NSW government consulting on their social media policy for public sector staff

It's good to see that the NSW Government has taken the step to consult the community and public service regarding the social media policy and guidance it is planning to put in place for agencies.

The consultation, visible at http://haveyoursay.nsw.gov.au/socialmedia (which unfortunately only has comments from me right now) uses a forum-based approach to solicit comments.

I hope other Australian governments will take similar steps!

However more important than this specific consultation is the commitment behind it.

The NSW government has committed to adopt the principles of open government: transparency, participation, collaboration, and innovation through digital technologies.

They have committed to two actions under this related to social media:

• Implement a whole of government policy that supports the use of social media for enhanced public engagement and service delivery 
• Make reference guidelines available to agencies for public sector staff use of social media 

Finally they have committed to a move to greater public consultation on policy development.

Of course the devil is in the details - how these are implemented and whether the culture of the NSW public service is sufficiently supported and empowered to make the shift to a 2.0 public service.


FYI: my two comments were as follows - just in case they are useful to other agencies and governments (though need to be read in context of the consultations:

Have your say on the draft guidelines for agencies

None of this actually mandates or prompts agencies to provide effective guidance, training and support to staff. 

I advise mandating that all agencies:
1) Have a social media policy that aims to define how the agency will use social media in the course of its activities and make it clear to staff that social media engagement is encouraged and supported within the agency's context.
2) Provide guidance to staff regarding how they maintain a separation between their individual, professional and official positions in social media (such as disclaimers on personal/professional accounts where appropriate "All opinions mine.")
3) Provide guidance and support on appropriate conduct online and build awareness of applicable laws around defamation, abuse, etc
4) Integrate social media training into the workplans for all staff and specifically within induction processes to ensure that staff are equipped to engage online in a safe and professional manner and, where staff do not engage via social media, they are equipped to accurately identify and mitigate risks the agency may face through external social media conversations and the agency's engagement through social media
5) Conduct specific training for senior management, including hands-on experience using key social media channels, to ensure they are able to effectively govern and support the social media activities of the agency.

Have your say on the draft guidelines for public sector staff

The statement 'Respect privacy and confidentiality and only publish information that is or is approved to be in the public domain.' is extremely awkward and I'm not sure what it means. 

Taken in two pieces it state: 'Respect privacy and confidentiality and only publish information that is' and 'or is approved to be in the public domain.'' - the first part reads contrary to the meaning I think you intend. 

Better reworded as: 'Respect privacy and confidentiality. Only publish information that is approved to be in the public domain.'

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National Audit Office invites the public to contribute to departmental audits

In what I believe is a global first, Australia's National Audit Office (ANAO) has launched a pilot program inviting members of the public to contribute to selected audits in progress, aimed at promoting closer citizen engagement in the audit process.

The system allows the public to provide contributions related to the efficient and effective implementation of government programs, policies, projects or activities—including whether the intended benefits are achieved.

Contributions can be provided via an online form, mail or in a document (MS Word or PDF) and will be kept confidential except for defined purposes (a legal requirement under sections 36 and 37 of the Auditor-General Act 1997).

This confidentiality may allow public servants - who often know a lot about how programs operate in practice - to contribute in ways that protect them from retribution in the office.

The pilot program will run until early 2013 and the ability to contribute is limited to certain audits (at least for now). However this is a great start and a huge step forward for one of our most important institutions.

The seven audits currently open for public contributions are listed in this page: http://www.anao.gov.au/Publications/Contribute-to-an-Audit-in-Progress

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What if we let ordinary citizens represent Australia on social media for tourism purposes?

Tourism Australia, state and territory tourism agencies and many regions and cities are now using social media to promote their location (their brand) to potential tourists.

Using the traditional approach, these accounts are managed by professionals employed by agencies and tourism bodies, communicating with official approved messages.

However other countries have begun to explore the potential of expanding social media engagement to put the public in control, allowing individual citizens to curate official tourism social media accounts for a 'rotation' - a week or two for each person.

The best example of this is from Sweden, where the tourist board’s official @Sweden Twitter account has been given to a different citizen each week to curate and tweet from since December 2011.

The account has, at times, attracted some controversy, however it appears the Swedish Government is mature enough to manage this in an adult fashion and their citizens continue to tweet about topics ranging from the weather to body parts to politics (including mention of Australian politics). Any controversial tweets also haven't dampened interest in the account, which has over 66,000 followers.

The citizens who operate the account (termed 'curators') are selected by an official panel and given guidance before being set loose, however tweets are not reviewed or approved by officials.

The account is supported by a website (http://curatorsofsweden.com/) explaining how @Sweden works, providing details of curators and a video (embedded below) with a Q&A with former curators.


Another example of an official account run by citizens, is the US state of Vermont's @ThisisVT, which follows a similar model of a week per curator, selected through a nomination process by a panel (to manage risk).

The account was launched in late July 2012 and now has almost 2,500 followers. It is also supported by a website, www.thisisvt.com, to promote Vermont to tourists from across the US and elsewhere.


These initiatives are building the brand identity of nations and states by presenting citizen perspectives, rather than an institution's carefully packaged messaging.

Essentially the curators are brand ambassadors, providing a human face and personality for potential tourists to bond with.

