This my first blog post for 2010, but I’m not looking to the future – instead I’m returning to the past.
Not too long ago I did a post about how Twitter and other social media being used in emergency situations. Now, I don’t claim that millions of people in local government read this blog, let alone act on it, but very few people could have failed to notice the phenomenal rise in social media this year – and local government, along with the media, now think they are on board.
The first problem is that social media is a 24/7 media. It doesn’t just work within working hours. The second is that social media is not simply a new hi-tech version of old media. Both of these problems were highlighted over the first weekend of 2010 and in the week that’s followed.
Firstly, a week ago, when a huge gas explosion ripped through a shop and flats in central Shrewsbury. Like most news these days, I found out through social media, or facebook to be exact, when a friend living nearby changed his status to “WTF WAS THAT???? It sounded like a bomb”. The media was on board too, with BBC Radio Shropshire and their presenter Jim Hawkins, amongst others, using Twitter to keep people informed of the situation. The council’s Theatre Severn also made good use of Twitter, explaining the cancellation of the closing night pantomimes and the injury of one of the cast members in the explosion. However, the main local authority twitter feed remained silent, a single Tweet from Friday warning people to avoid a bad batch of chick peas.
Meanwhile the people of Shropshire, or certainly those I follow on Twitter and Facebook, began talking about the story. Photos started appearing and the BBC snapped them up and put them on its site. Citizen Journalists fed out the story. However, there was an issue.
Citizen Journalists, unlike their professional cousins, do not always filter news based on fact. Rumours of deaths and exaggeration of facts spread quickly. Luckily, the BBC provided sanity in this conversation, however the local authority, whose buildings were damaged, whose roads were closed, whose citizens needed reassurance, remained silent. Wy have a twitter feed if you don’t want to join the conversation? This isn’t an argument AGAINST local authorities using Twitter – it’s an example of why they need to think about how they use it and use it effectively.
That was the end of that story, but it wasn’t the end of my week of local authority let-downs. Over the following weeks the snow really took hold and I was surprised to see how badly twitter and facebook were used by local government to put out information.
There are lots of issues around technology and snow, I’ve outlined them before and Digital 2020′s John Popham has also done an excellent post on the subject, so I won’t repeat it. However, there were some points raised that do require further commentary.
John refers to mobile working practices being a solution to the snow. It’s true that this would have alleviated many businesses problems and, as someone who is able to work flexibly, I was able to carry on close to normal working from home. I say close to normal because mobile working is currently a fledgling idea and, in the way local authorities have often jumped into social media without a strategy some organisations have used the snow to do the same with mobile working. We work from all locations and are used to it, but people who are used to the social banter and processes of the office can’t simply be told to work from home…it’s a major culture change that, while productive in many cases, can be damning if implemented without thought. That’s not an argument against it, and, like John, I think a link to project nomad is needed to show where that thought and planning is taking place.
John also mentions being irritated by “heroic” attempts to get to work. While I’d agree that it is always stupid to put lives at risk and that many people try to get to work when they don’t need to, I think that many people could easily have got to work if they tried. This would have kept the systems of this country running better and meant the snow was far less of an “emergency”. I went to work on the days I could and was very grateful to social media for keeping me informed about bus and train delays and closures. Social media from other commuters and West Yorkshire Metro, I should add, not my local Bradford Council.
However, elsewhere, parents were panicking about whether their schools were open. They weren’t as lucky in terms of social media help. Back in Shropshire a local independent radio station got some school closures wrong and facebook was full of discussions and questions. A conversation among citizens where everyone participated, except the local authority. Luckily, some inspiration was at hand in the form of Kirklees Council, whose Twitter feed (@kirkleeswinter) kept people informed about school closures and gritting and, in a pretty innovative approach for local authority Twitter, actually interacted and responded to questions citizens posed. A great example, which I hope they’ll follow with a KirkleesEmergency so people can follow it for any crisis.
There will be sceptics reading this who wonder whether this is just the voice of geek, telling local authorities how communities work when really no one is reading social media. To that end, I’ll put up this that I noticed on facebook from family in The Wirral. I’ve blanked out the names and schools, but this gist is clear. A teacher walked round the estate to tell parents when the school was open. Why, one the parents enquires, couldn’t they have just put it on facebook? Why indeed.
Great post, Kev. And thanks for the references.
It was frustrating to me, living in Kirklees and seeing the great work that @KirkleesWinter (and later @KirkleesSchools) was doing in getting the word out on Twitter about school closures, when my kids go to school in Calderdale where both the school and local authority responses are well behind the times.
I agree with your sentiments – it’s easy to see Twitter / Facebook as either
a) a quick method of announcing things to a grateful public
and/or
b) something to ‘have a go at’ and see what happens
The problem for Councils (and, in fact, any other large organisation) is that social media doesn’t fit into the departmental model that almost all organisations adopt. They have Highways, waste management, social services etc busily delivering the service. Customer contact is generally centralised and ‘public relations’ is entirely separate.
