US government launches state-based food alerts on Twitter

There's a lot of the work and lag involved in releasing emergency alerts using old fashioned approaches such as media releases.

Even when an agency's systems are tuned to fast-track emergency approval processes, when the media release gets distributed that may only be the beginning, not the end, of the process.

The release need to be brought to the attention of journalists and editors, they need to be convinced it is important to their readers and, once achieved, it must be re-written or edited, included in a news report and distributed.

For newspapers this can add a day or more lag, for radio and television (unless it is critical breaking news) it adds at least hours.


Mashable reports that the US government has cut through this by recently introducing its own direct to public food alerts via social media, using a custom Twitter account per state.

This means that the US government can get out the alerts it finds important more rapidly (even accounting for internal checking and approvals). It also gets them to the right audience - people interested enough to sign up for the alerts.

Alerts can (and should) still be distributed by media release into traditional media channels for breadth of reach, however the addition of Twitter-based announcements ensures that people can access the information when government releases it, rather than waiting for media distributors to deign to distribute it.

In this type of approach the government is using social media to bypass traditional media channels - effectively becoming its own media outlet. There's plenty of other activities where government can use this type of approach to great effect - regaining a level of control over messages and reducing the ability for traditional media to spin or obscure important information.

I hope we see the US extending this approach to other forms of emergency - and non-emergency uses.

And I hope Australia's governments will follow this lead - as some agencies already have.

Video below.

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The challenge of using Freedom of Information for good

I'm a big supporter of Freedom of Information (FOI) laws and the rights of citizens to access information from their government to better understand the processes and data considered around how decisions are made and policies formed.

I am also a big supporter of FOI as a tool for public good - including for sharing information that is useful within government and for businesses seeking to engage government agencies on a commercial basis.

As such, I put in an FOI request yesterday to the full list of FOI contacts for the Australian Government I collated for the following information:

• The web browsers approved and used across department hardware (desktop, laptop, tablets and mobile).
• Whether the agency had a staff social media policy and what it contained.
• Whether the agency provided additional guidance and training for staff on social media and what these contained.
• What social media channels were blocked by the agency.
• What plans the agency had approved to change any of the above.

This information is enormously useful for businesses seeking to engage with government.

Companies seeking to do business with government need their websites to be visible and usable to agencies - hence they must support the web browser technologies that agencies are using. For those that sell online services it is even more crucial that their apps and systems are accessible to agencies, otherwise they can't do business. Equally web developers seeking to sell to government need to understand the browsers their websites will need to support before quoting as older web browsers can add significant cost to a website's development.

Many companies today use social media channels to inform audiences, promote their products and provide support and assistance - a video walk-through, a support forum or product roadmap blog. They need to know whether government agencies block these channels so they can make specific arrangements to ensure they are able to competitively service and support agencies that do.

A number of government agencies are currently in the process of developing social media policies, guidelines and training. I have received many requests over the last few years from people in all parts of government asking if I am aware of other similar policies and guidelines they can borrow from and build on.

I provide what I can, however there's no central repository for this information in Australian government (though there is an international site, the Online Database of Social Media Policies). A central place to find this information would greatly reduce the time and resourcing cost for sourcing models to build from and greatly improve the initial quality of the efforts of agencies.

I also plan on publishing all the correspondence I have with agencies on a new website (foiaustralia.net.au - not yet in place), to help open up the process of making FOI requests, which is still foreign to many people across the community, despite the improvements made in recent revisions of the law.


I attempted to structure my FOI request in a format which would make it easier for agencies to respond - and easier for me to collate and publish the information at a central online location - saving time and money all round... or so I thought. (see my request here)

Unfortunately there's a stricture in FOI law where the information requested needs to be stored in 'documents'.

Although I did specify the documents I requested, this wasn't in a particularly overt fashion and appears to be being overlooked or misunderstood by agencies, some of who are (very rapidly) beginning to respond to my request.

These documents included:

• Their Standard Operating Environment documentation, which should specify the web browsers officially supported and deployed by platform and the filtering technologies used, including the social media platforms blocked and coached.
• Their social media policy and associated guidelines for staff. 
• A register of the social media channels operated by their agency.
• Internal briefs and strategies related to the use of social media channels by their agency and staff.

I also asked informational questions about the official plans of the agency, such as whether they planned on updating their web browers in the next twelve months, whether they planned to create a social media policy when they had none, whether they planned on unblocking or blocking additional social media channels and how they used their official social media channels.

I have encountered a few minor issues, that I will be progressively sharing with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and publishing in due course - a major agency whose published FOI email address is not working, a major and several minor agencies that do not provide electronic FOI contacts at all on their site, spelling mistakes and poor grammar in automated FOI responses.


