Well, for those of you that regularly check in on the blog you will have noticed that we have a new contributor who has just joined our team.

We are really pleased that Uli has joined the team here on the blog and look forward to many thought provoking posts to come.

You can follow Uli on twitter at @UliJanOgau 

Last week I attended the very interesting Strategic Communications Masterclass at Madingley Hall, University of Cambridge. And of course, discussions also went on to New and Social Media. It was said and I totally agree that Social Media could and should be used to rapidly spread out our narrative.

Ups, here we are. What the heck is a narrative? Different interpretation have been discussed. One said everyone of us has an individual narrative, a personal story to tell. That's it - it's a personal story rather than a narrative. It's the story why I am what I am.

Narrative in my opinion is more than that - is a sort of overarching story on why WE do what WE do. So narratives combine multiple individual stories, maybe even more than one (organizational,  institutional, or local/community) narratives. Take the Christian narrative as an example. This narrative comprises of all Christian values and beliefs. On the other hand, each and every individual following these values and beliefs - each and every Christian - has his/her own story to tell why he/she is a Christian.

By chance I happend to walk into Cambridge's Round Church, and guess what surprised me? There is an exhibition shown these days on Christianity. Under the simple top level message "Discover Cambridge - Visit the Round Church - The gateway to understanding Cambridge and its contribution worldwide." Admittedly not a very unexpected message, but simple enough to allow people prioritize a visit of the Round Church right at the beginning of their trip around the center of the city, concrete enough to let people remember, credible enough to let people believe or agree considering this church exists for more than 1100 years, emotional as soon as you enter, and full of stories.

Inside the Round Church the Christian narrative is told by displaying different periods in time of the more than 2000 years on 12 movable panels; on each of them the information is provided following the same structure. The panells aim to tell the Cambridge (community) Story from the time of the Romans to the 20th Century. In each panel the national and cultural context is given with a particular emphasis on the influence of Christianity on our culture and on Cambridge's history. All in all it is the Christian narrative seen through the Cambridge glasses. See the attached photos that illustrate what I said, culminating in a panel on "I am what I am"

Ulrich M. Janßen

In the second of a series of guest blog posts, Chris Archer Editor of IDGA talks to  Pat Fiorenza, Research Analyst at GovLoop.com on Social Media within Government.

Pat, at the Social Media for Defense Summit you’ll explore how GovLoop allows public sector employees and those who interface with the public sector to collaborate – explain this further, and what role does social media play in this?

A lot of it comes down to the ease of sharing information. By using a hashtag like #gov20 on Twitter, people can quickly find discussions and what the hot topics are in government. In a similar fashion, blogs/discussions, research reports, guides and trainings on GovLoop all help people connect with one another to find solutions to common challenges. The goal is to connect people in a meaningful way to help them drive innovation and change within their agency. 

Explore the ways in which the GovLoop platform can enhance social media? 

GovLoop allows like-minded public sector professionals to collaborate in a single online space, share best practices, case studies and resources. Social media is fast moving, things often change - and in the public sector, there are some unique challenges that social media professionals face. GovLoop allows state, local, and federal government officials to connect and share information. Through collaboration and sharing knowledge, GovLoop helps highlight best practices and cases studies for public sector social media experts to implement within their agency. 

Evaluate how government is using social media currently – what are some common pitfalls and opportunities you see?

I think there are a lot of opportunities for social media in government - everything from citizen outreach, disaster/crisis management, as a collaboration tool and even as a way to improve public discourse. With all these opportunities, challenges still arise; two that come to mind are providing access for all and crafting strategies that encompass the entire agency's mission. 

In terms of the digital divide, there is a constant pressure on agencies to provide new and innovative technologies to improve citizen engagement, while maintaining traditional methods of engagement. In the past year we have seen the Obama Administration perform a Google+ Hangout and a Twitter Town Hall. These are great uses of technology, and incredible ways to connect with citizens in a meaningful discourse. Although these kinds of initiatives are great to do – they by no means replace traditional town halls. So the challenge is incorporating social media into traditional methods, creating initiatives to reach key stakeholders through technology, expanding access of technology and empowering the citizen to take action. 

In terms of crafting strategies that encompass the entire agency’s mission, there still are some challenges related to buy-in, along with related cultural and institutional hurdles. Building great case studies and sharing them with management needs to keep occurring. The metrics to perform an evaluation on a social media plan are still not quite defined. Learning to measure engagement, and understanding what that means for an agency, is still a challenge for an agency. Measuring engagement extends beyond a simple analysis of fans, followers, tweets and retweets – there is something else in learning what makes an agency and citizen actually engaged on social media. 

