This session was basically asking whether Local Authorities were listening to what their residents (and indeed other people) have had to say about them on social media platforms (that’s twitter, facebook and the like for those of you not used to buzzword bingo).

I chose to attend this session because it’s something I’ve already discussed here, so I thought it would be interesting to see what others had to say. Plus of course it would give me the chance to chip in and hear the sound of my own voice a bit.

This session was led by @Paul_Cole who seemed like quite a nice chap with a lot of interesting things to say, and became the first of many people where I noted down their twitter names with a plan to start following them later. Incidentally, just to tell you exactly how geeky LocalGovCamp was, most people — myself included — had a twitter name written across their sticky name label. Some didn’t even bother with their real name. Of course, in the case of @Paul_Cole, it probably isn’t too difficult to work out what he’s actually called…

Paul used a product called Mind Meister to collate information he collected from searching about Derby. Obviously some people were somewhat negative (this was no surprise, having encountered the same thing when I looked for the Tyne and Wear Councils) but it’s also useful for finding out what the residents are actually talking about — what are they interested in, which local issues they are passionate about and so on.

Importantly, it’s a way to find out what people are saying about the council that they aren’t necessarily saying to the council.

A point was made about council/resident engagement again — this time the point being that councils can’t expect to set up their own forums and social networks and expect these to automatically be a success, they need to look to see where people are already discussing things. Of course, this brings up a second point: a site maintained and controlled by the council will always be perceived as a puff-piece, whereas something raised and driven by the residents will have much more credibility.

We then shifted topic slightly to look at Twitter. It was interesting to find that a number of councils were using twitter solely as a publishing stream — links to their published events and news information, instead of actually engaging in a dialogue with people who spoke to them. The problem with this is of course if there’s no way of engaging in dialogue, you’re not really interacting — and interest in it may drop sharply on people realise it’s just another publication stream.

I have to give a mention to my local council here, who only arrived on twitter on the 17th June, but GMBCouncil, despite being very new to the game, have already taken it upon themselves to respond to people (and no, it wasn’t just me, as it happens).

If you’re thinking, as a local authority, of going onto twitter, you have to consider who will be listening. In a purely unscientific, and non-random survey, I’ve poked through the twitter followers of two local councils (both chosen because they are relatively new and as yet only have a smattering of followers) to roughly classify their followers. I’ve not got the time or inclination to poke through the larger lists of followers — i.e. those with 1900 followers. If anyone does have the time, this may be more revealiing and interesting…

I would suggest that it at least useful for local authorities to have some sort of idea of who is following them. If you’ve got the time, go through your followers list, cull the spammers and try and work out who else is following you, and what they are hoping to get out of the relationship.

It’s like being a trendy uncle at a wedding breakdancing

Go on, see if you can guess what that quote was about. It’s quite remarkable, in that once you know what it’s about, it makes sense, yet also the reference to ‘breakdancing’ demonstrates a certain disconnect with what the youth of today are doing, and ‘ting. Surely it’s that big fish, little fish, box thing now…

No, the quote was about jumping in feet first with social media, and in particular twitter. What it’s saying is that whenever you start, you’re likely to feel (and possibly look) a bit out of place, but you won’t get that practical experience and be able to slip into a comfortable voice until you at least try it.

It was suggested that one way of providing information other than just the standard press releases through twitter would be to ask various directorates for extra tweetable quotes or information — although the counterargument to this (which I don’t think anyone mentioned) is that of course if someone follows up on this, there might be a significant delay if the council twitterer (twit?) doesn’t have the relevant follow-up information immediately to hand, and has to refer back to the appropriate directorate…

This is of course using the “Force” of social media in a way few would disagree with. But we also discussed those who have strayed onto The Dark Side. By this, I mean of course the increasingly common practice of councils using social networking sites, checking blogs and so on to see whether or not people’s eligibility for benefit was exactly as they had described it.

On the one hand, this is most assuredly helping to prevent benefit fraud, and catch fraudsters, and those fraudulent claims are of course paid for out of the public purse. On the other, it does feel somewhat underhand, sneaky and snoopy (not the dog). It also invariably means that Councils who do this sort of thing (and that is probably most of them, judging from the anecdotes I’ve heard) should have the prefix ‘Darth’.

This brought us round to the reporter Paula Murray who dug up dirt on the Dunblane survivors by befriending them on facebook and then, since they had just turned 18 and were ‘fair game’, had exposed these teenagers for doing evil, wicked stuff betraying the memory of their classmates by … well, drinking, and having sex, and acting like teenagers. I might have mentioned this once or twice here, but it wasn’t actually me who brought it up.

But the whole Local Authority “snoopability” and journalist data mining comes because people generally aren’t actually aware of what, and who, their data is available to. It was indicated that educational programmes are being developed by broadcasters to show the yoof exactly how profiles can get mined or leaked, and what steps people should take to protect their data (and how far it can be protected). There was a comment along the lines of ‘never mind the yoof, what about the rest of us too’.

Finally, the issue shifted to blogging, and in particular blogging by employees. The standard line was trotted out that as a council employee, you shouldn’t say anything negative about your employer, because otherwise you might get disciplined (see dooced) for it. I did point out the slight issue in this:

From 2005 until mid-2008 I was blogging as a Local Authority employee. I was also a resident of that Local Authority area. On the one hand, the Council would expect me not to say anything negative about them publicly; on the other hand as a resident, if the standard of service received was less than I would have a right to expect, surely I would be able to have a reasonable expectation to make legitimate complaints or grievances public? Anything less would suggest that Council employees have less rights than other citizens.

I’d be interested to know if anyone has any specific opinion regarding this issue (particularly if they are speaking from a legal knowledge and/or know of examples).

This of course relies on the council again listening out for what people are saying about them online and managing their online image appropriately. Of course, taking disciplinary action seen as draconian might backfire here, so there’s a need for Local Authorities to tread a careful line.

It was also recognised that there may be a need for employers to have a specific blogging policy, as this can answer some of these questions (although of course many might be already covered within the contract/terms of employment). I spoke to a couple of people who said that their authorities either had a specific blogging policy, or had something similar, so I’m hoping to be able to have a read of one of them soon…

And that was it for the session: a lot of thoughts, a lot of ideas, a few new contacts, and some recommendations for councils.