'Social Media in Government: Hands-on Toolbox' has been written to help practitioners who are setting up social media profiles and using the tools on a daily basis.  It has been written for public servants with limited experience using social media, but also offers tools and tips that will be useful for those practitioners who have been using social media for some time.

Along with a High-level Guidance document, the New Zealand government has released a toolbox guide to help their pubic servants use social media. Apparently they reused content from the UK (although not Australia?) and Gartner analyst, Andrea Di Maio, thinks its a pretty good guide.

Highlights in the toolbox for me are:

• I like the distinction made between 'Social networks' and 'Media-sharing networks' (although IMHO, Flickr can be both). 
• They attempt a balanced look at the Strengths and Weaknesses of the five types of social media addresses in the guide, rather than focusing on risk or over evangelising the benefits. 
• The methodology of Finding, Assessing, Contributing and Tracking as a way to develop they approach to a particular tool.

Now they are quite upfront that this guide is for people with limited experience and it is impossible to distil knowledge of this medium into a single, static document. I know that, because I co-authored a Toolkit, for the Australia Government Gov 2.0 Taskforce in 2009.

Personally I think this kind of guide remains a double-edged sword. On one hand, we need to encourage people in government to get online. However, I don't think the patterns of online engagement, tools or methods described in basic guides like this really help to create a deeper and more sustainable engagement with the concepts of open government, Government 2.0 or social media either. To quote Dominic Campbell, who said recently:

There aren't enough of us working to transform, challenge and change the inside of government. Not enough taking on the really sticky issues beyond relatively quick and easy wins, such as transit data or street-scene related apps. This needs to change before anything can be said to have gone mainstream. Disclaimer: this is exactly what we're looking to do with apps like PatchWorkHQ and CasseroleHQ, starting to hone in on priority, challenging, socially important and costly areas of government, such as child protection and supporting older people to live better independent lives. The journey is far longer and harder, but (we're hoping) even more rewarding.

Lets stop focusing on examples of Government using Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Instead, lets spread ideas that can really have impact.

This is something Dominic and I discussed at GovCampNSW a few weeks ago. Really, understanding the technology isn't the barrier and publishing more and more basic guides won't change that.

Regardless of where you stand on the Occupy movement, this photo highlights that even if we forget the protests themselves (and the abuses) something has definitely changed. Not sure if we should really call it citizen journalism, more a kind of governance.

Open government; resilient state: Innovating for government in NSW

If you work for government – or with government – whether federal, state or local, this one-day forum is for you.
 
GovCamp for you

This GovCamp “unconference” is simply a space to open up the public sphere conversation - to create a comfortable place where new thinking becomes possible and enables new outcomes.  There are no long presentations and the topics are yours - you get to create the agenda.

So this GovCamp is about how government works, as well as how it works for citizens.  It's about the pressures of needing to do better government with less; about meeting growing public needs and expectations within an increasingly transparent and stretched public space.

It's also about leverage points for innovation in NSW, such as connective technologies and open data.  We hope to hear some big-picture policy ideas and some pragmatic new-ways-of-working.

GovCampNSW is about the power of ideas and conversation. It aspires to build upon the gov-tech / 2.0 focus and look beyond to shaping innovation in government in NSW.

Discussion will include:

• Cultural change leading to open government.
• Social technologies and service delivery.
• Policy 2.0: Why do apps have all the fun? 

For more info on the program and format OR to suggest topics you'd be interested in discussing on the day, please visit the GovCampNSW website at www.govcampnsw.info.

GovCamp is for people like you

Public sector practitioners, advisers and leaders who are excited by these challenges, who seek to better understand the risks and opportunities within emerging trends. 

There are no clever corporate games; just dialogue and an open exchange of ideas.  It's a Saturday. It's free time, casual and as "off-the-record" as you need.  And because it's shared conversation, you'll take away even more than you contribute.

 

 

For my part, a recurring Gov 2.0 theme for me is social innovation and the role of the non-profit sector in service delivery. So I hope to see a good mix of government people, agitators for change (like me), engaged citizens and also the non-profit sector at this first GovCamp for NSW.

BTW I'll be helping out, co-facilitating the conversation cafe and maybe a presentation.

YouTube, YouTube, YouTube. If you want to upload a video on the Internet, pretty much anyone will default to the web’s standard. And why shouldn’t they? YouTube has been the platform for viral sensations, from huge brands (Old Spice) to kid musicians (Justin Bieber).

The wisdom: “Go where the people are.” It makes YouTube tempting, especially as it continues to expand its features and reach. But there are some things that YouTube can’t do, or doesn’t do so well. There are plenty of other high-quality video platforms with competitive features or specialized markets.

Last night on Twitter I was talking to Craig and Greg Lexiphanic about YouTube, particularly in the context of Government 2.0. Mashable offer seven alternatives to YouTube - from Blip.tv to yfrog. One of the benefits of some of the suggestions is that there is less spam and trolling, which is one of the problems of YouTube. (Craig actually suggests government departments switch off comments on YouTube, because of the moderation overhead.)

