However, the first comment here was from LouLouK at Blackburn & Darwen Council, just up the road from me, who pointed out that some councils have got it right.

I need to be clear that a lot of good work is going on and that, especially in these times, it can be really hard to get people motivated to try things.  Where this stuff is going on, it needs to be shared.  Maybe it is being, and I’m out the loop.  When you’ve read my post, stick to my action plan….or just skip past it and read LouLou’s comments….what they are doing there seems to be better than any action plan I can produce!

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It’s getting cold out there.

I don’t know who reads this blog in terms of location. I’d like to think we have a readership in exotic places like Hawaii, California and Walton-on-the-Naze. Those people may well not be aware that we’re approaching winter and have snow heading our way, apparently before the end of the week. If or when the snow does come, we’ll inevitably ignore the fact that this happens every year and, in a wild panic, close the schools, shut down the shops and make worried calls about whether we should attempt the journey into work.

Last year, this joke wasn’t even as unfunny as it is now. A heavy covering all over the country left everyone frozen to the spot and local government, schools, colleges, public transport and every other public body scrambled to find the resources to cope. In the mess, everyone realised there was a lot to gain from social media in a crisis and many of the commentators had got it right in predicting this.

In the wake of snow, there was much reflection. Some great examples of the use of technology emerged, some lessons in how not to use technology were learned. Alastair Smith, then a comms man at Newcastle Council, ran a workshop about this at last years UKGOVCAMP and I followed that up with another at LocalGovCamp YH. The details were compiled in my “Told you Snow” post.

So, as the snow approaches again, it’s interesting to see more people on board than last year. Just the other day, Leeds City Council announced that they would be running a feed similar to Kirklees Councils’ “Kirklees Winter” feed (dubbed The Gritter Twitter), giving out information about the closures. It’s fantastic that more councils are looking to social media now and they are right to do so; I certainly use Twitter and Facebook more than ever in emergency situations, and we’ve seen some great examples of Twitter’s use in crisis since then.

What’s disappointing, though, is that many of the lessons have not been taken on board. Again, Twitter is being used like an RSS Reader to roll out news releases that could be on a website.

In many council approaches, the conversations element, where people can ask questions and get responses via twitter extremely quickly is missing. Isolated, cold, damp and fed up people don’t need to know details about every school closure.  They do need cheering up.  A bit of conversation, when time allows, is as valuable as those road closed details.

The strategy for incorporating information into general twitter feeds and facebook pages is missing. This is particularly worrying if an inexperienced person has to update all the social media because management can’t get in.

The social media mashup element, where tweets can be placed on a google map to chart disruption hasn’t materialised. The lessons about wider access to open / mobile working to prepare staff for working from home have, amazingly in a time of austerity, been ignored.

There were some great Twitter stories last time. Newcastle Council’s Twitter worked with Sky News while Sarah Lay got Derbyshire Council working with volunteer 4×4 drivers through social networking. Part of the reason this worked was because, rather than inventing their own hashtags, they used existing conventions like #uksnow. It wasn’t just social media either. A huge percentage of people accessing school closure information did so using games consoles or television compatible browsers…how many councils test their web space with those?

It seems that, as the cold returns, councils are just rolling out the Twitter gritter with the traditional ones and no one is listening to the innovators who tried this last time round. So, what should local authorities do?