When the time comes to “do this Twitter thing”, the natural response for a Council is to employ someone to “look after it”. But that cannot work. It’s obvious to anyone that having an FTE in charge of “writing letters” or “phoning people” would be ridiculous, but that’s exactly what they are doing for Twitter.
In the last 5 years councils have spent large sums on centralising customer contact. This has partly been for “efficiency” and partly to offer a consistent and uniform customer face. Social media threatens to tear that apart. Customers are going to demand fast, 24/7 access to the people delivering their services, without a slick and regimented call centre in the way.
Legal and PR are going to hate it. Many council workers will fear it. Some will adopt it strongly and get into difficulties for saying too much, too soon or in the wrong way. It’s only a matter of time before a stressed-out council worker tells someone to “p**s off” via Twitter. The organisation needs to prepare itself for those things and recognise that social media is a culture, not a technology.
Good post and read.
More bottom up, less formalised news system is required with filters to seperate the relevant to the irrelevant.
Whilst I agree with the LA’s twitter being uptodate, on a weekend not may people will access a twitter account if it is for their work as many local authority offices are shut. Though during the week it should keep you upto date on council business.
Also what you must also consider is how many people are willing to use twitter, whilst there are the digitally included using the internet not many know how to use twitter or facebook.
Twitter should remain a service for bus and rail companies to post travel updates, whilst digital / Digi TV and teletext are a medium for informing if schools are closed along with website or a telephone service.
I hope my comments make sense.
I’ll look forward to your next one.
Nice piece – problem being for us (small unitary with a few *issues*) is that all forms of social media are seen as adversarial – ‘the authority’ vs ‘the whingers’ and through such potentially acrimonious interactions a “free ride for the local press”. I’ve tried (to no avail) on a number of occasions to generate some kind of social media interface for data mashing and some potentially less controversial interactions, but it gets lost at a point of ‘political risk’ at each occasion.
I’d love to know whether this is something specific to us, or whether it’s more common – I bet it’s just us.
I think that may be an extreme example, but it certainly isn’t unique.
The only way to battle this is for culture change, both in front line work, strategically and politically. I wonder if Cllr Tim (from Barnsley) has any comment to make on the political approach to allowing free comment?
Meanwhile, the “whingers” need to whinge. Social media is happening anyway, so why not attempt to be part of it? If you don’t, things happen like the recent example of a council refusing to allow a parent to put a teddy on their dead child’s grave. When it got onto facebook they had to backpeddle and got a lot of bad press (like this ) So the question is – do you wait for social media to involve you or involve yourself? I know I’m preaching to the converted here – but it’s what they need think about.
While I agree with some of the comments on here that releasing information via Twitter will only meet the digitally engaged, I still think it is important because the digitally engaged often have means of contact with the digitally disengaged. On the other hand, I live 5 miles from the school my kids go to, but a friend lives just around the corner from it. She has been telling me about weather conditions and how the street looks round there via Facebook or MSN. I could well then tweet that information if I thought anyone on Twitter would find it useful.
I also like what James Clay had to say about the snow in relation to “Digital Residents” and “Digital Visitors” http://elearningstuff.wordpress.com/2010/01/10/snow/ I like this analogy much better than the bunkum about “Digital Natives”. Basically, what he is saying is that most people are Digital Visitors, i.e. they only go online for specific purposes, and it will not occur to them naturally to turn to the online space to work or educate themselves during snow days. Those of us getting frustrated that they don’t are the Digital Residents.
An example from Walsall a few months ago was someone on Twitter ranting at the world in general about a cracked paving stone and the effing useless council not fixing it. I suspect they hadn’t actually bothered reporting it – after all it’s easier to rant on Twitter than to call the council and navigate their call centre.
Enter Walsall council’s Twitter account, which presumably spotted “Walsall” and “council” in the tweet. They replied, fixed the paving stone and converted a whinger into an engaged resident who realised that their neighbour parking on the pavement might actually be a better target for wrath.
By these small actions councils can recruit people to work with them, not against them. Or,as one council employee once said to me “Better to have them inside the tent pissing outwards….”.
However, council’s can’t use socmed as a sticking plaster over systems that don’t work. For example, my local council’s Highways department auto-responded to an emailed pothole report from me just after Christmas and I’ve heard nothing else since. They’ve managed to push me outside the tent by not having a culture of engaging with people and communicating effectively. They’ve set up an email account – job done.
I think it’s also important to note that the digitally disengaged are not always the same people as the disengaged were prior to the digital “revolution”. In fact, many of the peopel who have for years been local authorities “hard to reach” groups are sitting on facebook ,just waiting to be reached.
I’m aware that this is a huge generalisation and that many people, particularly those in severe poverty or with specific disabilities, have access to neither mainstream services nor internet technology. However, there is a core group of disengaged people who do have access and 2we” are failing to reach them, when it would cost us nothing to do so.
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