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Some of the practical benefits for government of online social media are beginning to emerge from various jurisdictions around the world. One that has particularly struck me as very positive is the use of online media by Washington DC to convince felons to voluntarily turn themselves in.
Written about in Using Social Media to Improve Public Safety - DC’s Fugitive Safe Surrender Prompts 530 Offenders with Warrants to Voluntarily Surrender in a Church (Doc) (and also available in the DC Public Safety Blog blog), the paper details how many fugitives wanted to turn themselves in, but had difficulty trusting police and the legal system to treat them fairly.
While the DC Safe Surrender program was in operation to allow fugitives to turn themselves in at a place of worship, thereby creating a more comfortable experience and a greater sense that they would get a fair go, there were fugitives who still were unsure of how they would be received and, frankly, thought it was simply a scam.
So Washington DC employed an integrated media strategy, using television and radio advertisements to drive fugitives and their friends and families (who often did the research for them) to the DC Safe Surrender website where the program could be clearly explained.
To add faces and personal experiences, the website featured videos of fugitives who had surrendered speaking about their decision and how they felt.
The website not only supported fugitives in making the hard decision to trust the legal authorities, but also convinced the media and other institutions to support the program.
By building the sense of trust and transparency the site has led to a large number of people surrendering and allowing their cases to be heard, reducing the workload on enforcement agencies and also the possibility of those on the run of re-offending simply to stay out of the clutches of a legal system they didn't trust.
That's the power of the online channel. To allow individuals to share their experiences in a one-to-one fashion, establishing a level of trust that is hard for an institution to match.
Once this trust is established it can be referred or inferred from the individual back to an institution, allowing institutions to build their level of trust with individuals.
This isn't a new approach for the commercial sector - it's known as word of mouth advertising. It has been shown many times that the trust built out of personal relationships is much more powerful than trust in 'traditional' advertising.
Could your agency improve its outcomes by improving the level of trust and respect your customers have in it?
If so, online may offer you approaches to build this trust in a more cost-effective and interpersonal way than the old 'print-radio-TV-outdoor' mix of advertising options.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Practical benefits of online media for government | Tweet |
Friday, March 06, 2009
PDFs can be accessible! | Tweet |
I've previously applauded the efforts of the Human Rights Commissioner to draw attention to government websites who provide inaccessible content via WebWatch.
Even where an agency's overall site may be designed according to accessibility guidelines, when certain key information is presented only in PDF format, this information can be inaccessible.
However I've also been a little cautious of the 'PDF is bad' approach.
The PDF format can be made accessible. If you use Adobe's software to generate PDFs there are a set of tools for ensuring documents are accessible, including the ability to assess the accessibility, tag images with alternate text and set the reading order for content.
Correct formatting of the original document (such as the use of standard heading levels) also goes a long way to improving accessibility, as does some thought around colour contrasts and use of text rather than graphics of text. These approaches apply as much for PDF as they do for HTML content.
So I'm pleased to see that Stap Isi has posted about several presentations where people have been explaining to public servants how to create accessible PDF documents in the article, My name is b3rn and I make PDFs.
I don't think government is likely to abandon PDF any time soon, so ensuring that public servants are trained to generate accessible PDFs is crucial.
Over 100 UK councils wild for Twitter | Tweet |
Over in the UK councils are being to adopt micro-blogging in a major way, with over 100 councils now using Twitter to make announcments and have two way conversations with their constituencies.
The UK council association has published an article, Councils turn to new media, which discusses the uses councils are making of the service - addressing complaints and informing citizens of issues.
A demonstration of this interaction is discussed in a post on The blog of the IDeA Strategy and Development Unit, Turn a frown upside down: councillors, Twitter and “customer” interaction.
In case you want to see who in UK councils are tweeting formally, visit Cllr Tweeps.
Thoughts from the web | Tweet |
I've been too busy and tired this week to really commit to putting much content into eGovAU - which doesn't mean I'm not listening and thinking about what is happening in the wider egovernment world.
So instead of a regular post I thought I'd share some thoughts that have particularly stuck with me this week.
It's Time for Governance - The need to senior level whole-of-government guidance in the egovernment space.
The Second Revolution: Why the UK Government Beats the US Government on the Web - What the UK government is doing well, and the US isn't.
Beginners Guide to Government 2.0 -- Some Suggestions from a Practitioner - to maximise your egovernment efforts, hire people from the private sector who have used the internet for more than ten years and can both execute as well as strategise.
Twitter and Widgets and Blogs, Oh My - the tools US state governments are now using as part of their basic 'toolkit' for citizen communication, engagement and consultation.
Aussie councillors AWOL from Twitter - A discussion of how of the roughly 6,600 councillors in Australia, only around 12 are using Twitter, compared to the number in the UK, where government is a more mature internet user.
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Making laws align with egovernment | Tweet |
I've come across some interesting situations recently where technology is far in advance of legal frameworks, placing governments in a position where agencies may be breaking - or at least bending - laws by using certain online tools.
Twitter is a case in point. The technology was invented after the Spam Act was passed and it is not actually email, however it does permit the sending of advertising messages out to thousands or even millions of people. How is this covered? Personally I'm not sure, however I'd hazard a guess that legal opinions will probably vary.
Another example is the use of services such as YouTube, Facebook and other social media tools. All come with terms of use attached which may in some cases contravene government legal requirements.
This hasn't yet become a pressing issue in Australia and the use of YouTube in particular has become quite widespread across government, with at least 20 agencies using it to host and distribute video.
In the US there's also a great deal of use of YouTube by local state and federal agencies.
In this case federal agencies have been in a legally gray area. While they are only answerable to federal law, YouTube's terms of service specify that its users are liable to the applicable state libel laws.
Also of concern is that in the US anything the government publishes is in the public domain and freely available for reuse (unlike in Australia where agencies generally attach copyright to their work). YouTube's terms also specify that the user posting the video is responsible for the video - which is not the approach the US government takes.
As in most situations, where new technology meets old laws it's the laws and how they are interpreted that changes. In this case the US federal government is negotiating with YouTube to change the conditions to legitimise its use of the channel.
This has been discussed quite broadly in Nextgov, particularly in the article Feds and YouTube close to reaching a deal to post video.
I wonder how Australian government agencies will handle the inevitable conflicts between laws and society in the online world - particularly when dealing with services often created, owned and managed out of overseas jurisdictions.