• Look at whether they need a separate Twitter feed for the winter or whether their existing feed with a hashtag can cover the job
• Find out existing hashtags and conventions for Twitter (so for snow use #uksnow followed by a postcode followed by any information or a number out of ten to rate severity of snow fall eg. #uksnow bd22 Hebden Road closed or #uksnow bd22 9/10
• Put together a communications plan.  Ensure that the social network tools are accessible from the office and from home, that people know the passwords, how to use them and conventions for using them
• Make sure that as fewer updates as possible are needed.  For example, updating a page with an RSS feed can automatically update twitter (using something like HootSuite), a facebook page and a website at the same time.
• Check that your website updates don’t rely on flash, java or other technicalities that could make it unusable from some smart phones and games consoles.  If it has to rely on these, make sure there’s a link to something that doesn’t
• Think big – this isn’t just a tool for you to roll out news releases, it’s a tool for people to report things to you, for people who’re stuck to talk to you, for the media to keep in touch with what you’re doing.  The feed isn’t just about you locally, it could be used nationally to paint the picture
• Use the right hashtags on Twitter.  Use you own by all means, but make sure you use the nationally trending ones, so that others can pick up on your feeds
• Have a plan – if you need to rope in emergency services, volunteers, community wardens etc, can you get information from them onto social media quickly?  How?  Maybe they have their own feeds you can re-tweet or share on facebook.  If not, is there a comms number/email accessible outside the office to keep the information up to date.
• Above all, make sure if you start this, you finish it.  There’s nothing worse than a twitter feed that shuts down at five when the snow starts at 4.  Make sure you don’t use the feed one day and not the next.  If using separate feeds, don’t neglect your original feeds. Have plans in place for how to do this.

With the right thought processes, another snow crisis could mean some real innovation in local authorities….I just hope it’s not a snowman that melts with the thaw, but one that stays with local government for a while, because, let’s be honest, it’s getting cold out there.

Recently, I took part in a debate on LinkedIn about public consultation.  The original question was around what one could do with the “I don’t know brigade”, the people who never answer the question.  The resulting dialogue left he original questioner in no doubt that a simple survey as a consultation simply isn’t the modern way.

But what is the modern way?   There are many councils doing consultations all the time and there are a number of intrinsic problems with them.  The first one, without a doubt, is that many citizens simply don’t trust them.  They believe, often rightly, that the council have made up their mind prior to a consultation taking place, or that they are given a choice of two evils to pick from.  The second one is the “don’t understand” problem.  If you’re regenerating an area, it’s easy to argue that residents know best.  After all, they live and possibly work there.  However, there are many thoughts and theories around regeneration that may not have entered residents minds.  The planners are, after all, the theory experts.  The solution to this appears to be to rate residents as stupid and impose on them the great expertise of the planners who do not live in the community, do not understand its politics or mechanisms and, more often than not, would not want to.

A great illustration of this exists in Telford, a new town created in the 1970s.  The planners used (in my opinion) flawed models in designing much of the town and there is a great deal I could write on this, but one example sums it up perfectly.  When building an estate for the “overspill”, the working class people of the Black Country who were out of work as opportunities began to dry up, an estate of close packed houses, pubs and a local centre were built.  To make way for this, countless farm houses and traditional green spaces were demolished, however, in the centre one old manor house remained.  Planners decided that this could be converted to a stable, where the overspill could keep horses.  They figured that many would have an interest in doing this and those who didn’t already have horses (probably around 99.9% of them) would feel more valued because they had a stable in their community.

The theory behind this is a good one.  Andrew Mawson, in his book on the social entrepreneurial approach to community development, notes that cheaply built and furnished community buildings lead to a feeling of not being valued in the community.  The flaw, however, is that the planners completely misunderstood that horses were not seen as prestigious by the people coming to the estate and a stables was not something that added value.  This was because planners failed to understand the residents needs, thought processes or culture.    The theory was right.  The practice was wrong.  That’s why theory can’t be left to chance and residents involvement is crucial.

The word involvement brings up an interesting point here though.  Why should councils be “involving” people in things they are doing?  Surely it should be the community that “involve” the council in their regeneration?    It’s because this often isn’t the approach that planners often resort to trying to “posh up” an area and bring in money, while involving residents in superficial focus groups around their ideas.  Mike Chitty called the latter “Economic Cleansing” and wrote an excellent blog post on the subject.

So, enough of the waffle.  How does technology come into this?

