Governments around the world must continue to embrace social media and other new technologies because besides empowering citizens new technologies bring in a "myriad of benefits" for the public sector as well.
Remember those days when the public only spoke to the government in the hopes of finding answers about when to file their taxes, where to cast their vote, or how to contest a parking ticket? Well, today, public service organizations are using social media, mobile computing, cloud computing and web services to foster closer interactions with their citizens in ways that are less expensive, more transparent and easier for everyone involved.
Take for instance Number 10 Downing Street, which provides an ecosystem of social media touch points, ranging from a Flickr account that provides daily photos from the PM’s travels, to a Facebook page that engages citizens in dialogues and discussions. On the other side of the Atlantic, the US government offers a variety of mobile apps that can help you find an embassy, or even calculate your body mass index.
For example, Recovery.gov enables citizens to track the spending and its impact on improving social and economic outcomes of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which is intended to create new jobs and save existing ones; spur economic activity and invest in long-term growth; and foster unprecedented levels of accountability and transparency in government spending.
But these high-tech tools are not limited to large governments with impressive IT budgets. Rwanda, a country with 90 percent of its population engaged in subsistence agriculture, has a Twitter account with 930 followers. While the number of followers is relatively small, it’s important to note that this small landlocked country in Africa has the same suite of technology tools available to them as Number 10, with Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook fan pages costing very little to maintain.
In today’s world, governments can interact with their citizens over many channels in new ways. By leveraging new technologies, governments are allowing citizens to engage with each other through social networking technologies, enabling them to participate in their governance through digital media, and educating and encouraging them to participate through online training and learning resources.
Governments today can connect directly with people, learn what they’re interested in and what they’re doing, and respond to what they say. By using social networks like Twitter and Facebook, counting on mobile apps and mashups, and building cloud computing sites (as the UK and Japanese governments are doing), both local and national governments have forged such a compelling model that there are no longer any excuses for interaction with the public to occur only through call centers, direct mail, or even email.
This shift to social networks and mobile apps is not so surprising in light of the sheer numbers of people they reach today. With 45 million people registered on Twitter and 500 million on Facebook, social networking tools allow governments to reach out to large numbers of the public quickly and efficiently. For the millions more in the world with smart phones, governmental services can literally be one click away, no matter where they are.
What’s more, today the public expects it. According to a recent Harris Interactive poll conducted in the United States, 34 percent of constituents believe that the government can better engage the public by increasing their presence on social media sites, while another 32 percent said they can do it by delivering tailored information via mobile devices. Already 54 percent of respondents say they have interacted with the government online or via social media. They say they prefer to do this because they can connect on their own time, receive answers to questions faster, obtain more detailed information and better advocate or support the agency’s mission or the work they do.
This demand will only grow over time. The Millennial generation (those under the age of 34) has already stated its choice – polls show they prefer engaging with organizations online rather than over a phone call or through in-person interactions.
For the government, this new paradigm offers a myriad benefits. For example:
• Reduced cost per engagement. Calling or mailing to constituents is more expensive than engaging in a dialogue in a social networking forum. Not only is it less costly per answer, but it also might be far less cost because someone else might be able to answer the questions (and do it faster and better). Gov 2.0 can also reduce the cost of transactions with governments using social media to increase the ration of online to offline transactions.
• More opportunities for people to help each other. A government using social channels not only creates a voice for itself, it creates a forum for people to come together, help each other, and form communities around different topics. This increases involvement in the community, as well as offloads the costs of interaction.
• More directed mouthpiece to the citizens. Social media like Facebook or Twitter let people maintain an active connection with their governments. For instance, the 1.7M Twitter followers of Number 10 receive daily messages from Downing Street as part of their Twitter feed. They can easily ignore these, or look into the messages that are of most interest to them. For the UK government, this is a channel that reaches out to a significant number of people and is far more dynamic than waiting for a much smaller number to visit a web page.
• More direct connection with the community and their interests. When a government creates or participates in an online community, they are helping to move the conversations of the community to a digital, readable format. This enables them to “listen” to what people are most interested in and concerned about. They can use this information to adjust policies, streamline communications, or engage in a dialogue to better understand the details.
• More knowledge about who they’re talking to. Social networks, like Facebook, provide details about who is saying what. While there is a value to anonymous feedback, in some cases it’s beneficial to understand who is saying what. Is it a vocal minority, or a wide range of concerned citizens? This level of transparency also limits the amount of “trolling” and noise in the system.
• Multimedia sharing. A picture is worth a thousand words. Providing citizens with the means to share photos of graffiti, or video of a disturbance helps the government to act more efficiently and serve people better. Similarly, there is the opportunity to engage citizens through photo and video contests, thereby allowing for richer digital community involvement and a more efficient response.
• Opportunity for citizens to develop mashups and other applications to support the government’s efforts. Governments that provide data through easy to access web services are likely to see a small but dedicated group of people develop applications that serve others with functionality that the government might not have even considered. As governments begin to expose data services to their own internal IT systems, they should consider making the data available externally. For instance, the US geographical survey publishes web services for maps, geographical features and real time weather data.
With this new method of interaction comes a number of key considerations that governmental bodies, like their corporate counterparts, need to consider. For example:
• Any form of social listening or data gathering should be done in a way that is aimed at keeping the government “in tune” with the people. A government can quickly destroy trust if this is done improperly.
• Don’t use the channels as a megaphone to blast your message, but rather as a means for creating a dialogue. President Obama was not the first elected official to use these channels, but has been successful in understanding the importance of fostering two-way conversations, not just broadcasting.
• Use the different channels together to effectively interact with the public.
• Fish where the fish are. Know which channels are most important to reaching your audience and/or have a clear case of why they should be coming to you.
• Know what you want to say and the tone you want to take.
• Make sure you have the right person communicating messages. If your social media channels are connected to 300 million citizens, you need to have confidence in the individual who becomes your voice on those channels.
• Know beforehand what constitutes success. This can be a quantitative or qualitative metric. Have a clear definition of what you’re doing and why.
• Listen to what is being said and act on what you hear. Be dynamic, responsive, and engaged.
The relationship between the government and its citizens is changing, forever altering the dynamics of how the two interact. Supported with new tools today – and more promised for tomorrow – the government can do a better job than ever before of keeping the public informed, listening and reacting to what they have to say, knowing who they are talking to, and providing a social forum for people to talk amongst themselves.