(It’s totally pathetic that I can only get to cranking one of these out per week. Just had to say that.)
In my last post, I proposed a decentralized communications model for adopting social media in government – in which the program or service level gets most of the action in terms of participating in the social web.
In the comments, @nickcharney was intrigued and asked me to flesh out my thinking a little.
Do you envision a movement from a centralized (departmental) communications function directly to the program level?If so, can you elaborate on what you think that would look like? If not, what do you envision?
Actually, @chamika put it best, when she tweeted @ me: “… program folk should be out there, with comms help.”
That’s pretty much how I see it – and in a lot of ways this is similar to what already happens. Leaving aside social media, a lot of web (and other) federal govt communications is led by programs and sectors. Sure, media announcements/media relations and advertising is mostly centralized in corporate communications shops, but in my department at least, most other communications activities happen at the sector or program level. Us in the communications shop are there to help, but we don’t lead.
So no, I don’t envision social media as causing a movement from a centralized communications function to a decentralized one — we are already operating that way in many respects.
The merits of this can be (and are) debated endlessly. It’s just that in terms of social media at least, I think that it makes most sense to have the programs out there on the front lines.
Think of some of the obvious business drivers for starting a social media campaign or program:
- customer service: government services are always delivered at the program level
- consultation: for instance, a policy shop requesting input on a specific issue
- brand awareness: increasing recognition of specific programs or services (e.g. Weather Office specifically vs Environment Canada generally)
- outreach and stakeholder relations: by nature this is targeted to specific groups or subject matter
- recruitment: the HR program or sector would usually lead this
In each case, the natural lead would be a specific program or sector rather than a corporate communications group.
Sure there are times when “corporate” social media might make more sense:
- crisis situations – when there’s need to get the word out quickly, and show strong senior management leadership
- launching a new department or agency – which would fall back to corporate communications by default, since orgs don’t spring to life fully formed
But compare the two lists – the latter are situations that arise more rarely aren’t they?
Last word: I want to be clear – I definitely see a role for corporate communications when it comes to government doing social media. As with other forms of communications (such as publishing and marketing), this role would be more in terms of providing coordination and leadership to assist programs with their efforts.
Categories: government · social media
Tagged: corporate communications, government programs
I’ve been thinking off and on for a while now about what the logical “home” for social media in Government would be.
You see, I work in a corporate communications shop for a capital-D Department (it’s Industry Canada for those of you keeping score). It’s a place that’s used to speaking on behalf of the organization – in a language of key messages via well established vehicles like press releases and the like.
Would you be more likely to tweet about General Mills...
But I have my doubts that this “corporate” voice is of much use in social media — to be sure, it’s all well and good to have an organizational Twitter account or a corporate Facebook page, more or less acting as news feeds into those environments, but that’s not really doing social media is it? It’s just using the platforms as a vehicle to push more traditional messaging. (Tactically, it may be useful to do this, if only to show the doubters across the organization that the sky is not going to fall when the organization starts to have presences in the social web.)
Further, my org is a large and varied, with programs and services that cover a wide range of topics and activities — and working with diverse communities of stakeholders. Us corporate communicators might have a bird’s eye view, but we barely scratch the surface. We’re stretched too thin, trying to cover the organization as a whole.
... or Cheerios?
Here’s an analogy: the government department is like the company, and its programs and services are like the family of product brands that the company owns. Think of the difference between General Mills and its brands: Betty Crocker, Cheerios, Yoplait, etc. Where’s the centre of gravity? I can envisage a community around the Cheerios product much more easily.
Anyhow, it seems like it’s going to be at the program level where most of the social media action is, at least for us. It’s a much more natural fit. It’s with government programs where “public service” for citizens becomes real. There’s a focus and depth that exists in a program area that we in the corporate communications shop just can’t get into.
Categories: government · social media
Tagged: corporate communications, government services
Things very multiball for me lately, so here’s just one further thought about the Open Government Brainstorm.
The brainstorm phase of the US consultation on open government closed on June 3. However, the folks managing the process decided to leave the site open to further contributions. But the site has now been overwhelmed with irrelevant and off-topic contributions — conspiracy theories about Obama’s birth certificate, pleas to legalize marijuana, and so on. Yet during the official brainstorming period, site contributors remained more or less focussed on the task at hand — ideas on how to make government more transparent, collaborative and participatory.
My take-away? When a consultation is over, it’s over. The site should have been closed to further contributions on June 3.
Categories: Web 2.0 · government
Tagged: collaboration, consultations, open government, participation
Update on the online consultations on open gov happening in the US, mentioned in my last post.
With a little more than one day to go, 590 ideas have been submitted, nearly 1000 comments have been posted, and over 20,000 votes have been cast.
To see the full list, ranked by vote, click through to the Open Government Brainstorm – by IdeaScale.
The choice of using a third party site to host the consult is interesting — shows a willingness to use what’s out there, rather than re-inventing the wheel.
And based on the branding of the consultation site, the management of the consult appears to be by an arm’s length think tank (the National Academy of Public Administration). To my mind this enhances the validity of the process — shows that the White House is letting the professionals manage the consultation process. (Or to be less charitable, doing it this way at least puts some distance between the administration and the consultation process. Which can mitigate the usual concerns about “government meddling” in this as it unfolds.)
