Stap isi

6 February 2010

So your council wants to blog?

Blogs are boring. In the Clay Shirky sense. Even in government.

Pitching a blog to your managers in council may still cause consternation, but most authorities are at least working towards a ‘social media strategy’ or ‘policy’ – the human equivalent of dogs turning circles before laying down – and blogs are mainstream. Your senior staff have probably read one, even if it’s just part of a newspaper website. Even better, there is now a considerable range of practice and evaluation on which to draw.

One of the best implementations is FCO Bloggers from the the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office blog

Stephen Hale, Head of Engagement, Digital Diplomacy, has spoken openly about the process since its inception and this very generous post – Evaluating our blogs – is a must.

It’s a blueprint for managers and bloggers.

Our advice isn’t the same for every blogger, but we are using our findings to encourage our bloggers to be personal (say things that only they could say), real time (if it takes days to draft or check the facts then it’s probably not a blog), integrated (with other things they’re doing on and offline), responsive (responding to comments), and targeted (writing about things that people are already talking about online).

The advice is based on real-world experience and web metrics. From a large government department. With staff around the world.

I would also point you to The benefits of blogging by Julia Chandler and Simon Davis from the Online Content team at DFID Bloggers, a similar staff blog portal from the UK Department for International Development.

Having said that blogs are mundane, there are still not many examples of blogs written by local government officers (as opposed to councillors or community activists). Here are a few to illustrate to senior staff and prospective bloggers what a blog can be:

• Weymouth Relief Road – Dorset County Council blogging a major works project
• Chasewater Dam – Lichfield District Council restoration works
• Out Of Your Mind – North Sydney Council
• Hands On Handsworth and life in lozells – Neighbourhood Management, UK

(If you know of other blogs by local authorities, please leave a comment.)

Gallereries and museums offer great examples of how and what to blog. See Brooklyn Museum bloggers, MoMA’s Inside/Out, the blog of the National Media Museum, Bradford and the Powerhouse Museum’s Photo of the Day.

Council blogs will change the way we communicate with residents. Read Stephen Hale’s piece. And do it well.

— b3rn   blogging, web metrics   Feb 6, 07:44 PM   #   Comment

13 January 2009

Why Councillor James Cousins blogs and twitters on his own patch

I took this decision mainly because I wanted to be free of restrictions the council would have to impose. While I do not intend the blog to be especially political, I am there as an elected representative because of my political affiliation, and want to be free to make political points when I want.

Additionally there is part of me that believes these things should be separate. A lot of people are ignorant of the role of a councillor, and the separation helps reinforce that I am part of the council’s political leadership rather than an officer.

— From an interview with Liz Azyan: part 1, part 2

The first reason echoes comments made by CivicSurf’s Shane McCracken and blogging Councillor Mary Read.

The second makes a good point – for both councillors and council officers.

Constituent comments on operational matters can be absorbed into existing workflows readily enough. But what to do with suggestions and questions relating to policy issues that are the domain of elected representatives?

Best if councillors are also online with their own presence and identity.

— b3rn   blogging, councillors, twitter   Jan 13, 06:37 PM   #   Comment

3 January 2009

A daily dose of strategic accountability

Here’s a great interview with a city manager who blogs.

Kent 360 has become an essential part of my job, as it gives me a chance to share information and insights that aren’t always evident from media coverage. Plus, I believe it helps create an atmosphere of trust as residents can see that we’re trying to be as transparent as possible, and trust is the foundation of local government.

One of the surprising benefits of the blog is the way it forces me to constantly look and talk about what we’re doing, what we need to be doing, what other cities are doing, and other ways to achieve our objectives.

My blog is like a daily dose of strategic accountability that makes me continuously reassess the alignment of what we’re working on in the short term with our long term goals. Even in preparing the stories, I am forced to constantly think about our strategic priorities and what I’m doing to effect change.

With our busy lives, it is easy to let the little things in life take precedence. The blog creates a framework that challenges me to explain how the little things contribute to bigger things; and if they don’t, it becomes fairly obvious once I am forced to explain it on the blog. Of course, the readers let me know when I stray too far.

It’s good to read a real world appraisal of social media tools:

I want to add that blogs make our jobs both harder (from a time perspective) and easier (the more people understand the issues, the better the quality of community decision making).

Dave Ruller hits many of the points made by Steven Schwartz, Vice-Chancellor of Macquarie University, in this August 2008 article in The Australian.

Might send both links to the boss on Monday.

— b3rn   blogging, trust   Jan 3, 10:02 PM   #   Comment

16 December 2008

Guidelines for local government employees online

Although we’re bound by Codes of Conduct and the like, we’ve yet to write guidelines for NSW local government employees online.

