I could blog this, but I’d have to kill you: civil service blogging

I am a blogger. Whether I like it or not, it’s part of my identity now. It’s an essential tool for me to communicate to a wider local government audience. In other spheres, it’s an essential way for me to communicate to friends and family.

It’s added a lot of value to my life and to my work. I guess I’m a little bit evangelistic about it. There are people who could be blogging and perhaps should be blogging who aren’t. I would love to see a local government partnership manager blogging about the development of their LAA targets. Do I think it could be a warts and all picture (e.g. which partner isn’t coughing up the money)? No, of course, not. Just like “real life”, there are some things that can’t be shared with everyone. There are limits of polite conversation. I wouldn’t tell somebody they’re a fool to their face (though I might think it) or record it in the minutes of a meeting and I couldn’t blog the same.

So there’s a little bit of common sense involved in blogging.

And there’s a new code of blogging practice for civil servants. It’s pretty much based on common sense and mercifully brief.

But why would civil servants want to blog? Why would the civil service encourage blogging? I attended a session yesterday at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to look at the role of blogging and social media in the civil service, consider the new code and think what else might be done to encourage the constructive use of social media.

Stephen Hale, Deputy Head of e-Media at the FCO, described how there’s a shift from the diplomacy of old to a new public diplomacy. People to people. And blogging helps them to bring that personal element to the international effort. There are a quite a few FCO bloggers, ranging from Foreign Secretary David Miliband to “regular” consular staff on their site writing in English and apparently the ambassador to Denmark blogs in Danish - as is appropriate when speaking with the people of a host country.

And their stories can be powerful. I read about the British consular staff’s work at the Hajj. The Zimbabwe mission staff writing is particularly moving. Here’s yesterday’s dispatch:

Despair and fear infects us working at the British Embassy too. Living through such a period is taking chunks out of us. In June we held our annual reception to celebrate the Queen’s Birthday, and give some aid and comfort to our community and friends here. Some of the guests could not attend, as they were being held as political prisoners. Others have been savagely beaten since the party. It hurts to see such cruelty close up.

You can certainly see the value of such writing particularly when many accredited news agencies are banned from the country. Of course, used in the wrong way, and one could imagine more than a little local difficulties ensuing.
For me, it was quite exciting to be invited into the halls of power and opulent venue of a reception room decorated with dead heroes (anti-heroes?) of the British Empire and overlooking a marble paved interior courtyard used for roller skating by senior civil servants* to talk about a subject I’m rather passionate about. But I’m not sure how much this conversation moved us on. For those already blogging, the code offers little additional guidance (I mean if we haven’t been sacked yet, we must be doing something right). For those who are nervous of crossing some imaginary line or who are hesitant about their online skills, I’m not sure how much help this would be.

In a recent survey of our Policy and Performance Community of Practice, a substantial number of people indicated that their hesitancy to contribute had something to do with nerves and confidence. Many people were nervous about contributing material about their employer or just putting stuff up on the web and some weren’t sure of the value of their contributions to others. And that’s a shame. I’m not sure how we can overcome this. For some people, it’s just not their thing and that’s ok. Public speaking isn’t for everyone, either.

Could it be overcome through training? Maybe. Occasionally we try to encourage people to contribute by having “fun” threads in our discussion forums, particularly in online conferences. We recently asked people about their own best and worst experiences of customer services (in a conference on customer insight) - and the answers ranged from the usual barney when returning faulty goods to the council’s speedy removal of a dead deer by the church gates on a Sunday morning. That seemed to draw out more responses than usual and I think it’s all a part of getting used to the media.

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* Not actually true, but I think it would be a great idea.