This isn't in itself a revolutionary concept. Many jurisdictions use brand ambassadors - though normally choose internationally known actors or sports people. However the approach through social media is new, rather than picking celebrities (and their price tags), normal citizens are selected to provide realistic faces for these brands.

Would this 'everyperson' approach be accepted in Australia?

Actually a similar approach already has won awards and enormous praise. The Queensland 'Best job in the world' campaign' selected an individual from over 34,000 entries to visit the state as a working tourist, reporting their experiences to the world via video and blogging.

Of course the 'Best job' campaign selected a single ambassador, whereas @Sweden and @ThisisVT select a new ambassador each week, so provide greater diversity but less celebrity. However I expect we'll see more of this (far lower cost) rotation approach.

Even if Australian governments remain too fearful of having citizens represent the nation, state or region to the world, it is already happening.

These 'Rotation Curation' social media accounts are already appearing, outside government control, with over 30 projects around the world.

There are already at least two unofficial Australian accounts, @WeAreAustralia and @IndigenousX (specifically for Indigenous tweeters), hosting a range of citizen views.

Many other 'unofficial' accounts are listed in Wikipedia, with notable accounts such as:

• @TweetWeekSyria (Syria)
• @JustaCypriot (Cyprus)
• @WeAreFilipinos (Phillipines)
• @HellofrmSG (Singapore)
• @ireland (Ireland)
• @CuratorsMexico (Mexico)
• @Bristol52 (Bristol, UK)
• @IamBremen (Bremen, Germany)
• @BasquesAbroad (by Basques, global account)

So would Australian jurisdictions allow Australian citizens to curate and communicate from an official account without approval?

Are tourism authorities - and other government agencies - ready to trust their own citizens?

I hope so, given the examples already out there.

I wonder which government will be first to break through the fear barrier and give it a try - even if only for a few months.

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What's the effective lifespan of a link shared via social media?

When you share a link on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or other social media channels, how long will it continue to receive attention?

I've just been told about a study that Bit.ly (a leading URL shortening service) did on this topic a year ago. The study, You just shared a link. How long will people pay attention? used a selection of 1,000 popular links shared via bit.ly in social media channels to research how long they would receive attention (clicks) from other social media users.

Firstly bit.ly looked at the 'half-life' of links shared through popular social media services, how long it took for them to receive 50% of the clicks they would receive.

Graph of the 'half-life' (time taken to reach 50% of clicks)
of links through various social media services.

They found that links distributed through Twitter, on average, had a half-life of 2.8 hours, while Facebook distributed links ad one of 3.2 hours. Direct emails (such as email newsletters) had a half-life of 3.4 hours, so all quite short and similar.

However links distributed via YouTube had a half-life of 7.4 hours, reflecting that it is not an 'always-on' service like the other channels, and meaning that when tracking responses it is important to recognise that it can take longer for YouTube to reach an audience - which doesn't necessarily mean it is less effective.

On average the half-life (except for YouTube) was 3 hours and in general links lost attention almost completely within 16 hours.

I've also been told that within 24 hours most links have received 99% of the clicks they will ever receive, and within 48 hours this reaches 99.9%.

So how is this useful information for government?

Firstly if you're sharing information through these social media channels, be prepared for a load on your servers. If there's an emergency or a sudden announcement of broad public interest, your website will receive most of its traffic from social media sharing of the link in the first three hours - starting seconds after you send out the message.

if your servers and bandwidth are restricted and slow to respond to increasing loads, you might need to reconsider your hosting and architecture - or provide emergency information through a more resilient and scalable platform (such as a Google Blogspot blog or other cloud-hosted service).

Secondly, if information is being shared about your organisation via links on social media, you don't have long to identify the trend and respond before it escalates.

If, for example, someone tweeted a link to a picture from an asylum seeker mobile phone which appeared to show an Australian navy vessel firing on them, it wouldn't be long before this was accessed by thousands, tens of thousands, even millions of people.

If the photo was a known fake and your agency needed to respond, you'd have to approve and distribute the message within that first few hours window to have an impact on the trend.

The era of multi-day approval processes has gone. Whatever the scenario, your agency needs to be ready to react and respond within a few hours at most.

How do you get there with an agency who still spends weeks approving a media release?

My post on Coping with the challenges of two-speed government agencies offers some ideas to start with - build systems that allow you to respond quickly by cutting repetition and 'fat' from approval processes and clear up the gray areas as to who can approve what types of content.

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Don't forget to register for October's Canberra Gov 2.0 lunchtime thingy

On the 18th of October is the next Canberra Gov 2.0 lunchtime thingy, with a focus on open data, data visualisation and new approaches to policy development through policy visualisation.

As usual we have two fantastic speakers:

Pia Waugh, an open government and open data ninja working with the ACT government as an Open Government Policy Advisor, will provide a report on her trip to the global OKFestival, a thousand-person conference focused on open government, open data and data analaysis/visualisation in Helsinki.

Evan Hill, the Methodology and Infographics Manager within the Strategy and Delivery Division of PM&C will be discussing policy visualisation and the newly launched APS Policy Visualisation Network.

For more information, or to register, go here.

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