We are faced with these kinds of challenges all the time at GovLoop and how we measure engagement on our site. We are always looking at data and how that impacts our strategy. Agencies are doing the same. Learning how to best use data to get desired results means that agencies need to have a clear-cut plan and strategy, that maps with the agencies overall strategy and goals. 

Do you believe social media allows government to be more transparent? How so?

I do – but it’s only one piece of the puzzle. Social media allows agencies to present information to citizens quickly and efficiently. Transparency is tough to define and measure; social media is just one tool that helps agencies meet their transparency objectives. I think an overall theme of social media is that social media needs to encompass elements across the agency and present the right information to citizens, quickly and easily. This requires communication across departments and the agency. 

This is no easy task within large federal departments. What really makes social media work is all the background planning by departments. It’s easy for agencies to know that they should be posting on Facebook to reach constituents; the challenges start to arise with what to post and how often. Transparency efforts improve naturally as agencies are engaging with citizens and listening to their needs. It’s a basic benefit of social media. Agencies also need to have a culture that is conducive to transparency and an open philosophy. 

There lots of great examples from agencies. Some agencies are more transparent than others, just by the nature of the work they perform and citizens they interact with. A common challenge for defining transparency lies with how much data is released and in what format. 

Some agencies will release data sets in raw form, allowing citizens to manipulate the data and tailor the data toward their needs. Some very technologically adept citizens might create mobile apps from the data and share the information across social media. For those kinds of constituents, that kind of transparency works. Others would just like to be able to see information quickly and easily through easy to produce graphs and/or visualizations. 

I think the challenge for agencies is to really understand their stakeholders and the kinds of constituents they serve, once they have a good handle on this – social media will help facilitate the agency improve their transparency efforts. 

You’ve said in your blog ‘There is no question that local government agencies should be using social media and Gov 2.0 applications, but understanding the tools and how they can solve certain problems has become the key question’ – expand on this for me – how so? 

I think the important thing to remember about social media is that it enables action. So what agencies are tasked to do is figure out how to use all the data they collect and information across their social media channels. Agencies are flooded with ideas and have thousands of interactions with citizens, so the challenge is how they can make social media channels transformative, not just another sounding board for a citizen that creates limited action. 

This is really the key and where I see social media going - agencies really using the interactions on social media channels to drive action. We see this a lot with the gamification and initiatives like challenge.gov. Likewise, we can see open innovation platforms as a way for agencies to collect ideas and crowd source information. 

At all levels of government agencies are challenged with tightening budgets. On GovLoop there have been a lot of great conversations saying that in this time of fiscal uncertainty – there is a lot of space for innovation in the public sector. The chants of “Do more with less” are everywhere, and public sector employees are pressed to cut costs, and improve citizen engagement efforts. Social media is part of the solution, as many social tools are free for government to use. Finding the right strategy, identifying the right problem and using the right kind of platform is what many agencies need to explore prior to expanding or developing a social strategy. 

The exciting part is that as more agencies take on these tools, they fall into the philosophy that government can’t solve all its problems alone. Government faces complex problems and social media tools allow agencies to reach a broader audience, and work towards achieving solutions to its’ most pressing challenges. 

Social media is still an emerging field, and sometimes we are all learning on the fly, but it is an exciting ride to be on. 

IDGA’s Social Media for Defense @SocialMedia4Def will address how the nature of ongoing combat operations have reshaped the way the military and government use social media platforms. Visit the website for more information: http://bit.ly/yDFfMX

The past 5 days here have been busy with conducting a Social Media for the Military course, tailored for the needs of "JP".

As part of the activities we looked at an app called "everytrail pro" and if it could be utilised for gathering meaningful patrol info from (for example) CIMIC etc for inclusion into the analysis piece.

We went into Banja Luka to walk a pre-determined course and to create content (image, audio, text).

We managed to integrate almost immediately static imagery and video. We still need to find out how to place the audio (which we created using another platform).

The initial results are encouraging considering this was all created on a smart phone in REAL time.

Whatever and whoever, the sad fact remains that ISAF and their embracing of Social Media (in my opinion "because its there") has not done them any favours and they still fail to see that they need to "engage", or start the converastion(s) rather than regurgitate press releases and tweet rather immature 140 character messaging.

Afghan expert Alex Strick van Linschoten has written an interesting piece HERE, with his view on the whole saga.

Alex can be found on twitter HERE 

Your thoughts would be appreciated in order to "start the conversation"

Stay safe. 

Picked this up yesterday at a hyper local "pub".

Targeting fathers and grandfathers?