About a year ago, I blogged about the Working in Canada initiative as a great example of the Government of Canada doing government 2.0 — it’s a mashup that pulls together info trapped in widely spread out databases and delivers it in a way that helps prospective or new Canadians make informed decisions about where to live and work within the country.
Well since that time, the Working in Canada gang has also jumped into social media, with presences on Twitter (in the usual English and French, but also Mandarin) and Facebook.
One of the coolest things about their Facebook presence? They are interacting rather than just broadcasting. Here’s a screencap:
Example of interaction on Facebook
From what I see, the Working in Canada Facebook page is developing into a hub where people are asking questions not just about the Working in Canada tool, but wider questions about coming to Canada as well. And they are getting answers — the Working in Canada folks are pointing these people to relevant information sources, regardless of whether they specifically pertain to the Working in Canada program or not. Nice work!
What's a spaghetti test?
That whole Foreign Credential Recognition team at HRSDC is absolutely brilliant (full disclosure: they are a past client of mine for social media work). Seriously though, they get the concept of 2-way engagement more than any department. Lot’s of brilliant minds of various backgrounds and specialties work there. They are even tweeting in Chinese through a Chinese Twitter account. Looking forward to more progressive thinking coming soon…
[...] addition to their social media presences, the Working in Canada team has now developed a code snippet that can be dropped on to any web page [...]