On a very superficial level, it’s about understanding different ways of thinking.  Local Government commentator Emma Langman recently posted a tweet asking if there were more right-of-centre people she could follow to try and maintain a balance.  An excellent idea.  In the more locked down areas of my facebook, I regularly ask provoking questions because I know that within my friends there are tory and labour activists, Trotskyists and Christian Rightwingers.  There are Americans, Kiwis, Germans, English, Scottish and Welsh people.  This melting pot leads to many interesting and, often, heated debates.  These debates rarely achieve anything in terms of putting new points forward or changing anyones mind.  What they do do, for me at least, is create an awareness of other arguments and view points.  Facebook pages are ideal ground for this, however local government often shy away from allowing debate to take place.  On several occasions I have been told, or have heard of council comms people telling others, that having negative comments on a facebook wall is a reason to avoid facebook.  On the contrary, I think council officers and elected members would do well to read, provoke and encourage debate among residents….it’s the first step in all parties understanding the differing views on offer.

This path offers an opportunity for more formal consultation too.  All too often, Twitter or facebook are used to link residents to an online survey which pretends to be a method of discovering what they think.  In fact, the medium itself is a melting pot which would often eliminate the need for a survey of any kind.

Of course, all of these still suggest the council asking the residents questions on a given topic.  In fact, I think consultation could be more organic.  On an ongoing basis, the council could be asking its residents all their views on everything and then drilling down into the debate to find their views on a given topic.  As part of this, they could be giving their own views and letting people scrutinise them.

One approach to this, which has sadly become a buzzword, is crowd sourcing.  Not too long ago, I attended a presentation by a company doing this, Hubbub Ideas.  They recruit what they call “Solvers” and create a huge online think tank, where people constantly post, debate, rate and review ideas.  Could these platforms not become ideal melting pots for residents’ ideas?

When I did my teaching qualification, we did a little experiment.  We did three presentations around different approaches to teaching.  The first group looked at teaching in the traditional “all sat in rows” style, the second on a non-facilitated self-discovery model and the third on a hybrid of the two.  I was in the second group.  We presented a powerpoint introduction slide, with action buttons to take people to different slides, then sat down and drank coffee.  Our classmates and teacher were a bit perplexed.  Was this our presentation?  About five minutes in, one of us eventually pointed out that there were action buttons so they could run the presentation how they wanted to themselves.  Thee point was proven that, with no facilitation at all, the classroom had failed.  However, with that small amount of facilitation the group had grown organically and run the presentation as they saw fit, in a way that met their needs.

The same could easily be said about consultation.  To go back to the LinkedIn debate, it shouldn’t just be that Yes, No, Don’t Know are the options.  It should be that online communities, reflecting or contributing offline communities routinely engage in “consultation”  where, with a little facilitation from officers, the issues are explored.  Debate is a healthy thing and the rough needs to be taken with the smooth.  The LinkedIn question asked what we should do with the “I Don’t Know” brigade.  In fact, that brigade shouldn’t exist.  When the question isn’t “what do you think about” but instead is “Talk to me please”, then “I don’t know” ceases to become an option.  That’s when we know we’re asking the right questions.

Maybe that’s why, despite columnists, broadcasters and union leaders ranting on about it, the cut word hasn’t really crept into the public sector and voluntary sector blogospheres as much as I thought it might. Nobody wants to talk about it. Partly because they don’t want to enter into political territory. Partly because they are worried that, if they stick their head above the parapet, their neck is vulnerable to the public sector guillotine heading towards us in October.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been fortunate enough to attend a lot of events where some or most of the delegates were from the private sectors. I’ve found a lot of people completely unaware of October’s comprehensive spending review and the unimaginably massive impact this could have on the public and voluntary sector if the worse of the rumours are true. More to the point, a lot of people are staggered to find that public sector morale is at rock bottom. We always say that though don’t we, us whining, unionised, cushy-jobbed public servants? The fact is, this time it is true. I’ve not met anyone in the public or voluntary sector in the past two months who isn’t in in fear of their job, their service area and, frequently, the difficulties their service users might experience if it all comes crashing down.  However, despite this morale crash, people aren’t aware. They are not aware because no one will talk about it.

Then, yesterday, I saw a post from Katie Brown, a friend and co-innovation enthusiast at Leeds MIND, the mental health charity. Katie’s blog is the first I’ve seen that really spells out how low morale is – but it also makes another point, one that is actually very important.  These points together persuaded me that I really do need to write this post.

