It is tempting to look at the rise of social media and assume that government is singularly unprepared to meet the challenges that the (socially) connected workplace have delivered to us. And if you restrict your field of vision to the technology, there is a good case to be made.

However, viewed in the context of the ongoing evolution of the public management system, here in New Zealand anyway where I believe we have a good record of evolving and developing in response to these environmental pressures, it is a much more tractable problem. It is the speed of that adaption that is the central issue.

The wave

As the Pew report points out, (online) social networking is not some novel behaviour that, along with rounded corners and reflective logos, arrived with Web 2.0. Usenet, bulletin boards and discussion lists provided media for this sort of activity as soon as people started connecting computers to each other. What has changed for organizations is the volume of participation.

As it has become increasingly painless to network online – you no longer require any real technical know-how, just an email address and some self-belief in the significance of your opinions – more of us are doing it. It is inevitable that this trend would extend to public sector employees, particularly the digital natives.

To give you a (purely anecdotal) picture of the change, in 2006 I had roughly four of five agency queries about social media, for that year. From late 2007 to today, I am averaging about one a week.

The strategy gap

The problem, as such, is not that public sector organizations are not adapting to the change; the fact that there is so much interest in understanding social media is a good indication they are. The problem is the rate at which they are adapting, and the consequences of that lag.

Government agencies naturally have a long-term strategic view; this is driven by statutory as well as practical considerations. The Statement of Intent looks forward three years, as do business plans and budgets. How many of you, given the chance, would have written social media into your business plans in 2005/06?

The tension we are all experiencing now, between the early adopters in agencies who expect to be able to use these networks as a matter of course and management struggling to understand and adapt to the shadow workplace, is an expression of the conflict between a shifting strategic perspective and tactical imperatives.

Managers are trying to adapt their strategy within a set of, in the immediate term, unforgiving constraints – like, for example, the Public Records Act and other accountability structures, and simultaneously manage the demands of tactical and operational contingencies that are reactions to, in most cases, ‘guerilla’ implementations that begin their cycle outside the corporate framework.

Let me give you an example (if you are still reading after that last paragraph, you have earned it): managers in Agency X discover that an enthusiastic employee has set up a Facebook group for the staff. They are now using it to communicate with each other across the geographically dispersed organization, to share knowledge and to build social and professional relationships.

Tactically, it is providing some value. Strategically, it is a nightmare. Why? There is no defined purpose, no exit strategy and, from a risk management point of view, they couldn’t have picked a worse application. It is, putting it quite conservatively, a crisis waiting to happen…

On the other hand, what this requires of managers is a rethinking of their strategic approach. They need to begin planning immediately to migrate the behaviour (which, to be clear, is both inevitable and desirable) to a medium, or possibly media, that is consistent with the security, legislative and cultural norms of the public sector. But, even with complete management support and the requisite funding (ie., in a perfect world) that won’t happen in a hurry. That’s your strategy gap in action.

And this sort of thing is not restricted to a few agencies, it is happening all over the public sector.

Change management

Public sector managers should all be conversant and comfortable with change. To narrow the strategy gap, what needs to happen is for senior managers to recognize that social media are a symptom of a wider cultural change, and to begin revising their strategies accordingly. Agencies should begin to consult, communicate and involve staff in the process now, because if the gap widens too much, our people will —literally— leave us behind.

As I noted at the outset, this doesn’t require any specialized management knowledge or technical skill; it is just another expression of the (hopefully commonplace) need to constantly manage change. What it does require, however, is a sense of urgency, a willingness to engage and a focus that is on people, rather than technology.

Photo: iMorpheus

When I started this blog, there were two primary reasons that drove me to the keyboard week in and week out and, after a period of reflection, I have decided that I haven’t been at all successful in the second. And while I am not trying to lead you to an inference about the first, I remain confident that the remedy lies within my own reach.

The first reason was to learn as much about social media in the public sector – in as public and transparent a fashion – as possible. To write about it and to engage with colleagues and peers. Pretty straightforward.