In terms of the actual brainstorm, many of the ideas that have been proposed are vague and sweeping. That’s to be expected, so it will be interesting to watch how this unfolds in the second step in the consult, when “the most compelling ideas from the brainstorming will be fleshed out on a weblog in a discussion phase.” Presumably the most compelling ideas are those that got voted up to the top.
Another interesting angle on this consult is that it’s open worldwide (as long you as you can participate in English), even though it is specifically about ways to improve the US government. What’s more, the consult was initially set up to allow anonymous contributions, although that was quickly changed:
Please note: On Saturday morning, we made a small change to this site. Posting, commenting and voting on ideas now requires users to log in. This change was made in response to concerns that settings that allowed anonymous posting may also have allowed users to vote more than once on the same idea. Our moderation policy can be accessed here.
(I see this change as a recognition of the limitations of current technologies to prevent voting up/down from being gamed, rather than an admission that allowing anonymous contributions is an invalid approach.)
I find the worldwide/anonymous angle interesting as a more conventional decision would have been to limit input to American citizens, since the consult is about their how their government works. However, opening up the consultation to a worldwide audience shows a recognition that the best ideas about how to improve government transparency, participation and collaboration could come from anywhere–so why limit your options?
Categories: Web 2.0 · government
Tagged: collaboration, open government, transparency, participation, consultations
On taking office back in January, one of the first actions of the Obama administration was to issue an “open government directive,” aimed at pushing the US government toward becoming transparent, participatory and collaborative.
The directive called for a set of recommendations for achieving “open gov” to be issued within 120 days. The deadline for this was today.
There doesn’t seem to be a set of recommendations that I can find. Instead, the public is being invited to co-create a set of recommendations. Go to http://www.whitehouse.gov/open to see.
Today we are kicking off an unprecedented process for public engagement in policymaking on the White House website. In a sea change from conventional practice, we are not asking for comments on an already-finished set of draft recommendations, but are seeking fresh ideas from you early in the process of creating recommendations. We will carefully consider your comments, suggestions, and proposals.
Here’s how the public engagement process will work. It will take place in 3 phases: Brainstorming, Discussion, and Drafting.
Beginning today, we will have a brainstorming session for suggesting ideas for the open government recommendations. You can vote on suggested ideas or add your own.
Then on June 3rd, the most compelling ideas from the brainstorming will be fleshed out on a weblog in a discussion phase. On June 15th, we will invite you to use a wiki to draft recommendations in collaborative fashion.
These three phases will build upon one another and inform the crafting of recommendations on open government.
This will definitely be worth watching — and serve as a model for those curious about how governments can undertake online consultations.
Update: just hopped over to http://opengov.ideascale.com/ – this is where the actual brainstorming phase of this consultation is taking place – as of 3.25 pm EDT, there are already 18 proposed recommendations that have been voted on 206 times. Not bad for the first hour that this has been live.
Categories: government
Tagged: collaboration, consultations, open government, participation, transparency
At the end of March, the US federal government’s General Services Administration (GSA) signed memoranda of understanding with four well known social sites: YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo and blip.tv.
Well, as seen in this list of the Terms of Service Agreements from the US government’s Web Content Managers Forum, there are now many more sites and services included:
Click through the links above to get to PDFs of the agreements that have been negotiated.
I really like the fact that a service like AddThis has been cleared for US government agencies to work with. Empowering your site visitors to easily and quickly share your content is really important if you want your digital communications to remain relevant. Also shows a willingness to use what’s out there rather than reinventing the wheel — often the temptation is to develop a “government” version of something successful like this, which is pretty darned inefficient.
By the way, Twitter is not actually on the list. Here’s what it says at the other end of that link above:
Regarding Twitter, several federal agency attorneys (including attorneys at GSA and The White House) have determined that there are no issues with Twitter’s standard Terms of Service that would present legal problems for their agencies. For this reason, we are not negotiating any special Terms of Service with Twitter, and are simply “checking the box” for the standard Terms of Service when setting up a Twitter account.
This is what had been originally reported back in March as well.
I will also revise what I said when I originally blogged about these agreements:
I see this as a really positive step. It’s something that US public servants can point to in their efforts to reassure their managers and executives that it’s OK for government to be on these major platforms. This will make it easier to go to where online audiences actually are.
We need the same kind of thing here — PWGSC and other central agencies are you listening? (Time to get on the phone to your counterparts in the GSA and ask them to share their templates!) [Time to start downloading those agreements and using them as a base for GoC use!]
(found via the Government Information Division blog)
Categories: Web 2.0 · government · social media · social networking
Tagged: government 2.0, GSA, MOU, USA
GTEC Ottawa – Distinction Awards Program and Gala.
This year’s GTEC event in Ottawa is happening in October. The theme is “Government 2.0 Service Mashups.”
A centerpiece of the conference is always the Distinction Awards, where innovation, leadership and excellence in government IT and information management is recognized. There are awards at the municipal, provincial and federal levels.
I really appreciate the awards, if only because they highlight good government projects that I hadn’t heard about before.
This year’s awards come with a revised format — every nomination that makes the final round of judging will be recognized with an award, effectively expanding the range of winning projects. There will still be “best of the best” winners also.
The call for nominations closes in one week — you need to nominate your favorite government tech innovations by May 22, 2009.
Check out the GTEC Call for Nomincations page for more info. And you can download the nomination form in PDF or in MS Word format.
Categories: government
Tagged: awards, GTEC, GTEC 2009, innovation, nominations
