These were intended as a rough draft to start a wider conversation among government communicators about what we (collectively) might agree as the guiding principles for social media.

If you have been following social media over the last couple of years, even tangentially, then none of what I cover here should come as any sort of surprise.

However, many agencies were looking to SSC for advice and, given some of the early forays into the field, I was keen to get something out to them...

Both these blogs were launched in mid-2006 and took advantage of the Blogger hosted platform. The fact that they were hosted externally prompted the first of the ten principles, "sovereignty."

I also had concerns about using a blog as a purely marketing tool, believing that it was inappropriate for government to be running what was essentially a flog.

1. Sovereignty: do not use an (external) hosted solution, eg blogger. If this is an agency initiative, then you should host the site in the .govt.nz namespace. I would recommend WordPress, as a powerful, extensible and semantic publishing platform. It is also open source, so it is free and easy to deploy, meaning there is no significant cost to the taxpayer to set up.
   • I have since updated my views on this to include public sector use of sites like YouTube or Flickr. Summarized as: government's shouldn't be building these platforms – so use them, judiciously.
2. Access: the site must be Government Web Standards compliant. If it is funded by the taxpayer, then it should be accessible to all New Zealanders. This is another good reason for choosing WordPress as your solution.
   • Accessible doesn't just mean people using assistive technology, although government must cater for them, but accessible to mobile devices, web spiders etc.,
3. Transparency: make it very clear who is posting (do not claim that your CE is writing the posts if they are being ghostwritten by you and your team), and how to contact them, online and off. This is one instance where you are not an anonymous public servant. Similarly, (and I know I don't need to tell you this) no flogs, astroturf or sockpuppets.
4. Trust: do not disclaim the content on the blog/wiki/podcast etc. If you are engaging your publics through these media they should be able to expect a straightforward exchange of ideas and information. If your Legal team intend on vetting every post, the venture is doomed.
5. Fairness: social media is about reciprocity, if you are going to engage and invite comment then accept the good with the bad. Post a very clear comments policy and stick to it. Don't delete comments because they are critical of your agency or policies.

1. 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.
   • We learned this the hard way 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…
2. Openness: share content that is an honest reflection of your thinking and position. Don't set up a social media channel to broadcast your risk-averse, legal-approved and comprehensively qa'ed copy. Remember, this is about engaging people, not boring them into apathy…
3. Ethics: respect what you can legitimately say about your agency/project in public. No matter how small you think your audience, once you hit the "publish" button your content is in the public domain. Make sure you don't surprise your Minister this way…
4. 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.
5. Integrity: at all times measure your actions against the Code of Conduct. If you think that you are close to the line with a post, or a comment, check with someone who has some distance from the issue — or hold off posting for overnight. Once it is published, there is no taking it back.

These four intiatives demonstrate that we have become more sophisticated in our approach to deploying social media in New Zealand government, but there is still plenty of room for us to improve.

1. Police: overwhelmed by the volume of contributions, some of which were vandalism. The lesson is not to issue a media release because, as was the case here, if you end up on BoingBoing and other social news sites, you are going to fall victim to the Slashdot effect.
   • The Police Act wiki was part of an innovative & varied communications strategy, including essay writing and debating competitions and the old standard, town halls: 80 public meetings over 8 weeks that drew 1200 New Zealanders
   • Wiki was open for 8 days and drew 5,158 NZ visitors out of a total of 23,785 visits
2. SafeAs: a very solid effort. Contained to a well defined (and interested) community and focussed on very clear outcomes.
3. Web Standards: only just launched, so too early to tell. Eschewed the media release for low key blogger outreach and old-fashioned town halls.
4. Digital Summit: got off to a very rocky start. Attempted blogger outreach but haven't followed through with participation in the wider conversation; the result, a bubble unto itself.