Stap isi

19 April 2009

The Muppet - Superman Continuum

By Councillor James Cousins of the London Borough of Wandsworth.

“My central contention is that online engagement is about being yourself online and, therefore, learning to use new tools rather than changing your behaviour.”

Prepared for Councillors Connected, an online conference exploring how councils and councillors can use social media to communicate with and engage communities, effectively deliver services and empower local people, facilitated this month by the UK Improvement and Development Agency for local government (IDeA). You will need to register to get access to the rich vein of materials.

This video is an excellent accompaniment to the CivicSurf documentary.

— b3rn   councillors, engagement, listening, politicians, tools, trust   Apr 19, 10:05 PM   #   Comment

6 April 2009

Introducing LGi a.k.a. Local Government Eye

• Update 2010-01-11 Today I turned off the Pipes and both Twitter accounts are now inactive. Twitter’s new Lists feature provides similar (and better) functionality. Follow twitter.com/b3rn/ozgovlocal or make your own!

I’ve set up a couple of Twitter accounts that aggregate and relay tweets from Local Government Authorities in Australia and their elected representatives:

• OzGovLocal
• OzGovLocalClrs

If you’re a Council (or Shire or Town or Borough…) or a Councillor, follow the relevant Twitter account above, and you’ll be followed back – automatically adding you to the stream.

Credit to Barry Earnshaw in the UK, whose Pipe I cloned.

For more on Oz LG, see:

• Local government in Australia – Wikipedia
• Councils on the web – Australian Local Government Association

— b3rn   community of practice, councillors, councils, twitter   Apr 6, 07:49 AM   #   Comment

24 February 2009

Meetings in a Minute

Great idea, well executed, from Hermosa Beach deputy mayor Michael DiVirgilio:

‘Meetings in a Minute’ is a video series where I’ll be posting a brief video overview after each Hermosa Beach City Council meeting.

Through the videos I hope to help communicate important City business as well as to make it easier for busy residents to stay informed and engaged in their local government process.

Michael gives further background here and makes the point that Meetings In A Minute is “not the goal, but more likely one of many steps devoted towards a dedicated and continuous effort to include people in the process.”

Check also his blog and YouTube channel.

Council business papers do a poor job communicating what Council is doing and why. There is too much text. This format, like Twitter, rewards the succinct.

Thanks to @bashley for the link.

— b3rn   councillors, engagement, politicians, time, tools, video   Feb 24, 08:25 PM   #   Comment

11 February 2009

Aussie councillors AWOL from Twitter

Twitter has been getting lots of media coverage, here and abroad. For the goverati, Ingrid Koehler’s post gives a good overview of its use by elected representatives in Britain. (Councillor James Cousins of Wandsworth is an exemplar.)

It’s now becoming clear to me that it’s just as important for your councillors as your council to be online. No yin without yang.

Apparently Australia has about 6,600 elected councillors. I’ve been able to find about 12 of them blogging. And I haven’t found any using Twitter. I hope that’s more a reflection of my search skills than the reality.

Take a look at the UK – there’s loads of them. Given their weather, sporadic bathing schedules and innings of 51, you’d expect plenty to be bashing the keyboards indoors. But so far they’re keeping a clean sheet against us on Twitter.

As k3nd said – cmon local authorities, lets jump into the 20th century, u may even like it.

Update April 2009: see OzGovLocalClrs.

— b3rn   councillors, strategy, twitter   Feb 11, 08:11 PM   #   Comment [4]

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, 07:37 PM   #   Comment

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, 03:36 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, 01:07 PM   #   Comment [1]

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]