Last week was an exciting week for us at GovDelivery, as we joined other volunteers working to make a difference in our community by helping Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity build a house for a family in need.
As a company, we volunteer each year with Habitat for Humanity. Why? Because, like our government clients we serve every day, we believe in giving back to our community.
Check out these GovDelivery team members, happy to be part of something good..and supporting our local community.
Welcome to our second installment of the"Friday's Food for Thought" post where we take a light-hearted (and we hope funny) approach to what's happening in government-related news. This installment's theme is about the new NBC show "Parks and Recreation."
Parks and Recreation Show Funny, But Real? I think not.
We are the first to admit that Amy Poehler does a great job playing a bumbling and often confused bureaucrat helping run a department of parks recreation in the city of Pawnee, Ind. She takes a Michael Scott (from the NBC hit, "The Office," played by actor Steve Carrell) approach and always has a good heart, but seems to be awkward and have very poor judgement.
However, as an organization that works with state and local government across the United States, we believe this portrayal is far from the truth. In fact, there are many local government agencies doing many progressive and forward thinking things that are far from bumbling.
For example, Idaho Game and Fish is especially committed to keeping its citizens and out-of-town visitors updated on new fishing and hunting related information. And another DNR doing swimmingly well..Wisconsin DNR. They send out updates on over 25 different fishing topics!
And then we have Texas Parks and Wildlife. TPWD updates the public on state parks, destinations, fishing and more... None of these examples reflects the obtuse or clueless antics of the Parks and Recreation show. But, we can still find the humor right?
Speaking of fishing, it just so happens that this weekend is opening fishing for Minnesota. Thousands of people will pack up their fishing gear and head out for the lake first thing tomorrow morning. MN DNR sold over 256,000 licenses as of Wednesday.
Now that I've reminded everyone that fishing opener is tomorrow and I've checked that 'to-do' off my list, it time to check out a promo clip from Parks and Recreation. Enjoy and have a great weekend. Bobbers down!
Federal, state, and local health agencies are working overtime to inform the public about the recent Swine Flu outbreak that is currently affecting Mexico and small portions of the United States, but that poses a real international threat.
Direct information from the government is an important primary source of information for the public, the media, and the public health community during an outbreak.
Because the majority of federal health agencies and a large number of state and local agencies use the GovDelivery platform for digital outreach, we see the broad range of critically important messages going out the public. Already, government agencies have sent hundreds of thousands of messages regarding Swine Flu.
Here is a sample of those messages:
When there is an emergency or potential emergency affecting your agency, you should follow the lead of these government communicators and get the word out as quickly as possible by using all key online and offline channels including your website, email, text message, and traditional media. The key is to act quickly so that the citizens learn as much information as possible directly from their government.
See this story from the recent peanut recall to understand how every bit of communication makes a difference.
GovDelivery is currently working on a major information sharing project that allows government communicators and citizens to see updates coming out from across the government on a range of topics. We are also encouraging more posting of information into social media to help spread the word when pressing issues arise.
You can learn more about this project, view a live prototype of information going out from different types of agencies in real time, and provide us with feedback by reading our blog entry on the topic.
Welcome to the first "Friday's Food For Thought" post here on the Reach the Public blog. Every other Friday, we will showcase news and stories that enlighten, entertain and sometimes confound our readers.
This week's post takes the theme of transportation to the next level with some entertaining travel stories, a government blog I like, rounded out with a classic comedy video clip.
Public Transportation is Fun!
There are many reasons to use public transportation, like saving on fuel costs and protecting the environment by 'going green'...but did you ever think it'd be entertaining? In digging about for additional transportation insight, I found a blog that showcases a number of fun - and somewhat bizarre - travel stories from readers. Check it out here.
U.S. Transportation Secretary's Official Blog
We here at GovDelivery are always fans of blogs managed and run by government officials. As such, I would like to showcase the "Welcome to the Fast Lane" blog from the U.S. Secretary of Transportation. Be sure to check out the top story about Bo, the new "First Pup" and his connections on DOT. By the way, it'd be cool if they used the Eagle's "Life in the Fast Lane" as the theme song of the blog.
NBA Season is Over; Now How Do I Get The Escalade Home?
Transportation never seems to be an issue for NBA players making the big bucks. Having multiple high-end cars, and often someone to drive you, is not a bad way to go. But, it turns out there are some challenges for NBA players when it comes to their luxury cars. Check out this NY Times story on how NBA players are dealing with getting their cars home post season.