Her second point was about the vision she had presented for taking forward MIND’s Information for Mental Health. It involved savings. It involved rationalising. It involved, in part, the use of technology and social media to achieve this. But it didn’t involve cuts. No jobs were going to go.

There are very few people reading this who will be under the illusion that the public sector doesn’t need to save. We’re in tough times and, while some may have it considerably tougher than others, the sound bite that we are all in this together is true insomuch as we are all part of the same economy. It’s also true that, in some areas of the public sector there are more ways to save than others. One way of saving money is to rationalise, making use of free, or open source, technology, using social media as a form of communication and embracing mobile working not only as a environmental and productivity raising tool, but also as one that can save organisations huge amounts of money.

So, in a time of cuts, is the public sector embracing this? Well, let’s narrow this down. Is local government embracing this? No, in a word. Recently, I helped organise an event around public sector innovation. Every local authority Chief Executive was aware of this event. Yet, Chief Execs, Directors or even Heads of Service were only really notable by the absence. The promising things that are produced from time to time from organisations representing ICT in the public sector appear to come to nothing. Councils, as a generalisation, still require employees to come to the office every day, still block useful professional networking tools like Twitter, and still see social networking as a novelty that someone in the comms team does. That person in the comms team isn’t usually even a comms officer.

At a time when the private sector are talking about crowd sourcing, social marketing, corporate blogging and putting live chat rooms in their websites to allow people to get on-the-spot customer service, councils are creating a Facebook page but barring discussions in case anyone says something they don’t like. They are implementing text message systems to keep customers informed, but not allowing them to text back. It’s not that they don’t see the use in technology. It’s that they don’t see the vision.

Social media is all about communication and the transmission and organisation of information. It’s no coincidence that this is what much of life as a whole is about and, while it could be argued that money is at the root of all evil, I think it’s fairer to say that communication is often a factor in the issues of a community. People who are unable to communicate effectively, people who struggle to receive and process communications are often the people who councils are supporting.  But, it’s not the comms department doing the supporting.  Communication is at the heart of almost every council frontline service and essential internally to keep the organisation working.  But social media is seen as a way of marketing, and limited to a cupboard in the comms team office. Bosses see it as something to replace news releases, a way of people interacting without the need for people.  This, in turn, sparks a technophobic, and often union backed, backlash of people worried that the computer will replace them. Community development workers have been using the telephone for years, saving a lot of time and money, but people don’t want to press 1 to receive support. They want to speak to someone, the support coming along the way. Social media doesn’t need to cost jobs…and can still save money.

I’ll take you back now, to Katie’s post, her vision that didn’t include job cuts. There’s a bigger picture here, a future that’s much brighter than the confusion we have tonight. But that bright future depends on people listening, people responding and people changing. Right now, we’ve got some room to breathe in the eye of the storm. We’re spending the time battering down the hatches and clinging on to the safest tree.  Not only that, but we’re so busy clambering for higher ground that we’re not looking at new ways to stay afloat.  Let’s look beyond that and start that innovation right this instant.

I suggest a simple action plan.  Let’s think about how we communicate.  Internally.  Externally.  With people.  Not just in term of formal, public relations.  How do we support colleagues, how do we support customers, how do we support each other?  There are new, easier, more effective, cheaper ways of doing this.  Let’s change.  Let’s move forward.

This blog is a-political. But that’s not important because, let’s be honest, if the public sector can’t respond and change now, it will destroy itself. It won’t be a case of blaming the Government.

Me and Ken were certain from the start that we wanted certain things from this event.  We chose a Saturday so that people who can’t blag innovation through their job role could come.  We wanted the involvement of senior management and frontline staff.  We wanted involvement from elected members.  Sadly, we failed a little on point 2 (more on that later).  However, the Saturday worked wonders and we had just under 80 people meet at York’s National Railway Museum, including a number of elected members who attended a parallel session facilitated by Cllr Tim Cheetham (Barnsley) and Cllr Simon Cooke (Bradford).  I certainly felt that the attendence of so many elected members really enriched the debate and the audience.  It was nice to break away from a techie/comms event and get more input.

