Let me set aside for the moment the distinction between Govt 2.0 and social media, because they are not one and the same thing (rather, one is a condition for the other); that can wait for another post…

Instead, I would like to explore some of the issues around framing these early attempts at government use of social media as almost exclusively success stories and the implications for this (entirely understandable) tendency.

Fear of failure

Why is it understandable? A couple of reasons. One is that public servants are naturally loathe to admit that they spent tax payer dollars unwisely, or worse, ineffectively. Consequently, there is always a temptation to adopt an overly optimistic assessment of the impact of a particular initiative. Of course, there may be cases where this view is supported by metrics. Or not.

Second, the people who are promoting social media in government are, by and large, enthusiasts; early adopters who champion these tools with – let’s face it, a zeal that is borderline messianic. The last thing these people want to see is the non-believers (principally senior management) arriving at the conclusion that this stuff is just hype, Or worse, that it doesn’t work. Thus the drive to label it all a runaway success.

With social media, however, it isn’t that simple. First, success – or failure – is not a value that we are able to ascribe ourselves. It is a co-production. We, ie., the government, can’t unilaterally decide that an engagement initiative with our publics was an unqualified success. They, those with whom we have tried to engage, have as much – if not more – say in whether or not the engagement was mutually satisfactory (mutual satisfaction being the key determinant of any successful relationship).

A good example of this for me is the Police Act Review Wiki. This received a lot of attention at the time, and continues to be one of the stock examples for a lot of commentators on what constitutes a successful public sector social media implementation. I don’t think it is that simple.

The Police Act Review was an outstanding piece of public policy work. It engaged a wide range of people and initiated an enormous amount of discussion. The overall communications programme would have to be regarded as extremely well executed.

But let’s be realistic about the social media element of the Review. It failed. Not a National Australia Bank sort of epic fail, but – in terms of providing a transparent forum for people to contribute their thoughts to how the Act should be reviewed, a failure nonetheless.

Is this sort of failure a bad thing? The wiki delivered what the Police wanted – some suggested changes to the wording of the Act and a lot of publicity/awareness, nevertheless it was shut down after less than a week. What sort of public consultation can take place in less than a week? What about those thousands of visitors to the site who arrived only to find that they were too late, the wiki was locked and it was all over? Did they consider it a success?

What price failure?

Which brings me to an important corollary. Failure in social media should not be stigmatized. For an emerging set of channels/tools, it is both inevitable and I would argue, welcome. Why? Because it is social. As long as you are engaging in a principled way, it is OK to make mistakes. Own them and learn from them; and do it publicly.

It is also welcome because we are unlikely to collectively improve our performance in this space if we are busy congratulating ourselves on what a good job we are already doing.

The real risk to your agency’s reputation is to continue to talk up your social media efforts as wonderful examples of engaging with citizens, while those selfsame citizens think that you have just built another creepy treehouse.

Photo: eelsmann

What I found interesting about his first post (he has posted two more on the topic with the fourth to come) Reputation: where the personal and the participatory meet up was that the discussion (so far) is limited to individuals; the implications of what online reputations mean for organizations doesn’t feature. So I thought I might explore some of those implications, particularly as they relate to government agencies.

Before I get to the 3-step approach to a reputation management, it might be worth pausing to consider what exactly we mean by an agency reputation. I’m not sure that I necessarily agree with the definition Andy derives from the symposium, at least not in a public sector context:

reputation can be seen as a market in which people invest in reputation, store it, exchange it, and expend it as necessary for other goods.

My take on it is that reputation is a product of the degree of trust that your publics have in your agency. It is not an end in itself — and it is certainly not something that we are in a position to trade. Public sector agencies have public monies and public authority ceded to them by the citizens of the state. The extent to which we effectively manage that money and authority determines the level of trust that the citizens have in their public institutions; reputation is one expression of that degree of trust.

Other expressions of trust may be, for example, the willingness to comply with taxation policies, to engage in public consultations or elections or to participate in the census. None of which, in a functioning democracy, you would want to see compromised…

The 3 Steps

A public sector communicator’s job consists in part as being the curator of their agency’s trust. While their fellow managers have responsibility for the effective discharge of the public’s money and authority, the communicator is responsible for ensuring that this is transparent to that authorizing public.

Within this framework, what then can a public sector communicator do to effectively manage their agency’s online reputation?

Online/offline

Any consideration of an agency’s online reputation must first acknowledge that, no matter how much work you do in cyberspace, most of the transactions that impact upon your reputation will still take place offline. For that reason, you might want to focus your attentions on your internal communications. If you can engage your staff and have them embrace the vision of your agency (and the values of the public service), then you have a solid foundation on which to build your management strategy.

Online, all the time

Your online presence is, for all intents and purposes, ubiquitous. No matter how many people you have in the field, at the counter or behind the wheel, the simple fact of the matter is that your web sites are available 24/7 to anyone, anywhere. Or they should be.

