Areas for improvement – 10 things social media can support in local government
Posted by Ingrid Koehler on February 3, 2009
Social media is more than a set of tools, it’s a way of thinking, communicating and doing. . Done right, it can transform business. It can transform government, too. It’s a revolutionary approach which embraces openness, inclusion and citizens at the heart of policy-making.
In preparing a brief for how the IDeA can nurture the effective use of social media, off the top of my head I thought of 10 ways social media can be used to support improvement in local government.
- Empowerment: citizens and communities are able to have a real voice over time and distance using social media tools. The collaborative approach lends itself to real empowerment of citizens. Citizens can create their own spaces for conversation enabling councils to hear them in their own language and context. Councils can use social media for consultation that can really drive service and policy change.
- Inclusion and social cohesion: digital inclusion closely matches social inclusion, and some studies suggest that promoting digital inclusion can help tackle social exclusion. using local, hyper-local and neighbourhood sites to promote community cohesion
- Performance management: Timely information to citizens presented in more comprehensible, attractive and inclusive ways helps citizens and stakeholders alike to hold public service providers to account.
- Sector self-support and regulation: we can build on our existing strategies to enhance knowledge management, support between councils and partners using social media approaches
- Leadership development: politicians, potential councillors, local leaders and senior officers can use social media tools to understand the needs of local people and communicate their vision.
- Customer insight and service transformation: social media can help councils understand the customer experience and communicate to stakeholders within councils and partner organisations the priorities for change. Social media can also be cheaper than many existing communication channels.
- Equalities: hearing from voices not normally heard, providing information and opportunities to contribute more accessibly.
- Talent management: using social media for better recruitment
- All kinds of service specific support: creating hyper-local sites for tenant groups and social landlords (housing), more feedback and access to planning and regeneration information, online feedback for scores on the doors (licensing and regulation), better ways to increase recycling and reduce rubbish…the possibilities are almost endless.
- Innovation: many of the innovations in local government either are or are being delivered through social media or lessons and adaptations are being shared via the social web. NESTA and RSA are continuing to look at Innovation through networks, including social networking – and there’s no reason we can’t take advantage of that in local government.
What else? What more?
I know that there are already examples of a number of these being done, if you know of any I’d love to hear about them.
This entry was posted on February 3, 2009 at 4:56 pm and is filed under socialmedia. Tagged: improvement, local government, social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
James Cousins said
Challenge? There are elements of this in many of your top ten, but by being on social media you have to be prepared for challenge – you cannot only answer positive messages, Tweets or posts. Of course, challenge can, and should, lead to service improvement.
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PaulG said
Some ideas that spring to mind.
Fostering trust between the public and councils (maybe that should be rekindling trust)
I know who you are, and you know who I am. I am responsible for what I say to you, and that can be a somewhat private conversation if we both choose it to be.
e.g. I trust you to add events to my diary that match my criteria.
vs “subscribe to our planning newsletter” , What, so you can spam me, leave my details on a laptop on a train etc? Hand over my details to your Benefits Section?
eTrust is shot ATM.
Choice.
I want my services (I pay for them, so they are mine) delivered to me the in the way(s) that are best for me. Today I want to know election results by twitter and rss. Tomorrow I want to know if you miss my bin by sms and email, but next week I don’t.
Dissemination of urgent information.
e.g. twittering about the snow event, boosting and extending resilient britain.
re: trust, social media can also contain strong team building elements, a knock-on effect of enhanced trust building within councils could be more remote working, ie realise benefits of reduced carbon footprints et al.
georgneu said
Dear Ingrid,
Interesting thoughts and a good list.
Generally I would add, that one of the key effects of social media goes beyond the usage of tools for purposes, but is a different way of thinking about how to go about government. This is sometimes the reason why “top-down” social media initiatives do not work, and the need for a collaborative bottom-up approach is much more promising.
Also, have a look at two additional items that might be interesting for you in a three-point list I did a couple of months ago: http://socialtransparency.wordpress.com/2008/10/02/changing-fight-against-corruption/
Best,
Georg Neumann
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Kevin Campbell-Wright said
This a a brilliant list!
There’s ones thing missing here – Community Education Programmes. Maybe it’s not missing as another item….but as something that embeds throughout several of the others.
This may not seem like local government at first – but all local authorities (well, nearly all) have an Adult & Community Education department, where citizens at the “failed to reach” end are being engaged and empowered. All of these departments have an e-learning strategy, looking at how technology can help in their learning. If social media is included in this strategy, it’s a great place to look at a number of these, especially the first two and seven & eight…
I’d be interested to hear thoughts around this…