The argument in favour of communicating with your constituents beyond your website has been made and won over the last two years. But how to accelerate your organisation’s acceptance of web-based tools for community and collaboration?
We all know the hurdles:
How to get over (or around)?
The flipside to that last post – about network limits to staff engagement – is managing employee interaction on social media, or – more importantly – helping staff manage themselves.
In December I collected some prior art from the public sector. It’s good news that the LG Web Network is working on a web space that will encourage collaboration across councils in NSW – but lots has been happening out there.
Attack is the best form of defence for the United States Air Force and they go for full spectrum dominance with ‘every airman is a communicator.’ Their Web Posting Response Assessment flowchart has been widely praised and linked, but they’ve just released a booklet New Media and the Air Force (PDF) via Air Force Link that has a clear and confident introduction and practical links to things like Wikipedia contribution policies!
In New Zealand, the State Services Commission, New Zealand, has released its final guidelines on social media monitoring and interaction. These are excellent – Principles for Interaction with Social Media and Implementing social media monitoring – and note where they’re positioned.
Laurel Papworth has a comprehensive list – Managing staff who participate in social networks – that includes the best corporate examples.
Nick Hodge, who – as a prominent Microsoft employee and internet personality – knows about the blurring of personal and professional identities first-hand, hosts a good discussion that includes The Six Tenets for Employees in Social Media.
Local government employees need a custom build. ASAP.
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.
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?