This event’s timing was crucial.  The first LocalGovCamp since the election, we knew about the cuts and efficiency drives that lie ahead.  Innovation isn’t just something that will happen now.  It’s something that has to happen.

I’m not going to try and summarise everything that happened on the day.  There’s plenty about it on the website and we’ll be adding a lot more very soon.  You can also check out Dave Briggs summary here.  I think I’ll keep this blog the way I like it and make it all about me.

I ran two sessions on the day.  The first, run with Al Smith and Ben Proctor, looked at emergency planning and the role of social media in this.  Ben has some background in the emergency planning process and Al led a similar workshop at UKGovCamp, so we were off to a good start.  We didn’t just talk about social media – we spoke about the role innovation could have in mapping resources, mapping crisis points and giving staff the opportunity to work from home.  The conclusions were that emergency planning chiefs really need to take the role of social media more seriously – a hard challenge when so many heads of communications and chief executives seem to ignore it, or treat it as a novelty comms issue.

I thought this workshop would be the bright one of the day.  However, I never expected my session on “Just a game?  Do social and geo-dependant games have an impact in local authorities”  I based it on my recent blog post and the response I’d received from it.  The workshop was very popular and the discussions from it spilled over into the after event drinks and then into the twittersphere.  It’s clear that this is a can of worms that’s been opened and that gaming can, and is, having an impact on local authority activity.  Additionally, there was talk of developing gaming content for local government engagement processes.   However, progress was hampered.  Firstly, there were concerns expressed about security in some games and, more importantly, the perceived security risks that many council gatekeepers might have in allowing their implementation.  The final point was asking how we could expect council chiefs to take games seriously when they don’t even really take social media seriously.

See the theme here?  I was disappointed that we hadn’t managed to get the chief execs and directors we hoped for along – it’s their drives that shape the organisation.  I was also disappointed that we didn’t have many frontline workers there – the people who can tell you what works and what doesn’t on the ground.  Social media, social gaming, innovation, mobile devices, mobile working and new models of communication simply have to be taken more seriously, not just be enthusiasts, but by the people that really matter.

We’re already looking at how we can put our heads together to plan the next move.  Its clear that, in Yorkshire & Humber and beyond, there are real issues and that the debate is starting to move forward.  However, as the situation becomes urgent, the debate needs to reach the senior areas of local authorities.

I’d be interested to know ideas people might have of how we move this forward – post them here, on the LGCYH website or in any other place you think people look.  The key message for me is this:  Look what we can achieve working together.  Now let’s widen that net so that everyone can get involved.

One of my gripes with e-safety policies is that they often only look at e-safety from the safeguarding side of things.  Obviously, this is by far the most important area, however corporate reputation and liability is another angle which is often ignored.  So, you might expect that I was fairly excited to hear this week that a school for the 11 – 19 age group had put in place such a policy.  However, I’m afraid I wasn’t.

The school, which I’ve decided not to name (for reasons that will become apparent), has decided to tackle the issue of videos of teachers in school head on.  Its publicly accessible policy states that anyone posting comments or videos on public websites that show bullying of staff or harm the school’s reputation might be expelled.

Initially, this seems like a good idea.  However, the bit that had me worried was the whole “anything that may harm the schools reputation” bit.  See, I remember that, when working for the council, we had a clause in our contract that we would “not bring the council into disrepute”.  This kind of clause is vital for public sector workers to protect impartiality and confidentiality of public records and integrity, but it is also a get-out-clause that allows someone to be disciplined or sacked for anything that can be deemed “harming” the reputation.  For example, while council officers not on a politically restricted scale are technically free to express their political beliefs, it would be very easy to argue that political beliefs, in particular controversial ones, harm the council.  Thus, arguably, this clause prevents any political discussion by council staff.  I’ve certainly known of cases where union activity was interpreted in this way.  The same could be true of the clause in this school’s safety policy.   The only way to be sure you don’t harm the schools reputation is not to talk about it at all.

