The Podcaster

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

At every public sector conference I speak at I always ask the audience how many local government employees  present actually use Social Media tools. I always get a good show of hands usually about 75% of those there.  If I then ask how many work for councils where the IT department bans social media access I get the same number. The council employees are using social media at home or on smart-phones and not from the councils own IT systems. I then ask them does the local council have a strategy for social media use and it seems very few do. A would say a handful have ever stated that their employer has a planned and co-ordinated strategy to use social media. A few ‘early pioneers’ are experimenting or running trials but not as part of a longer term strategic plan.

When I ask why access is banned by IT and Senior Management I get a variety of answers but the top 3 are usually – concerns over security, issues over disclosure and the resultant reputation management and network capacity/overload (expressed as people ‘wasting their time and using valuable bandwidth socialising’ or watching video!)

As the above issues would equally apply to the US Federal Government and Agencies I thought it would be useful to look at why they have a more open attitude to using social media.

As  one official document (CIO Council – Guidelines for Secure Use of Social Media by Federal Departments and Agencies) expressed it – the use of social media will continue to grow because of initiatives from the Administration (started by President Obamas memorandum for Transparency and Open Government signed at the White House within a month on taking office in January 2009), directives from Government leaders and demands from the public.

For them the re-calibration of IT deprartment is from ‘no to social media’ to ‘yes – but with the issues addressed’.

The CIO of US Federal IT, Vivek Kundra, has stated that Web 2.0 is essential to “tap into the vast amounts of knowledge’ available. He has developed a 5 point plan to enable the Administrations agenda

• Open and Transparent government
• Lowering the cost of government
• Cybersecurity
• Participatory democracy
• Innovation

To ensure that the issues on cybersecurity are addressed fully guidelines on Web 2.0 and its use have been produced. The risks of using and not using it are a determining factor with the biase being on use. The default position for Government CIOs is now ‘yes – to social media’ but to minimise the risks the following actions are being taken.

• Establishing clear policies and sharing them freely within the Agency or Department
• Training people in the tools
• Training on the ‘best practice’ use and security risks for the employee and for the relevant department or agency

Reearchers Drapeau and Wells at the National Defense University defined four specific uses of social media within the US Federal Government.

• Inward sharing – within department functions or across agencies as with information portals and wikis (in effect a Government intranet)
• Outward sharing – within a small and defined group including organisations external to the Goivernment (an extranet)
• Inbound Sharing – where external input (crowdsourced data) is used
• Outbound sharing – where an official  presence exists on a public network like Facebook or Twitter.

All the above should be useful background information to help inform UK local government and private sector organisations that there is value in a social media strategy and policy.

An interesting video from the Salt Lake Valley Health Department in the USA on how they have been using social media tools to maximise public and media communications relating to H1N1