GovTwit a Big Hit

More and more people in and around government are using the social media platform Twitter. Twitter allows users to create a community of interest and shared information via “tweets” of 140 characters or less. Government users have created a vibrant and active community using Twitter daily to talk to one another and share government best practices, ideas and news.

Until recently there was no central listing of government related Twitter addresses. So on November 20th my client BearingPoint launched GovTwit, and we’ve been blown away by the hugely positive reception: www.bearingpoint.com/GovTwit

When it launched less than three weeks ago the directory had approximately 150 listings, predominately from the Executive Branch and from the Hill. To date the directory has grown to almost 350, driven by user supplied additions and ongoing research into additional Twitter streams. There have been almost 100 comments to the directory posting, and our GovTwit Twitter stream has almost 300 followers.

The directory is a resource for anyone working in government, reporting on it or looking to get more engaged as a citizen. Currently the directory is broken out in the following manner:

• Agencies and Exec Branch
• The Hill
• State and Local
• Reporters and Publications
• Industry, Academia and Others
• International

The “traditional” media is taking notice:

• Federal Computer Week: http://tinyurl.com/55p4hf

• Washington Technology: http://tinyurl.com/55p4hf

• Government Technology: http://tinyurl.com/6zvtah

• Washington Examiner: http://tinyurl.com/5onnrh

• Washington Biz Journal: http://tinyurl.com/5v4hge

Soon BearingPoint may move GovTwit to its own online home — it launched as a post in the BearingPoint New Thinking blog. They are also looking at ways to add greater functionality to the listings, and retweeting the most interesting content via the GovTwit stream, creating a sort of “best of the best” channel. Right now it’s quite an investment of time just responding to  every comment and adding new listings daily.

Whatever GovTwit morphs into, it’s a great example of a company jumping into social media in a manner that adds value and builds community. And for my agency Strategic Communications Group, it’s staying true to our goal of great work for great clients.

Government 2.0 Goes Mainstream — Are We Ready?

(Slightly Orwellian image courtesy of Newsweek)

I’ve read Newsweek magazine since childhood. In today’s environment of ever more immediate and narrowly focused media channels, a weekly magazine cannot go very deeply into issues. But the magazine is still a useful read on the zeitgeist of the moment.

So I took note when Daniel Lyons and Daniel Stone wrote this week on Barack Obama’s use of technology and how his administration may tap into the grass-roots organization built during the campaign to actually help govern the country. Government 2.0 is a term increasingly heard in Washington, with a number of proposed definitions. Here’s the one Lyons and Stone advance:

“Call it Government 2.0. Instead of a one-way system in which government hands down laws and provides services to citizens, why not use the Internet to let citizens, corporations and civil organizations work together with elected officials to develop solutions? That kind of open-source collaboration is second nature to the Net-gen kids who supported Obama and to the technologists from Silicon Valley who are advising him.” http://www.newsweek.com/id/170347

The piece suggests some ways to keep the “army” Obama built engaged and involved, and some of the challenges. A senior level CTO/Tech Czar is a good step, and making the full text of passed legislation available online for public comment prior to being signed by President Obama. A good first step here is the web site www.change.gov, which contains detailed position statements, videos of the transition team members and the ability for the public to provide feedback.

There are some obstacles as well. By law President Obama cannot directly contact the reported 10 million supporters gathered during the campaign separately from the rest of the public. Everyone has to be included when the President communicates. To get around this the administration may have to create a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) organization to handle the huge database.  And the much reported decision to bag the presidential blackberry has more to do with a law making every presidential communication public property than it does security concerns.

For me the most interesting thing to watch will be if technology can make staying connected to government truly a mainstream activity. After all, to paraphrase a well known expression, you campaign in poetry, but govern in prose. Governing means making tough choices (at least it should), sometimes the “least worst” choice, and compromising when necessary. How many of the Obama army will find this process as inspiring as helping to elect candidate Obama?  And will they be energized by broad-based initiatives or by value issue/litmus test disputes?

To a great degree, this is a social experiment powered by technology, but it’s not about the technology. It’s about us, the American people and our capacity for active citizenship. Plenty of obstacles remain, but the Obama campaign has already rewritten the rule book for winning the presidency. It will be fascinating to see if the Obama administration can now rewrite the rule book for governing. Success or failure depends on we the people, as much as it does on the technology provided.

SRO Crowd at Public Communication Roundtable

This morning I attended a packed Public Communication event put on by the Federal Consulting Group and GovDelivery. Over 120 government PA Officers and IT and Web Managers came to hear how agencies are using new digital channels and automated email alerts to better share their content with the public. We heard from a panel of experts who are really “walking the walk” when it comes to using technology in innovative ways to better disseminate their content.

Sheila Campbell is Team Leader for USA.gov’s Web Best Practices and oversees their Gov Gab blog. The ground-breaking blog just celebrated its first birthday. Sheila shared with the audience the many reasons for launching a blog — public access, exposing more people to your content, giving government a human face, SEO, opening up your culture and engaging more citizens in conversation. She also addressed some of the perceived barriers to 2.0 tools like blogs, all of which can be addressed — legal, privacy, security, authenticity of content and employee access to 2.0 applications. Sheila told us it’s all about managing risk vs. the public benefit of new communication channels.

Jeff Morin is Senior Web Editor for the EPA. The success story he shared was around the online promotion the EPA gave to Earth Day last April. He described how the agency created a “Green Tip of the Day,” that citizens could subscribe to during the countdown to Earth Day. That feature eventually became the Earth Day widget, which people could download and place on their sites. The most popular tips were also made into audio podcasts that could be easily shared. Together these new applications produced over 300,000 additional visitors to the EPA web site.