A further rule, again issued in the spirit of e-safety, requires all students to sign a “contract” which includes a clause about not identifying that they attend this school on any postings they submit.

Again, it is simple common sense that giving out your school details could breach your security and I’m not arguing in any way that these policies should not be in place.  However, they become far more worrying when you actually see how students are instructed on or interpret them.  One told me that they are not allowed to discuss anything relating to the school, at all, on any social network.  Clearly, the implication of this policy is that the school is not mentioned on social networking sites.  Indeed, a quick scan with Google shows that it’s worked.  There are no identifiable groups set up by students.  However, there are several set up by former students, one of which calls the school “prison-like” and “draconian” amongst many other things.  How can students make use of technology to communicate effectively if they cannot use it to discuss the issues that matter to them?

So, you may be wondering, where is my gripe?  I’ve said that e-safety policies should be taking reputation into account and this one does.  I’ve said that it’s silly to open yourself too much online and this policy prevents that.  Well, my gribe came to me this week as I was looking at a new project that a friend of mine was involved in.  It’s called “The nation thinks”, is part of Crowdworks and is a new forum for political discussions around the forthcoming budget, encouraging users to submit their ideas.

Obviously, this will spurn a lot of political debate.  Useful political debate.  The kind that we want to see more, not less, of.  However, as I registered, I found myself wondering how many people would be put off by clauses in their contracts, vague wording in policies and rules presented as safety being interpreted and enforced as draconian?  In a world where our schools have policies like this and many of our public networks have even stricter ones, where is the room for free debate?

I, and probably most of the readers of this blog, will have argued for some time that the solution in terms of infrastructure is not to lock down systems but to foster awareness of safe and proper practice.  The same is true in terms of reputation.  We need to have a world where we can freely discuss, without worrying about whether we will get into trouble for what we say.  That means policies that are flexible, but make clear what is and isn’t acceptable, rather than simply relying on interpretation.  We need to educate and inform users about the good practice of discussion and debate, the laws of libel and the consequences of sticking your neck out.  But at no point, surly, should we be telling people that they cannot talk about their time at school, or work in any way without fear of disciplinary action?  If we continue on this route, we’ll have a very safe world….but not a world of active citizens.  We might then all be sorry….but we won’t want to say anything about it.

Part of my dislike for this is born from the fact that I love that social networking gives us the chance to share real things with real people and these “social games” seem to trivialise so much of that. Maybe I take life a bit too seriously.

So, when I first saw FourSquare I dismissed it as a game. The network involved gaining points, claiming prizes…it all sounded a bit trivial to me. However, I noticed more and more people using it. Suddenly it seemed like I was the only social media geek not on it, so I thought I’d better give it a try.  What’s more it’s soaring in popularity.  According to the founders, it had 175,000 users last December and, say the LA Times, it has just under 1million users as of last month.  That’s growth on a curve that’s close to the one Twitter had in its early days and only a few 100,000 less (that’s just a drop in the ocean) than facebook had back in the day.

FourSquare is a social game and geo-located service for mobile devices.   When you go somewhere, you use your phone to pinpoint your location and a list of nearby places, such as the park, are shown. You can then “check in” to these places. Once there you can add tips about the places for your other friends (or the wider public) to see. If you go to one place more than anyone else (and at least five times) you become “the mayor” of that location. You collect points for the distances you travel, the new places you add, etc and get trophies. So, how is this different from farmville?

Well, firstly it’s about real places. The next addition is that you can “shout” from locations (basically, tweet, about what you’re doing) which is handy if your friends are there as well and you want to meet up. Thirdly, FourSquare tell us, businesses such as cafés are starting to offer “mayor deals” where to mayor of their café gets a discount.