Classic National Lampoon Vacation Clip
To round out our inaugural Friday's Food For Thought post, I thought we should showcase a classic clip of one of America's favorite families...the Griswold's. A road trip steeped in comedy pitfalls, family dysfunction and ultimately redemption at Walleyworld.
Enjoy and Happy Friday!!
Like any other commuter, the last thing you want to encounter on your way to work is slow moving traffic or a delayed train. Whatever the reason for the delay - an accident, the weather, or road construction - you simply don't want to deal with the frustration or hassle.
Getting traffic alerts through email or text messaging helps commuters make informed decisions that allow them to save time, fuel and traffic congestion. (and maybe a little frustration too...) Signing up for these types of alerts allows commuters to get up-to-date information that is relevant to their commute, allowing them to make informed decisions about alternate routes or transportation.
With more than 68 million people using their mobile device to get information (according to comScore), getting route information on mobile devices is just another convenient use of technology. Individuals can sign up to get alert emails or text messages sent directly to them, wherever they are. Check out Santa Clara VTA for instance. Here you can choose YOUR specific route information, whether it's by bus, light rail or shuttle service and get email updates.
This is an email that Santa Clara VTA sent out about an accident that affected the light rail trains.
If you have a "this is cool!" commuter alert story, please share it!
I was discussing online communication plans with one of our clients recently, and I heard something that surprised me.
We'd like to use more social media, but we don't want to do anything if we're just going to be criticized for doing it wrong. Everyone is so opinionated about how blogs and Facebook pages should be used, and we don't want to set off a bunch of bloggers criticizing our efforts.
That's right friends, there are many people out there who are reluctant to use blogs, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. And not because of their security and privacy concerns, but because they are afraid of being criticized by the Social Media Police.
I've seen a lot of this "policing" related to Twitter lately so I'm going to focus on that channel to illustrate Social Media Police behavior.
I have heard two prominent "Web 2.0 Experts" recently criticize agencies that setup Twitter feeds to stream news updates. The criticism came in two forms. One "expert" thinks everyone on Twitter should be a person. He says that the benefit of Twitter is to put a personal face on government. Another expert thinks that Twitter must be a two-way medium. If you aren't going to engage others, he thinks you should not share your information at all.
My first caution to the "social media police"... if you want to be an expert in a medium as fluid as social media, I think you need to be careful about stating facts with too much confidence.
One fact I'm sure of: I like to get the official EPA updates from @usepagov in my Twitter feed (as do over 500 other people). The real power of Twitter, for me, is that I setup a stream of updates that are of interest to me, but I don't have to monitor that stream like I have to monitor my inbox.
Tim O'Reilly has a really good blog post here regarding what he likes about Twitter. He stated his view on NPR's Science Friday program that the power of Twitter, for him, is that it's a stream of information running by his door that he can get in and out of as time allows.
For a lot of people, Twitter is a more social channel. They might find the @usepagov feed to be too "impersonal" and one way. Rather than criticize an agency trying to dive in and participate in a channel, I suggest that those who find a particular feed or approach annoying, just avoid it and let the collective wisdom of the crowd dictate how a channel can be used. The benefit of social media is that it's easy to iterate based on user feedback and behavior so agencies don't have to get things perfect the first time.
Different groups of stakeholders will gravitate to different approaches for different reasons. Social Media uses that don't gain audience will eventually fade away, but not before providing a lot of useful learning to the agencies that tried them in the first place.
If your first instinct is to criticize an agency (or individual for that matter) for using a medium in a way you don't appreciate, you might be having a chilling effect on agencies embracing these new channels that is not unlike the chilling effect from overzealous privacy & security experts.
As I've been working with our government clients to encourage use of social media channels for public communication, I am currently most enthusiastic about three areas of opportunity, but I would love to hear other opinions:
Widgets that allow our clients to easily share information from others and encourage partners and other agencies to share their information (see www.cdc.gov/widgets or www.fbi.gov/widgets.htm). The FDA Peanut recall widget saw massive uptake.Other channels (e.g., Twitter and Facebook groups) are important and useful for engaging certain groups, but have real limitations as official channels for mass communication. The actual usage of social media channels for government information / public outreach continues to trail email dramatically in the same way that users express a strong preference for email as a professional channel and social media (and in Europe and young groups in U.S., text messaging) as a personal channel.
Take USA.gov as an example.
They saw 13,628 citizens subscribe to updates by email last month with the average sitting selecting more than 15 topics of interest. By contrast, they have 431 total fans on the USA.gov Facebook Group page that it launched early in 2008.