However the overwhelming issue I am encountering is that it appears that much of the information I am requesting is not stored in 'documents'. It is known and shared within the agency, but is not FOIable if not recorded in the appropriate format.

The flaw I see is in the use and interpretation of the word 'document' - a discrete, paper-like format which doesn't describe much of the information and data stored and distributed within organisations today.

In the future we're likely to see even less information in 'documents' - a thousands of years old archaic mode of information storage - and more information stored in fragments and tables, shared electronically via transient communication tools.

While I totally appreciate agencies sticking to the letter of FOI - that information must be in a structured document, which an FOI requester must specifically request - the opaqueness of public agencies to the public (in knowing which document to request), the increasing range of information in forms other than documents and the danger that agencies, following poor business practice, do not create documents with some important information in order to avoid being FOIed, risks undermining the spirit of Freedom of Information.

I appreciate governments applauding their own successes at openness and transparency - at legislation where the only excuses remaining for not releasing information are privacy, commercial confidentiality and national security.

However they are still overlooking the major and persistant barriers to real freedom of information - the implied need for the requester to already know precisely what documents to ask for and the explicit requirement for that information to be stored in one specific format, a 'document'.

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The elephant in the room

In case you've not read it yet, Steve Davies wrote an interesting piece on the government's grapple to adapt to and adopt Gov 2.0 thinking and practice. Published in the Canberra Times and Brisbane Times, the piece highlights that the elephant in the room is the culture of the APS, which is not always supportive of new ways of thinking and doing. It is worth a read. The article is titled The paranoia that will shut government.

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Stop waiting for the messiah and do it yourself

While there's many organisations now actively beginning to experiment with social media channels and tools, just as many - if not more - are still cautious about even putting a toe in the water.

"It's not right for us", they say, "our audience isn't online" or "doesn't want to engage with us" or "we don't understand the risks" or "we're not ready yet" or "we're waiting for a critical need".

I'd like to say to all of these organisations - stop waiting for the messiah and do it yourself.

As has been shown through research, humans often make decisions first and justify their actions later - which means that most of these so-called reasons for not engaging online are justifications, not evidence.

How do you know whether a new tool will work for you if you don't experiment and pilot? How will you build the expertise you may need when there is a critical need for you to use these channels?

We've seen this behaviour in industries like retail, where a major retailer, Harvey Norman, is now pulling back from use of the internet because it didn't meet their projections on revenue. How did they work out those projections without experimenting online? Why did they not meet the projections and how will pulling back increase their success?

Given the internet has been a valid sales channel for fifteen or more years and some of the largest retailers in the world, such as Amazon, have built themselves online, how could any organisation in retail claim that online isn't viable, or delay entering the market - at least in an experimental way - for over ten years?

If you're not yet engaging actively online via social media just stop waiting for the messiah - that person or reason that makes it 'compelling' for you.

The compelling reasons are that 95% of Australians are online, that other businesses are building their expertise online, that online is the second biggest media today in Australia.

Online no-one cares that you're not there - but they are talking about you - truth and otherwise.

You wouldn't wait until an emergency occurred before building your emergency management systems. You wouldn't wait until you were in court before preparing your defence.

Organisations have case studies to learn from, examples of good practice and a range of resources and tools available to experiment with online, which allow you to learn the ropes without leaving you hanging.

If you're not building your experience now then how do you expect to build it in the future? Do you think your business will be able to afford the talent needed to leapfrog a ten-year or more advantage from your competitors, rivals and detractors?

Is delay really worth the risk?

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Note to self - make your organisation name long enough and people cannot criticise you on Twitter

The growth in the length of government agency names has amused me for several years.

These days it seems as though every function of an agency needs to be listed in its full name,so that the community remember what they are responsible for - and then be embodied in a meaningless acronym, perhaps to ensure that the community forget again.

We appear to no longer be creating agencies with short names such as 'Centrelink' or Medicare'. Names that are short, sharp, snappy, focused and easy to remember.

Instead government appears to like names such as:

• Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (a relatively short 63 characters)
• Department of Regional Australia, Local Government, Arts and Sport (67 characters)
• Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies  (69 characters)
• Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (69 characters)
• Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (72 characters),
• Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities (76 characters)
• Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education (76 characters)
• Comcare, the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Commission, and the Seafarers' Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Authority (a whopping 133 characters!)

I have thought of one reason why the names have grown so long.

They are too hard to tweet with a criticism.

(Unfortunately they are also too hard to tweet with a compliment as well!)

Can anyone else suggest long agency names at Commonwealth or state/territory level in Australia, or maybe overseas?

What is the longest government agency name in the country? It might be worth a Guiness Book of Records bid!

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