So, armed with my iPhone and new FourSquare app, I started checking in everywhere I went.  I noticed that many businesses, such as local cinemas, had a presence on there already.  Councils, meanwhile, had none.  I’m not suggesting that people would want to check in with their council.  But they might at their libraries, sports centres, community venues and theatres.  Many of these venues have already been added on FourSquare – but without the council having any kind of control, branding or any other association with it.   They are missing a trick.

Maybe it’s not suprising that council’s aren’t looking at social games like FourSquare.  After all, many are still struggling with Facebook and Twitter.  However, we can see from social games popularity that they are here to stay and the popular ones may well become the household names that facebook and twitter have become.

What this teaches us is that social media strategies need to be built to change.  In 2006, I’d have told you the we needed MySpace strategies.  a few years later we were talking about Facebook, Twitter and social bookmarking.  Just a few months ago, I would have dissmissed social games as being just that  – games that had no community benefit.  Today, maybe we should be thinking about their impact however, along with geo-located services and augmented reality.

In summary, strategists need to be looking beyond the individual tools and looking at the wider vision – how can local authorities keep on top of social media practice and react to new apps and programmes. Are these kind of applications the next big thing for people….or really, are they all just a trivial game?

There were lots of sessions on lots of topics and I can’t even begin to cover every thought and idea that passed my way.  The best thing to do it read the Twitter stream and see all the hundreds of comments.  There were lots of people to meet too, some people who I knew from Twitter and some new faces too.  I won’t list them all, partly because I can’t remember them all and partly because I want to get to the core of this blog post.

My running theme for this GovCamp was, unintentionally, the three Cs:  Community, Crisis and Communications.

Alastair Smith ran a really productive session around social media and the response to the recent snow.  The conversation strayed off into emergency planning as a whole and the role of local and national government alongside the role of media and volunteers.  There were some great stories of how local government had responded using social media, how local government had rallied volunteers and how the media had used council social sites like Twitter to gather information.  Despite a general feeling in the hierarchy of many local government bodies that social media is something for the kids, the snow showed huge hit counts of web media.  One posting even reported 21,000 hits.

However, these great stories were also diluted with the inevitable ones around social media failing during the snow.  There were calls for a greater consistency in the way councils used things like twitter – for example using a #schoolclosure hashtag nationally, so that media organisations could follow everything (which SkyNews did).

In terms of planning for future emergencies,  there was a definite consensus that web officers, ICT professionals, comms officers and emergency planning officers need to work together more to plan for these eventualities.  Somehow a 24/7 approach needs to be agreed.  Other questions raised were:

• What is an emergency – what defines a time when it’s ok to get the boss out of bed to get a tweet?
• How do press staff respond – are press releases the way forward, or is a twitterfeed more useful?
• How does the organisation respond – some schools give their closures to the BBC, not the council PR team
• How does the comms team work with the emergency services, roadwatch and other external agencies around this?
• How is web content updated?  Can key staff access the CMS from home to make web updates?  How do they plan for Twitter or Facebook crashing under increased demand of a major emergency?
• Most importantly, how do they respond to customers?  Obviously emergency queries could be answered online, but is it over the top to assume a 24/7 conversation can take place?  What if someone replies to a school closure with “well that school would close, it’s rubbish”.  How do comms staff avoid engaging in debate?  Should they avoid engaging in debate?

Following on from this nicely, I went to Eve Shuttleworth’s session around how journalism is changing and, more to the point, how comms should relate to the media via social media.  There was strong feeling that video and youtube type content submitted with press releases needed to be in keeping with the spirit of the medium.  There was little point making corporate videos for YouTube.  A lot of doubt was raised that content like this would be used at all, especially as many media bodies won’t use content developed by a council because it’s weighted.  Jim Hawkin’s, from BBC Radio Shropshire, joined in the debate via twitter, suggesting that media releases should remain as text and that actually linking to other content was largely irrelevant – it was a quick, accurate and simple product that journalists wanted.  Despite this, one local newspaper had already agreed that they would take YouTube content for their website.

The final session, run by Robin Grant, looked at how we use the data we can get for consultation.  There were lots of methods suggested and ways of analysing the results were also debated.  My favourite, though, was the feeling that consultation could be crowd sourced, ie that, as part of a formal conversation, we should be tapping into where peopel are talking about the issue already.