And, as more and more people use their phones and other portable devices to access the Internet, the smart money would be on those agencies that make a strategic investment in exceeding these customers’ expectations.

Not busy, engaged

Social media offer real opportunities, if deployed intelligently, for an agency to engage with it’s publics in ways that are both convenient, transparent and, increasingly, expected by younger citizens who are only just forming their own impressions of what it is like to deal with government agencies.

Conclusion

Ultimately, any and all of these tactics are only ever going to assist you to manage the outputs of your online reputation, not the outcomes. These are contingent upon the nature of the many and complex interactions that your publics have with your agency. However, while you can’t control the outcomes, you are obliged to do your best to manage those elements within your control.

Trust in government is an indicator of a lot more than reputation. It is not just a measure of credibility or a record of successful transactions (the TradeMe model) but is the fundamental social and political legitimacy that we have to keep earning every day.

Photo: sonicbloom

This comes on the heels of Transparency International’s assessment of NZ as equal first in their annual Corruption Perceptions Index, this time we shared the top spot on the podium with Iceland and — once again — those damn Finns.

What is important to note, apart from how gratifying it is to work as a public servant in a jurisdiction where there is genuine transparency and sound practice, is that both these polls look at perceived levels of transparency and corruption. That is, they are effectively measuring our reputation.

Not the reputations that we manage day-to-day, ie., our agencies, but the reputation of the public sector. The all-of-government reputation. Small ball to drop, eh?

This is not to suggest that we should just be focussed on maintaining our reputation. In the Public Life Values (2005), New Zealanders were asked how much confidence they had in their public institutions. Around 56% that responded reported “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the Public Service. Just over half suggests we still have quite some room for improvement.

How do we improve? We start managing the collective reputation as assiduously as we manage our agency reputations. We use organisations like the Network to:

• exchange ideas, lessons and people
• develop our skills across a broader range of disciplines
• collaborate with our peers, and
• champion the values of the Code of Conduct

We also need to be much smarter in the way we approach the management of our collective reputation. As I have noted, social media like blogs, podcasts and the like, present opportunities and challenges for our organisations. We need to be aware of the nature of the conversations that New Zealanders are having, and how they touch on their relationships with government. We need to start participating in those conversations and engaging more directly with the public we serve.

If we want to build trust, we have to engage. People trust what they know.

What really got me, however, was a quote in the front of the paper that, given my recent comments about reputation management [here and here], really resonated.

Your brand is no stronger than your reputation – and will increasingly depend on what comes up when you are Googled.
Allan Jenkins

This really impressed me. Given that once an issue becomes part of the conversation in the blogosphere, there is no way that you can roll it back. And Technorati are now putting the number of blogs at more that 57 million, which is a tremendous amount of potential Google juice.

So in order to effectively manage your reputation in this environment, you have to:

1. be aware of what is happening – at a minimum monitor the conversations,
2. be engaged in the conversation: have a presence and be credible, and
3. proactively manage your reputation by representing the values your agency espouses.

This means that, if your agency does drop the ball, you have some credibility in this space, which translates as reputation ‘credits,’ you are engaged so you can respond early (and disclose everything), and – in the very distant future – it is less likely that when someone googles your agency, the first couple of returns won’t be a painful reminder of how ineptly you managed a particular issue…

…act on your behalf by contacting data hosting services and requesting the removal of any materials that threaten your good social standing. Any web citizen willing to pay ReputationDefender’s modest service fees can ask the company to seek and destroy embarrassing office party photos, blog posts detailing casual drug use or saucy comments on social networking profiles.

My first reaction on reading this was w00t! I’m in the clear you are kidding, right?. Then, upon more considered reflection, I decided they were not and, while RD are unlikely to crack the sort of Web 2.0 jackpot that YouTube managed, they will probably do very nicely preying on that wonderful mix of human frailty that is a combination of gullibility and youthful indiscretion.

We all have had those moments that we would like to forget or, more importantly, have forgotten. Unfortunately, now many of those moments are published on the web, generally courtesy of people we loosely refer to as “friends”. Now, thanks to the good people at RD, you can rest easy, knowing that those pictures of you and your colleague doing the “lambada” at the christmas party will no longer appear when you egosurf.

Apparently, the business case for the firm rests on the interesting statistic that

26 percent of hiring managers say they have used search engines to research potential employees, and one in 10 has looked on a social networking website.

26 percent? I would have thought that would be a conservative estimate. If I was in HR, I would pretty much restrict my quality control to googling – why deal with the mundane (ie, actually reading the rank fiction that is passed off as a resumé or the fulsome praise of an employer who is only too keen to offload a freeloader) when you can cut straight to the tawdry and the scandalous?

Will this service really help anyone? Who knows. Why should we care? It is about reputation management -albeit an odd sort of retroactive variant- and it is a reminder of the changing environment in which we work.

Oh, and for the record, as I have noted before, in the age of Google, once it is posted, it is there for good. So before you hit Enter, make sure that you are happy for whatever it is to stay there for a long, long time…