Twitter in Government? Strategy from Across the Pond

Previously posted at GTEC.CA Blog: http://blog.gtec.ca/?p=512

Last week a fascinating and very useful guide to Twitter for Government was published by Neil Williams, head of corporate digital channels at the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. The blog post and full 20 page report linked here: Digital Engagement Blog

While specific to ‘official’ department use of Twitter, even seasoned Twitter users can learn something new about using this increasingly popular micro-blogging communication service.

Four key topics are covered:

1. Objectives and Metrics – why to use it and how to assess value

2. Risks and Mitigation – how contain potential risks to reputation

3. Channel proposition and management – how to populate and use it

4. Promotional plan – how to promote the presence and increase its reach


The document also includes a very useful glossary, providing a great overview of social media and Twitter terms.

What struck me as interesting?

• Twitter is being incorporated as part of a larger strategy of the UK government to better engage citizens. It provides a low-barrier to entry allowing people to interact with their public institutions and let them experience live coverage of events when they cannot attend in person.
  

• The policy offers clear communication on what constitutes inappropriate content, the importance of ‘light’ but effective procedural controls and guidelines for Twitter users, and how to proactively avoid potential ‘hacks’, misrepresentation or vandalism of content.

• “Tone of Voice” must be considered and articulated to ensure consistency especially when the account is managed by a team (great tip for any public or private sector corporate social media outreach)

• Content should be varied, have a human touch, be timely, credible and inclusive. The report’s tips on frequency, ‘re-tweeting’, use of hashtags (ie, metadata for Twitter updates), hyperlink shortening tools, how to balance humour and fun – these pointers demonstrate thoughtfulness and a good understanding of how to build and maintain a solid list of followers.

• UK is thinking longer term – including how Twitter may evolve one day into a new source of intake for Ministerial Correspondence systems – and whether these departmental professionals should begin monitoring and responding to Twitter enquiries.

The fundamental missing piece to this otherwise excellent guideline is articulated very well by Gartner’s Andrea DiMaio in an earlier blog post. What’s not covered is: “whether and how individual government employees should use it to better fulfill their tasks”. In other words, while it is a good guideline to create an institutional presence, it is thin on how and why the people working for that institution can or should use social media channels as part of their job. Perhaps there will be a part 2?

Haunted by the Box of Rocks

Previously posted at GTEC Blog: http://blog.gtec.ca/?p=352

At GTEC 2008, I presented a seminar called “Managing Corporate Memory in Public Sector”. The well-attended session explored the pending shift in workforce demographics as the Boomer generation approaches retirement age. Sectors at most risk included government, utilities, engineering, transportation and manufacturing. I sought to explore how IT and IM professionals could play a strategic role as our workplace transforms and to minimize risk of information and knowledge loss.

Though this is no longer a new topic challenging public sector management, the situation continues to grow in urgency and awareness. Over the weekend, I noticed that Gartner Research VP, Jeffrey Mann, had twittered about a recent spike in his customer inquiries precisely on this topic. He “tweeted”: “three of this morning’s 4 calls are on knowledge management (two on capturing experience of retiring employees) who says KM is dead?”.

Whether we call it knowledge management, corporate memory preservation, succession planning… whether the project is led by IM/RM, Human Resources or IT… regardless of the tools we use to capture the intrinsic knowledge held in the brains of our most senior valued employees – we know it must be done. Public Sector is a knowledge-economy enterprise. Information, policies, and programs: services are delivered to the citizens, residents, businesses within our jurisdiction to provide a stable infrastructure for social, commercial and political activities. To not pay attention to prospect of losing mentorship, best practices, and institutional culture is to do a disservice to the investment we’ve made in cultivating depth and breadth of public sector experience.

We all have our “keep me up at night” moments. Mine is a story told to me at the annual ARMA Conference in 2006. I was conducting a workshop on this topic of “Managing Corporate Memory” and a woman from an academic institution came up to me, very pleased to see the research I had done on the topic. As part of her Records Management responsibility, she was tasked with capturing the legacy paper and physical records of the scientists and engineers who retired from her institution. She told me the story of a scientist who upon his departure handed to her a large box of ore samples. He said to her very intently, “make sure you hang on to these… they are very very important”. And so she took them. And put them on a shelf, documented with the date and location and name of the scientist who left them behind. She looked at me rather sadly, and admitted that she had no idea what those rocks meant, or WHY they were so important. There was no corporate memory preservation mandate to ensure the samples got to a new researcher who could continue the work. So to this day, they sit on a dark shelf.

Was the cure for cancer in that box of rocks? Did they tell us something about our world that could make our lives better? We may never know.

To learn more about this topic of Managing Corporate Memory, click here to listen to a recorded educational seminar we hosted earlier this year. Any comments or feedback welcomed.

Guest Blogging with GTEC 2009 - Canada's Government Technology Event

No, GTEC hasn't changed dates! Canada's top technology conference aimed at Government is still in October like it has been for years.... But a few things have changed.

As part of the GTEC 2008 ramp up, the very clever and forward thinking organizers decided to try something a little different. They decided (to use my favourite phrase) Live it, not Lip Synch it. I mean... the '08 theme was all about Government 2.0, and what that meant to Canada. So starting last summer, a team of us agreed to blog regularly (-ish) about the things we thought government information managers and technology gurus needed to think about.

A mixed crowd of vendors, consultants, publishers, editors and real life public sector professionals contributed to topics spanning Collaboration, 2.0, Enterprise Architecture, Security, Information Management... and others. It was a great learning experience - figuring out what got the comments flowing, where the hits came from, what topics were most read.

But most interesting was that it created a sense of buzz, of anticipation so when the Conference finally arrived, people who had begun to engage and connect online came in with the education and background ready to make maximum use of the precious face-to-face time they had with their peers, with experts, with vendors.

So... here we are in April '09 and we're ramping up now for October. I was really glad to be asked back, and will try my best to stick to a weekly post, primarily on topics relevant to collaboration and what government 2.0 can mean for Canadians and the public sector information professionals that help manage our social and political structures. And I suppose it's a way to keep my homesickness for my ex-home of Ottawa at bay... an amazing talented and close knit community of information management professionals there that I'm proud to call friends.

My first post went up today: "Collaboration and the Social Workplace: What Does it Mean to Public Sector, part 1" Check it out. Some of the posts will be syndicated to our Open Text ECM Briefs corporate blog site.

I've already become a fan of one of my co-bloggers, Marj Akerley from Natural Resources Canada. Check out her 2 posts to-date under the category Government 2.0. She writes beautifully, and I like the way she thinks.

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