I’ll finish this post on a note that really summarised the day.  The first session I attended was a “Local Authority Group Hug”, just a session to catch up where local government was in terms of technology.  There was a real mix form the very innovative to those with complete lockdowns.  The session was facilitated by someone I won’t name, who had come unofficially.  Social media wasn’t recognised in their organisation.  Innovation wasn’t  encouraged.  But that didn’t matter, because staff came from all over the country to see how they could make the change in their organisation.  How they could innovate past the barriers.  It’s that passion for the future that really makes UK Gov Camp.  I’ll certainly be booking my ticket for next year.

There are many arguments for and against having these restrictions and I don’t really want to open the vast can of worms that those debates would involve.  Additionally, I don’t want to go over the whole “your employer, the council, might search for you on google” debate, which has been done to death.  However, having read a recent article re-posted on Twitter by community development consultant Mike Chitty, I did have to think about how this could apply to social media.

The article, from Montana in the United States, revolves around a City Council asking job applicants to submit usernames and passwords for all their social media sites as part of the job application.  They’ve taken legal advice on this and apparently they can do this.

This is an extreme example of councils probing into people’s private lives.   The legal implications of asking people for passwords which, as the article points out, they are bound not to give you by the terms of service, probably means this won’t go any further.  However, I doubt it’s the end of the social media fit for office debate.

Currently, most public bodies I’ve experienced ask you, on application, for the following information:

• To declare any criminal charges or, if relevant, any accusations that have been made against you
• Submit to a CRB Disclosure (police check)
• To declare (and normally to cease) any business interests you have
• To declare any membership organisation you belong to (such as the freemasons)
• To declare (and if applicable cease) any political office you may be involved in

So, would it be that surprising if they started asking you for lists of your online presence?  Do you have a website, are you a member of facebook , what does your LinkedIn history say about you?

There’s always that argument that if you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve nothing to hide, but the fit for office argument gets tricky here.  What if you’re a member of the facebook group  “I was born in the UK so why don’t I have as many rights as immigrants“.  To some, this is a legitimate, humanitarian debate.  To others it is a political, right wing, cause.  To others still it is an unfounded, racist and prejudicial statement.   If you went to a physical rally around this subject it would be quite easy to determine if it was political or not, based on who had organised it.  You’d be able to judge the tone of the rally and decide if your presence brought the council into disrepute.   However, on a facebook group it isn’t quite so simple.

The standards board ruled some time ago that a politician who posted arguably racist comments on a facebook page had not violated standards because it was a personal account.  So where does this leave public bodies?

Looking back at the guidance from Darlington Council, I note that even politically restricted persons can display a political badge on their person or vehicle…so what about on their facebook account?  What if they also conduct some council business over facebook?

The answers to this, sadly, are policy and guidance.  Applicants, staff and political members need to be clear about what they can and can’t do politically via social media – otherwise we’ll end up with job application forms asking the questions that they do in Montana.

So, I’ve put a list here together of all the posts I’ve found on the subject, so that this can be a one-stop-shop for cases studies about technology could, or did, help the public sector respond to the recent snow “crisis”.

The list is a bit small – please, send me links to yours (tweet them to @kevupnorth) or leave them in the comments section

My recent post on social media in a crisis, my guest post on NOMAD about mobile working in the snow , a round-up of the snow discussion at UKGovCamp on and older posts on snow and emergency planning

John Popham from DIGITAL 2020 on how the internet could be used through twitter or learning platforms

Tim Hobbs, director of Bartec on how Twitter can get the word out in the snow

Dave Sugden from Village E-Learning on how the education sector could prepare for snow days

Donald Clark from UFI LearnDirect on the problems of closing schools (personal blog, not technology related)

James Clay on closing schools – should it matter – and when will we learn?

Ingrid Koehler from IDeA on examples of how councils used social media in the snow

Sarah Lay on how local gov snow-sites were not just accessed via the PC, or even the iPhone

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.