Social media in government

Craig ThomlerGov 2.0 AdvocateManaging Director

Delib Australia11 June 2013

Social media and Gov 2.0 in Aussie government

What issocial media?

About.com – Media is an instrument on communication, like a newspaper or a radio, so social media would be a social instrument of communication

Affilorama - Social media is content created and shared by individuals on the web using freely available websites that allow users to create and post their own images, video and text information and then share that with either the entire internet or just a select group of friends

BlackBox Social Media – Social media is any online media platform that provides content for users and also allows users to participate in the creation or development of the content in some way

CubixDev - Social Media is the new term for socialising online. It allows people to freely interact with each other online where-ever they are and whenever they want

Fresh Networks – Social media is people having conversations online. These conversations can take a variety of forms; for example, blogs and comments or photo sharing

Health is Social – Social Media is the meeting place between people and technology

Get a Social Boost – Digital word of mouth

Michelle Digital – Social media is life online

Optimize Your Web Presence – Social media are online venues, such as social networking sites, blogs and wikis that enable people to store and share information called content, such as text, pictures, video and links

ProPR – Social media are online communications in which individuals shift fluidly and flexibly between the role of audience and author. To do this, they use social software that enables anyone without knowledge of coding, to post, comment on, share or mash up content and to form communities around shared interests

Relationship Economy – Social media is communications

The Financial Brand – Social media isn’t about the media, it’s about being social

Webgeekly - Social Media is generally any website or service that uses Web 2.0 techniques and concepts

Wikipedia - Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques

Many definitions for social media…

Facilitates user-generated content Facilitated by social connections Distribution is zero or low cost Supports flowing discussions (low barriers to

participation) Allows the community to ‘do’ for themselves Use open frameworks that support integration &

extension

Social media has in common…

Blogs

Groups and Forums (Whirlpool, Google Groups)

Wikis (Wikipedia, Wikispaces)

Social networking (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Google+)

Social bookmarking (Delicious)

Social news (Digg, Reddit)

Micro-blogs (Twitter, Yammer)

Community Q&A (Yahoo Answers)

Multimedia sharing (YouTube, Slideshare, Scribd)

Ideas markets (Dialogue App, Ideascale, GetSuggestion)

Collaborative budgeting (Budget Simulator)

Product and service reviews (Epinions, Yelp)

Emerging tools (Group buying, Pinterest, Crowd funding)

Each has different uses

Social media includes…

Just for teenagers and young adults 50+ age group is the fastest growing on Facebook and Twitter 30% of Facebook users are aged 35-49 Average age of Twitter users is 31, of LinkedIn users 39 years old.

All low quality content An independent study in 2005 by Nature Magazine found Wikipedia and

Encyclopedia Britannica had about the same rate of errors Since then, reviews in 2007, 2008 & 2012 have found Wikipedia is at least as,

if not more, reliable than commercial encyclopedias in a range of topics.

Unproductive “People who surf the Internet for fun at work - within a reasonable limit of

less than 20% of their total time in the office - are more productive by about 9% than those who don’t”. Dr Brent Coker, Dept of Management & Marketing, University of Melbourne

Going away

What social media is not…

What about Australia?

Source: Sensis Social Media Report May 2012

65+ yrs

50-64yrs

40-49yrs

14-39yrs

Female

Male

Total

93%

99%

99%

100%

97%

99%

98%

Australia’s internet use

Source: Sensis Social Media Report May 2012

Australia’s social media use

Never

Use social media

38%

62%

38%

62%

2011 2012

Source: Sensis Social Media Report May 2012

Australia’s social media use

Never

Less than weekly

Weekly

Everyday

38%

6%

19%

36%

38%

9%

24%

30%

2011 2012

Source: Facebook March 2013 / ABS Census 2012

Facebook in NSWBased on residents aged 15+

NSW

Sydney

2,109,315

1,020,701

3,599,380

2,620,620

Use Facebook Don't use Facebook

(72%)

(63%)

Source: Facebook May 2013 / ABS Census 2012

Facebook in VictoriaBased on residents aged 15+

Victoria

Greater Melbourne

1,534,209

1,235,920

2,821,040

2,024,880

Use Facebook Don't use Facebook

(62%)

(65%)

What about Australian governments?