This doesn't mean YouTube isn't the right place for some content. Such as Zombies...

Personally, I think the choice of YouTube should be based on the kind of engagement you expect. Content that is of interest to niche audiences, controversial or wasn't designed to be sharable or engaging (i.e. reposted public education TV adverts) may mean that YouTube isn't the right place or it shouldn't be the only place.

I thought this comment on the Mashable post was interesting:

It’s important to place your videos in multiple places, especially if you want to reach a broader audience. You never really know where people are going to discover your content. I’ve put short videos on YouTube that got very few views, but got significantly more on Flickr.

Interesting that the article didn’t mention Facebook as a place for videos. I get tons of activity when I post a video to Facebook.

BTW To Mashable's list I'd also suggest 23video, which offers a complete video site service.

Mumbrella report that the Say Yes Australia campaign is shifting to a grass roots approach, which I think is code for targeting the members of supporting organisations (including GetUp!) with direct email.

Anyway, this is a good reminder for me to check the Twitter and Facebook stats on both this campaign and also the government's Clean Energy Future site, which I've been tracking.

In the period 28th July to 6th September:

Clean Energy Future

• Twitter 1,603 increased to 1,725 followers 
• Facebook 1,490 increased to 1,847 likes

SayYesAustralia

• Twitter 1,247 increased to 1,409 followers 
• Facebook 21,644 increased to 24,050 likes

According to Mumbrella the nine groups supporting SayYesAustralia have 3 million members, so based on these numbers it would make sense for them to engage more directly rather than waiting for a viral approach to take hold.

As it happens, I also noticed that a case study was presented today about the Clean Energy Future digital engagement campaign, most of which was managed in-house by the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. The total budget for the campaign overall (not just the digital part) was $13.7 million.

One of the highlights from this summary of the case study was emphasis on the videos, so that has also prompted me to look again their popularity.

Clean Energy Future's most popular video (How does carbon pricing work?) has received 17,434 views (30% of all their views). Unfortunately, adding comments is disabled on their videos so they missed the chance to get feedback that way. Meanwhile, GetUp's most popular Carbon Tax video (A Price on Carbon - In Five Easy Steps) attracted 90,887 views - however, another non-Carbon Tax video reached 423,870 views. It is interesting to note that both videos address the same topic.

On reflection, I'm still not entirely clear about the purpose of the social media channels for both campaigns. Clearly, involving an agency in SayYesAustralia hasn't helped their Twitter stats. However, based on numbers their Facebook and YouTube channels have been more successful than the government.

Looking at the actual engagement on Facebook in particular, I'm also not sure either campaign has been particularly good at creating a groundswell of support. The approach of both campaigns appears to be one of post interesting links and then letting the community argue amongst itself (I couldn't find any examples of the moderators from Clean Energy Future joining the conversation). SayYesAustalia's Facebook page gives supporters the ability to add a badge to their profile pic, but other than this there is nothing for people to do for either campaign. Of course, the argument is that you just have to be on Facebook - but without any clear purpose, my question is would anyone have really noticed if they weren't?

Hopefully SayYesAustralia have finally realised this and they are going to finally give people something to do.

The wonderful thing about news in the Internet age is that we have unfiltered access to both first hand reports and the perspective of overseas news channels. In this panel interview, Guardian journalist Paul Lewis emphasises that he feels the use of social media and Blackberry Messenger in particular to orchestrate the riots should be considered in the loosest terms, rather than it being a defining factor.

The comments from the panel also reflect some of my own experiences of watching the riots unfold online - the positives far outweighed the bad.

Its also interesting to reflect on the evolving relationship between the traditional media and social media. Lewis immersed himself in the medium, like photojournalist, adding credibility and insight into his reporting in parallel to user generated content. The Guardian newspaper also leads the way in using open data to share facts, so we can judge for ourselves. The public record of social media also means we can check quotes for the original context too (scroll down to Misquoted).

The UK Police are also using social media to track down offenders, although perhaps they should have read from Queenland Police's book for their approach to #mythbusting during an emergency (PDF).

Such is the ever tightening relationship between our every days lives, the delivery of community and government services, professional media reporters and social media I can't see how in reality we can really untangle the technology without unintended consequences.

THE anonymity afforded by the internet makes it hard to know for sure who is driving online public opinion. But one thing can be said about this surfing, tweeting, blogging community busy putting links and comments up on their Facebook pages: it is made up of people with nothing better to do.

An interesting argument to discredit the value of online opinion: most people are participating online in company time because they are bored and cranky, so their opinion is skewed and unrepresentative (and clearly, they are of bad character by slacking off).

Curiously, no mention of the online popularity of the ABC's #qanda and SBS's refugee 'reality' documentary. I'm pretty sure those shows play outside of normal business hours - perhaps they were only popular with shift workers?

And there is plenty of other local research that challenges the mythology of cyberslacking too.

But based on the overall negatively I often see coming from the traditional Australian media about anything to do with the Web (e.g. social media, the National Broadband Network) I can only conclude its the result of widespread boredom in the industry itself.

What do you think? (Comments to be submitted outside working hours only, please)