Maxine Teller is New Media Strategist for the Department of Defense, New Media Directorate. She was all about video — videos to support Warrior Care Month. She pointed out that 65% of the members of the armed forces were born in 1982 or later, meaning they’ve grown up in a digital culture. The Directorate’s use of online video began for that internal audience, but has since also been shared externally. The Directorate uses GovDelivery email alerts to alert subscribers whenever new video or other content is updated. Starting in July 2007 with GovDelivery, they already have accumulated 47,000 subscribers, and over 300,000 emails have been sent supporting Warrior Care Month. Maxine also described a very smart program called Bloggers Roundtable, in which the Directorate gives access to senior level military officials to hundreds of bloggers, who then post the information to their readers.

The Q&A was lively, but I didn’t take notes since I was shooting some video interviews — hope to have those up soon. If you’re in this space definitely register for the next event — but do it early!

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Government 2.0 — It’s Not Just the Feds

Earlier this week I brokered a conversation between two people I knew would hit it off. Pam Broviak is an online publisher, Director of Public Works for LaSalle, Illinois and a leading thinker about Government 2.0 at the local level. She put together a few months ago a group called MuniGov 2.0, which already boasts an impressive membership list: https://sites.google.com/site/munigov20/Home

Zach Stabenow is co-founder of GovDelivery, a company (and client) that automates, personalizes and delivers digital communications solely for public sector clients. GovDelivery has government customers large and small, from agencies like DHS and DoJ to cities like Ann Arbor, Charlotte and Palo Alto. Zach focuses on state and local for GovDelivery, and in fact knew a good number of MuniGov 2.0 members.

Both Pam and Zach agreed some kind of central repository of best 2.0 practices at the local level is needed, and in fact that is what Pam hopes her group becomes. Pam and MuniGov partner Bill Greeves have started a Muni group on GovLoop, but that group (an excellent resource) is more federally focused. Both Pam and Zach report a lot more interest and willingness to learn about 2.0 tools at local levels, especially transit authorities. Today the interest comes from inside government departments, not so much from elected officials.

Pam talked about how Government 2.0 can seem a little intimidating when someone is just starting out. Zach said what often helps there is GovDelivery’s multi-tenant SaaS platform, which allows government clients to just worry about the message, not the technology. GovDelivery has just added the ability to support tag clouds, blog management and cross-agency promotion of content to the platform, making adoption very easy for clients.

Pam shared a great Twitter story that struck me as innovative and simple at the same time. There was a major construction project in the city of LaSalle that was causing traffic congestion in a particular housing subdivision. To keep the residents as informed as possible, Pam started a Twitter stream with constant construction updates of project progress. Eventually even the contractor and the local paper were following the stream. So simple, yet how many departments of public works would think to do it?

If you’ve got information to share on 2.0 efforts at the local level, drop a comment or consider joining Pam’s group.

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News from the Front Lines — Government 2.0 Success Stories

The Social Media Club of DC had a meeting dedicated to Government 2.0 Wednesday night. Unfortunately I was unable to attend, but my Strategic Communications Group colleague Bill Murray was there. Bill wrote up his thoughts, and I’m happy to post them here.

Bill is very experienced in the b2g field, having formerly worked as a reporter for Federal Computer Week, Government Computer News and Washington Technology. His Twitter stream is wamurray, and his report is below.

I attended last night’s Social Media Club DC meeting on Gov 2.0 at Ogilvy 360 on 19^th Street. John Bell, head of Ogilvy’s 360 social media practice, served as the host, and Larissa Fair of Livingston Communications was the Social Media Club officer who introduced John. Mark Drapeau (cheeky_geeky on Twitter) was there, and I had a chance to speak with him for a few minutes about how a biological scientist came to write about social media for Mashable.com.

There were four speakers — Miguel Gomez of HHS’ Aids.com, Joanne McGovern of GSA’s USA.gov, contractor Tracy Johnson from SBA’s Business.com and Mike Panetta of Grassroots Enterprises, who is DC’s shadow representative to Congress. Some of the best practices they described are very similar to the work we do for our clients.

Joanne, for example, wanted to put a human face on government through blogging with her team at USA.gov. To overcome any fear of what the public might say to them, they have two rules in place — comments need to be civil in tone and directly related to the topic of the blog post.

Miguel spoke about the culture clash that can happen when implementing social media inside government. He talked about the immense bureaucratic obstacles at Health & Human Services Department to his blogging and podcasting at AIDS.gov. Incredibly it took six months to get a meeting with decision makers, and an addition four months to receive approval. And the day before he was to go live, the plug nearly got pulled because he’s “not a public speaker.”

He talked about taking the role of a patient educator with his fellow public health professionals to explain how social media can help them fight AIDS. He also spoke about how important repurposing content (for example blog postings that can be made into podcasts), which can be very effective.

Tracy serves as marketing manager for SBA’s Business.gov, and showed how the site was able to increase its traffic 69 percent in six months, primarily through offering a search widget to local chambers of commerce on Business.gov material, using Google AdWords and guest blogging on two sites.

Mike spoke about how he’s using Facebook and Twitter in his public outreach to try to gain full voting rights for District of Columbia residents. Despite the challenges some described, I came away very encouraged that 2.0 technologies ARE being implemented by government agencies to improve their communication with the public.

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Government 2.0 is Happening

Stephen Barr of the Washington Post has a very interesting Federal Diary story today. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has embraced the Wikipedia model and used their own Wiki to quickly catalogue 13,496 budgetary earmarks. The process took 10 weeks, as opposed to the usual 6 months. It currently has 5,500 members and other federal agencies are using to collaborate and gather financial information in real-time.

“Agencies Share Information By Taking a Page from Wikipeida“