In mid-2012:

73% of Australian Government agencies reported using social media for official purposes

The social media majority

What the Australian Government is using social media for..Answer choice Response Share

For stakeholder engagement or collaboration 32 54.24%

Operating an information campaign 25 42.37%

Responding to customer enquiries/comments/complaints 25 42.37%

For engaging with journalists and media outlets 24 40.68%

For engagement or collaboration with other government agencies

24 40.68%

Monitoring citizen, stakeholder and/or lobbyist views and activities

17 28.81%

For a public consultation process 16 27.12%

For a stakeholder or other restricted access consultation 13 22.03%

Other type of activity (i.e. recruitment, crowdsourcing, staff) 11 18.64%

For policy or services co-design 7 11.86%

Over 1,000 online consultations in last four years

Over 860 Departmental Twitter accounts

Over 120 agency blogs

Over 250 Facebook pages

Over 300 agency mobile apps

Over 200 agency YouTube channels

At least 12 data competitions (13th in June)

At least 6 open data sites (7th coming in May)

All levels of Aus government

Growth in Twitter use

Open government & Gov 2.0

• Citizens have a right to access government documents and proceedings to support effective public oversight

• Citizens have a right to have their views considered during government decision making.

Dates back to European Enlightenment in the 18th Century.

Traditional open government

Is expanding to include:

• Citizens have a right to access, repurpose and reuse government open data (PSI)

• Expectation that government should develop and use open systems, sharing them across agencies and communities.

• Decision-making should be citizen-centric, government’s role is to coordinate, curate views & implement citizen decisions.

Open government today

The big change in openness…

PresentCitizens are (or wish to be) active participants in governance processes and decisions.

PastCitizens considered passive subjects of governments (albeit with some right to scrutinise decisions and processes).

Source: https://www.facebook.com/FatherPiotrWisniowski

The difference between Open Government and Government 2.0

Open government is the philosophy (Why).

Government 2.0 is about the process & tools for achieving open government (How).

IMHO - the difference

Using tools and techniques enabled by digital technologies to bring citizens 'inside the tent'.

Empowering citizens to be active participants in government decision-making processes and supporting them to do for themselves.

Opening up public data for public reuse to inform and enable new insights, better decisions and more effective policy.

Initiatives from individuals and non-government organisations as well as government.

Government 2.0 includes...

Government 2.0(in my humble opinion) is creating a fundamental shift

in the relationship between

citizens and governments,

to the benefit of both.

Inform

Consult

Involve

Collaborate

Empower

Source: IAP2.org

Gov 2.0 by goal

Inform http://www.police.act.gov.au/crime-and-safety/crime-statistics.aspx

Inform https://www.facebook.com/theline

Inform http://www.detentionlogs.com.au/data/incidents

Inform http://theopenbudget.org/

Consult http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/spend_spendingchallenge.htm

Consult http://surveys.getup.org.au/s3/YourElectionSurvey2013

Involve http://www.challenge.gov

Involve http://www.fixmystreet.org.au/

Collaborate http://transcribe.naa.gov.au/

Collaborate http://www.electionleaflets.org.au/

Empower http://stjornlagarad.is/english/

Empower http://hackerspace.govhack.org/?q=groups/open-index

• Doesn't replace existing approaches...it can supplement and amplify them

• Doesn't work for all audiences or issues...but does work for some that are otherwise unreachable/intractible

• Gov 2.0 & social media can't solve problems…people do

Gov 2.0 & social media caveats

Craig Thomlercraig@delib.net@CraigThomler

http://eGovAU.blogspot.com

www.delib.net/australia/@Delibaunz