Fortunately a number of draft and formal guidelines have been published by government agencies both here and abroad.

• Interim protocols for online media participation – Australian Public Service Commission
• Draft guidance for New Zealand State servants using social media – State Services Commission, N.Z.
• In Development – an SSC blog: Staff Contribution Guidelines (PDF) – State Services Commission, N.Z.
• Social media policies – do you have one? – NSW Public Libraries
• Principles for participation online – Civil Service, U.K.
• Draft social media and online participation policy and guidelines – Devon County Council, U.K.

How about we set up a collaborative space to write a general set of guidelines under a Creative Commons licence that Councils could freely adapt?

— b3rn   blogging, guidelines, trust   Dec 16, 07:49 PM   #   Comment [4]

7 December 2008

Bartlett's view on political blogging

Andrew Bartlett has been blogging since 2004.

For much of that time he was a Senator in the Australian Parliament. His blog was the first by a Federal politician, and it has had over 20,000 comments.

Some of his posts about blogging would be useful for councillors who want to engage in this way.

Continued...

— b3rn   blogging, councillors, politicians   Dec 7, 02:36 PM   #   Comment [1]

1 November 2008

Councillors blogging in Australia

• Benn Banasik – Wollondilly Shire Council
• Anthony Boskovitz – Woollahra Municipal Council
• Sue Brooks – Fraser Coast Regional Council
• Samantha Dunn – Shire of Yarra Ranges
• Julie Hegarty – Pittwater Council
• Kate Lamb – Willoughby City Council
• Chiang Lim (comments disabled) – Parramatta City Council
• Alex Makin – Maroondah City Council
• Shayne Mallard – City of Sydney
• Michael Osbourne (comments disabled) – Newcastle City Council
• Terry Perram – Ryde City Council
• Fiona Rossiter – Orange City Council
• Ben Smith – Ballina Shire Council
• Warren Yates – Mosman Municipal Council

These lists quickly go out of date, but could be useful over the next year or two as Councillors get to grips with blogging. Please post links I’ve missed.

And it’s only a blog if comments are enabled.

List updated 16 May 2009.

19 July 2009: James Purser has grabbed these and added to his Planet Gov2.0 aggregator. Check it…

— b3rn   blogging, councillors   Nov 1, 12:07 PM   #   Comment [1]

19 October 2008

Comment everywhere

The Guardian has extended the functionality and improved the information design of its community features.

The site as a whole is exceptional – see the tagging scheme for aggregating related information, the RSS feeds for almost everything and the rich yet composed front page. If you’re building or evaluating content management systems, see how the Guardian’s web platform evolved for a valuable real world case study.

But here I want to focus on their implementation of user comments, profiles and clippings. It’s how I think a Council website should work!

• Comments are not restricted to blog posts. People can respond to multiple information types.
• A person’s contributions across all information types is aggregated and accessible from their user profile.

Continued...

— b3rn   blogging, comments, identity   Oct 19, 06:28 PM   #   Comment [1]

17 October 2008

The case for social media #2: Trust

Demos, the think tank for ‘everyday democracy’, has a report online called State of Trust: How to build better relationships between councils and the public. It looks at what they call the “worryingly low levels of public trust” in politics and democratic institutions.

It’s worth paying attention to Demos because their methodology is good. That is, they talk to lots of real people.

Many of their recommendations for improving that level of trust could include social media components.

Continued...

— b3rn   blogging, identity, the persuader, trust   Oct 17, 09:05 PM   #   Comment

27 September 2008

A friendly introduction to blogging in local government

A British campaign to encourage civic leaders to use the internet to communicate with their constituents has produced a short film aimed at councillors and senior staff.

The 14 minute documentary […] follows 3 Norfolk County Councillors as they learn to blog. We get to see their transformation from sceptical novices to enthusiastic, successful bloggers and can compare them with the views of some of the most experienced UK civic bloggers such as Cllr Mary Reid, Tom Watson MP, Steve Webb MP, Richard Brunstrom (Chief Constable of North Wales Police) and Andrew North (CEO of Cheltenham Borough Council).

The accompanying 32pp booklet complements the film and informs readers how to start a blog and gives tips on becoming an effective online communicator.

Last week I showed the DVD to my senior managers and the outcome was positive, with lots of questions asked and a good discussion ensuing. The film gave them a real world example of how blogs – in fact, any form of social media – could work in a government or municipal context.

(I think some of the arguments for blogging by civic leaders apply also to council staff – and I will try and make an argument for staff blogging in a later post.)

Continued...

— b3rn   blogging, civicsurf, councillors   Sep 27, 08:10 PM   #   Comment [3]