We pulled together some additional information on email alert interest from citizens vs. Twitter in an earlier entry and the stats are equally as compelling.
Our observations about the power of widgets, point sharing, and blogging have guided our focus for improvements of the digital communication platform we offer our government clients. Government agencies use GovDelivery to send hundreds of thousands of emails monthly promoting blog content to email subscribers, and we released discuss this email blogging capability in 2008. We also have an exciting information sharing project underway that you can see in prototype form at this time. We expect production release of these new sharing capabilities in May.
A headline for an article on the popular Mashable.com blog yesterday read: Social Networking More Popular than Email. We wrote an article a few weeks back titled: Email Rules! Internet's Killer App Promotes Collaboration, Communication, and Content.
The Mashable.com blog article reviews some recent Nielsen Online Research that says that the percentage of Internet users using social media has now reached 66.8% vs. 65.1% using email. We noted that Internet users in the U.S. spend over 80% of their time using email.
Our focus is on how to interpret these trends in determining how government organizations should communicate with the public. Luckily, this is not the kind of race where there needs to be a winner. What these statistics really point to is that communicators have more ways than ever to reach the public.
There are several interesting comments on the Mashable.com article including:
I wonder if you took away either social networking or email, which would have a more devastating effect on society. Popularity does not equate to importance.
Social networking is the best way to remain connected
Did Nielsen release any frequency numbers on email versus community usage? Seems like that might be a more compelling argument if people are using Facebook everyday versus their email once a week. I have my doubts though.
Social Media is not a monolithic channel that is threatening email for dominance of the world. Social media and email are actually highly complementary with each filling different roles in how we engage citizens.
In general, new channels serve needs that are not met effectively by other channels. While email has many strengths and works well for official communication, long documents, and asynchronous communication, it is very poor at connecting disparate stakeholders together on issues of common interest and also falls short as a public content archive and group discussion mechanism. For example, everyone has been part of an email discussion "group" or "List Serve"that became unwieldy. Appropriately, we are seeing all of those types of discussions migrate to blogs, wikis, Twitter, and Facebook.
All government communicators whether in government or in support organizations like us here at GovDelivery are working hard on engaging in new channels.
What is really exciting for me is to see organizations ranging from Ramsey County, Minnesota to the CDC embrace the opportunity to learn how best to use new channels. Overall, we've seen citizen interest in receiving email updates from government grow exponentially even as other channels have emerged.
The most effective government organizations are engaging in all channels. That allows you to cross-promote channels (e.g., promote your Twitter feed in your email alerts and vice-versa) and focus different messaging on different mediums. For example, I love how CDC has made one of its 300+ email subscription options "Social Media Tools" and has built a base of over 15,000 subscribers in just a couple of months.
We see many mayors, governors, and other public officials engaging in social media as well. If you are trying to build a sense of community around your local government, agency, or campaign, it only makes sense that you want more communication between your stakeholders and more ability to comment and repurpose content.
I have written about how email is a key hub of social media. GovDelivery has also just launched a massive information sharing project that will make it easier for government agencies to create widgets, mash together content from different agencies, and encouraging reposting of content into social media.
So, I don't have a horse in this race.
I think that when new channels emerge they compete with old channels creating new opportunities for reaching the public and, in some cases, replacing existing channels but only where those channels were functioning poorly. Where do you think things are heading?
When someone follows me on Twitter, I get an email letting me know. I usually take a quick look at their profile and maybe an update or two to find out if I know the person and may want to follow them.
If someone wants to friend me on Facebook or leaves a comment on my "wall," I get an email from Facebook. I make a note to myself to respond later.
If someone signs up for a group on GovLoop, I get a note. Or,
if someone makes a connection on LinkedIn, I get yet another email. If you comment on this blog entry... you guessed it, I'll get an email letting me know.
I think you get the idea.
There's no question that email is the hub of social media. Email is the No. 1 use of the Internet according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, used daily by more than 60 percent of Americans.
Many Americans use social media applications, but they can't spend all day logged into those communities. So services like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter understand that they need to use email to keep their audiences engaged in conversations. In many ways, my email inbox is the ultimate "mashup" of my entire online life across many social media applications.
I've recently interviewed Web Managers at several major federal agencies and cities to learn more about where they see the connection between email and social media in the public sector. There are some exciting ideas and some easy ways to make the email updates governments are sending to the public a key enabler and "hub" of the social media initiatives that different agencies are pursuing.
We'll be posting our specific ideas on this soon, but where do you see the opportunities?
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