The second, equally important, reason was to provide a forum for colleagues, peers, interested readers et al (you), to interact and experiment with social media. Looking back over the last year and a half, there hasn’t been too much of that. This post is an attempt to change that.

Come on out

Looking through the visitor numbers to the site I have a good idea of the ratio of readers to commenters and while it is reasonable to expect that social sites will generally have a fairly predictable breakdown of active/passive visitors (the 1% rule), for communicators I think we can and should do better.

This is your chance. Stop lurking (even if only for this one post) and come out and introduce yourself. Tell everyone a little about yourself, where you are from, your work and your interests in terms of communications, social media etc. Get social.

If you have other social media profiles, include links to them. Your blog, bookmarks, Twitter or Tumblr accounts, your online feed reader, LinkedIn profile, whatever… Anything that will help all of us connect with others who share what is after all (if you read this blog regularly) a fairly obscure interest.

If you would like to do more than introduce yourself, you are encouraged to submit your thoughts about the blog, especially if it involves suggesting directions or areas of interest for 2008.

Now, don’t be shy: start mingling.

Photo: yewenyi

Launching a blog or wiki is easy – it is literally a matter of minutes, not hours. The real cost, or rather the investment, is in ensuring the regular flow of quality content and in moderating and participating in the resulting conversations.

In this post I won’t look at the issue of generating quality content to a merciless deadline, for two reasons. If this hasn’t already occurred to you then your social media strategy is in the sort of shape that no amount of further commentary will salvage and, secondly, producing non-quality content –but doing it with clockwork regularity– has always worked for me…

Moderation

I touched on this when I wrote the principles for public sector social media:

6. Timeliness: post regularly and be prepared to engage people when it suits them. This may mean checking comments or making edits after work hours and on weekends — be prepared to make that effort.

This may seem difficult for some senior public servants to grasp, but the reality of engaging with social media is that it can’t be restricted between 8:30 and 5:00.

An example: when we first dipped our toe in the water earlier this year, with a guest post on Public Address, the post went up on Thursday and, inevitably, the comments continued over the weekend, effectively leaving us out of the conversation. Not particularly well planned on our part…

This is will be less of an issue for younger public servants who are permanently plugged into the matrix. They will have comments forwarded to their Gmail accounts (aka nerve center) which they will access via mobile devices, meaning they can clear comments on the fly, day or night.

Of course, it is not just about moderating and responding to comments in a timely fashion, it is also about managing the volume of contributions. The Police Act Review wiki I posted about last week was very quickly overwhelmed by the volume of contributions, resulting in it being shut down only days after it was launched.

Adequate resourcing for moderation, related to both time and volume, definitely needs to be factored into the planning of public sector social media sites.

Participation

Again, when I posted the principles I recommended that agencies think about more than just their own sites when they utilize social media:

9. Participation: don’t just focus on your site and expect your publics to find, engage and maintain a conversation. Get out among similarly oriented communities and participate there. Post comments, email other bloggers and recognize that your site is only part of the solution.

This is time intensive. You not only have to respond to people that visit your site and leave comments or edits, you will need to follow any trackbacks to other blogs and, perhaps, comment there.

You will need a good understanding of the other social media sites covering your particular niche, and you will need to develop relationships with some of them. Don’t underestimate how much time this involves. Colin at SoSaidThe.Organization has an excellent post on public sector blogger outreach that captures the complexity of this part of your strategy.

This is compounded by the fact that, as a government agency, you will also need to be much more discriminating about which other sites you link to as, all disclaimers aside, linking is a form of endorsement.

Conclusion

Social media, like blogs and wikis, offer public sector communicators tremendous opportunities to more effectively engage with their publics. The (apparent) simplicity of the tools and the ease with which they can be deployed can mask some of the real costs of using these tools in the ways that those same publics will expect that you use them.

I would be interested in the views of those readers who are not public servants as to what your expectations are around the government’s use of social media. Do you expect 7 day a week moderation and responses to your comments? Prompt attention to trackbacks and engagement in distributed conversations? Or are you happy with glide time?

Photo: Eduard.