Archive for the 'Government' Category

Government blogs

Published by
AndrewBoyd
at 10 May, 2007 in Blogging and Government. 5 Comments

In Government 2.0 I discussed blogging as a tool for communication between government and interested citizens. I truly believe that once governments have accepted the inevitability of communication, government blogs will proliferate - they will become the new “I am not sure why, but I know I have to have one” must-have. I worked within the Australian government during the 80s and 90s, and saw this phenomenon happen several times, with ERP systems, external websites, and intranets.

It is up to us, as the blog-literate, to decide what we are going to do about this. Those of us who blog about blogging will no doubt have a field day discussing it - some topics I can see coming are:

  • whether a given government blog has a format and platform appropriate to the medium: it is possible that many a non-blogging-yet-technically-literate corporate webmaster will be given the job of creating the organisational blog. They may do a good job, then again, they may not. Because the resulting efforts are going to be highly public, whether they work as a blog or not will be a subject of much discussion.
  • whether their editorial policy is too strict: this discussion has started already over at Anecdote - see the comments about the VPSCIN policy of not nominating authors - and if the content is boilerplate or brochure text, some may question the usefulness of the effort. If all postings need to be sent through Corporate Communications and approved by the appropriate branch head, will they be in plain language? Will they be believable? Will they be seen as timely? And on this same vein, who will be allowed to post? Most government websites now have a “Latest News” section, but these are traditionally very one-way - out of the organisation, not back in.
  • what their comment policy is and where they draw the line: if the purpose of the blog is a free and open discussion of government policy, where will the line be drawn on strongly worded responses? Will there be a “all comments are moderated” policy? Will this maintain the appearance of transparency?

Lots to think about - lots to watch into the future. And for those of us who work in the web space in government, perhaps an astounding opportunity to make a difference.