Challenges to Government Social Media Participation: An Outsider’s Perspective
April 2, 2009 :: Joe LoongThe main reason I went to Government 2.0 Camp was to get first-hand info on specific challenges and barriers faced by Web 2.0 advocates in government. It’s easy to say, well, government should get on blogs and Facebook and Twitter and whatnot, but beyond the traditional risk-averseness of large institutions, I wanted to see what else was keeping them from doing it.
I mean, there’s stuff like the federal government’s prohibition on persistent cookies, as well as the fact that they have to be a lot more sensitive to Section 508 Accessibility issues (an area where the private sector could learn a few things), the digital divide considerations, personal privacy, etc. But because it’s government, there’s whole ‘nother cultural and even regulatory barriers.
There were three sessions I attended that I’ll be drawing from here (note, session recaps may not be available): Social Media/Executive vs. Agency Level with David Almacy, former White House Internet Director; Social Media Subcouncil – What is it? with IRS’s Jaqi Ross; and Running a Federal Blog with Jeffrey Levy of the EPA. (I’m going to focus on federal government issues here.)
Just Like Private Industry, Only Very, Very Different
First off, every government agency is different, in terms of its policies on IT access, privacy, employee social media participation, and every other damned thing. So things that one agency are able to do on the Web don’t necessarily translate over to other agencies. From my corporate viewpoint, government is the entire “industry,” and individual agencies are separate “companies.” (Also, throw in political appointees for guaranteed turnover every few years, adding even more fun.)
On top of that, as David Almacy pointed out, the Executive Office of the President is also different from agencies (for example, it’s subject to the Presidential Records Act, etc.), and what they’re able to do or not do on Whitehouse.gov doesn’t automatically roll down to the agencies.
There’s also a sensitivity to using third-party service providers, which we kind of take for granted in the public sector, either because of incompatible user agreements, or the desire to be not seen as favoring any one service (though that last bit seems to be fading).
Mitigating Factors
Despite hurdles, some folks in government are trying. To some extent, companies may be able to work with government to adjust their terms of use; the Smithsonian is on Flickr and added a bunch of their photos to the Flickr Commons, after the photo license terms were tweaked.
And during the White House Internet town hall last week, they used Google Moderator to handle questions, though they handled registration, instead of using Google accounts.
In another example, the EPA’s blog uses Wordpress, hosted on EPA servers, though they don’t use user accounts for people to comment. (The process they used to set up and publish the blog, as well as the review policy and comment policy, was also pretty similar to what I’ve experienced with corporate blogs.)
The Social Media Subcouncil
In an effort to share knowledge, collect info, and keep agencies from having to reinvent the wheel every time, there’s an interdepartmental working group-type thing called the Federal Web Managers Council and their 3-month-old Social Media Subcouncil (their wiki is open to all — in fact, they’re seeking input from private industry). Here’s Jaqi Ross (right) and members of the Social Media Subcouncil during their session:
I was heartened by the fact that such a group exists, populated by volunteers who see the merit in all this social media stuff. With enough pulling from the top and pushing from below, maybe government will be able to make use of more social communication tools.
Of course, social media isn’t a silver bullet for government’s (or society’s) problems. And besides getting it right, everyone is still trying to figure out how to measure social media return on investment and success metrics. So at least the public sector has that in common with everyone else.
Anyway, I’ll continue following the work of Government 2.0 Club and similar organizations, and maybe even see what’s going on in the Social Media Subcouncil, since what they’re doing is important to participatory government. It matters.
Comments are moderated and will appear shortly. See terms.
