blogging – Beyond Physical Spaces

When Government Agencies Meet Social Media

A part of me thinks government agencies (especially those with higher state functions like defense and finance) and social media is somewhat of an oxymoron. On the other hand, libraries, media, cultural departments and anything to do with the arts and information are perfect matches for social media. However, regardless of the function of the agency, I believe that social media can benefit government agencies.

The first reason would be transparency. Maybe not quite a Facebook account but a blog by the agency explaining policy decisions can go a long way in reaching out to the public as well as getting their buy-in, especially if it is an unpopular policy change. But policy changes do not happen all the time so the blog can be used to, for example, give tips on tax filing, “inside information” on how to get the most out of a call and generic information pertaining to the agency that is useful for people to know. If there is value in the information provided, there will be readers.

The second reason would engagement with the public. With feedback channels that are properly serviced by employees in place – like the comment sections in blogs – agencies appear less bureaucratic and reflect the core principle of the civil service which is to serve the public.

However, if government agencies are going to do this, it cannot be token – there must be a genuine desire to engage the public. The danger of course is that comments from members of the public can easily overwhelm the staff maintaining the blog but done well, it can a long way in getting the people’s support. There is no unreasonable person, there is only an ignorant one.

I remember our former health minister had a blog which he used to explain some policy decisions. It was an unpopular policy but the unpopularity was a result of people not understanding it fully. The blog reached out to those who were social media literate. In turn, they explained what they read to others who did not follow the health minister’s blog. Useful entries were shared on other social media platforms like Facebook so people did not actually have to follow everything that he wrote because the important ones do filter to the community. Eventually, when the policy was approved, there was considerably less resistance than there was at the beginning. But of course, the blog wasn’t all of it. It was a conscious and continuous effort of the health ministry to reach out to the people.

Social media can of course be used internally within agencies for information sharing and to meet organisational communication needs. However, at this point, it seems that it is mostly internal blogs from where I come from, which are primarily for communication. Due to the sensitivity of government information, free social media platforms are not really used and unless these platforms can be commissioned securely, I don’t see it happening as yet.

Hello world!

Hi! I’m Felicia, an MLIS (Masters of Library and Information Science) student at the University of British Columbia. This blog was created for the class LIBR559m which deals with social media and information professionals. You can read more about my personal self in the about page.

Since this blog is primarily about social media, I would like to start by sharing my own personal experience with it. I started blogging since 2002 which is almost 10 years ago. In those early days, it was often an avenue of self validation. It was wonderful to be able to share one’s thoughts about something that happened and have people respond – my young adult self found it wonderfully assuring. Privacy meant very little then though I was conscious about not making disparaging remarks about others. As I grew older, I found that I did not relish the thought of people I was unfamiliar reading my blog which resulted in the move to private blogs. That caused readership to drop. People could not see it in their RSS feed and most found it a hassle to log in. When readership dropped, I felt less inclined to post anything. These days, I just use Facebook.

I realised then that blogs are written to be read, they are not personal diaries or a place to write long academic papers (as a friend of mine used to do) unless readership means nothing to the blogger which then begs the question of “why publish it?” It’s a wonderful tool when used correctly but many have run into problems like school teacher Natalie Munroe who got flagged for insulting her students on her blog (see article here). I also realised that issues of privacy matter more the older you grow. Blogging did not happen in my early teenage years so I did not have a whole lot of “floating information” to delete and even then, erasing that footprint was difficult. I wonder about the children and teenagers of today who would have started at a younger age. By the time privacy matters to them, would it be too late for them to remove their digital footprint?