Web 2.0: October 2008 Archives

Citizens crave information, but they are also busy and difficult to reach.

Blogs, social networks, and other Web 2.0 capabilities can help you reach citizens with critical information how and where they want to obtain it.  But, are any government agencies really using these tools?  We've provided examples before, but here are some new findings.

In April, a ScienceLogic survey found that more than 65 percent of government IT workers surveyed said Web 2.0 tools are important to their operations and 20 percent were using tools like wikis, blogs and RSS feeds. More than 50 percent said they are planning on having these tools in place by next year.

In some cases, such as the Intelligence Communities' wikopedia project, Intellipedia and the Navy Department CIO blog, the Web 2.0 tools are internal communications tools.

But other applications face the public such as those at USA.gov where they use social media applications to reach the public, including blogs, RSS feeds, podcasts and microblogs.

A recent article on Read Write Web, "To 2.0 or Not 2.0? That is the Governments' Question" (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/government_20.php), provides additional examples of how the government is using social media to reach the public.

In a recent blog post by Daniel Mintz, chief information officer for the U.S. Department of Transportation, states, "The second generation of Web access will change the way government delivers services and its relationship with the American public."

While there are many examples of government embracing Web 2.0, I am now looking for more examples of how this embrace of technology is resulting in positive change and efficiency in how government interacts with the citizen.  The changes instituted following comments on the TSA blog are very positive examples.  I hope to find more and document them here over time.

One thing we do see is that content that challenges and engages the citizen (what we call, "Compelling Content") seems to be more successful in Web 2.0 which is fundamentally an environment where content faces a lot of competition for attention.

We will be discussing these issues at the Proactive Communication Roundtable at the Department of Treasury where we will talk about embracing new channels, leveraging channels that have been with us for longer (mainly email), and how different agencies use compelling content to engage users.

GovDelivery thanks guest Blogger, Jamie Findlater, for this interesting post.

Posted by: Jamie Findlater, Department of Defense, Community Relations and New Media Team Member

Going Viral: DoD's New Media Tactics for the Troops

 

This year marked the fourth annual Department of Defense America Supports You (ASY) National Freedom Walk in Washington D.C.  The ASY Freedom Walk is an opportunity to reflect on the lives lost on September 11, 2001 at the Pentagon and remember the sacrifices of our veterans past and present.

 

Employing new media tactics to communicate to the public about DoD policy and programs is an important part of the Department of Defense's public affairs mission, and letting folks know about the ASY Freedom Walk is no exception. This year, for the first time, we incorporated viral marketing and new media tactics to increase awareness about the opportunity to walk in the DC area, which led to great walker registration and turn out. We also experimented with new media tactics the day of the event, understanding that these components are an important way to connect with our audiences.  

 

A central part of our new media campaign was the creation of an America Supports You Freedom Walk widget. The widget displayed a countdown to the day of the national walk and tallied the number of local walks being organized around the country. The widget also provided links through which participants could register and spread the word about the event. Milbloggers, military spouse bloggers and online publications could post the widget on their sites. Then, during the ASY Freedom Walk, we enabled participants to send text messages honoring our troops and the lives lost on the day of the event. The messages scrolled through the widget after the event.

 

In terms of viral outreach, we relied largely on cross-promotion from the ASY homefront groups, military support organizations and partner government agencies. GovDelivery sent our viral e-mail to its own subscription lists and partnered us with their other subscribers. Here at DoD, we placed e-mail footers at the bottom of our news articles. Other organizations, including DisabilityInfo.gov and USA.gov, were instrumental in helping us get the word out to their subscribers through similar tactics.

 

The viral outreach campaign also incorporated online video components. The DoD New Media team created a video blog, or "vlog," to share information with communities about opportunities to start local walks in their area. The video was showcased on the DoD "video on demand" Web site, DoD VClips, along with many other DoD videos centering around September 11^th. This year's ASY Freedom walk and recognition of September 11^th was particularly important due to the dedication of the Pentagon Memorial, and viral video was an important part of telling this story. 

 

Overall, thousands of participants participated in the ASY Freedom Walk. This event provided a good opportunity to experiment with viral notification and new media tactics.

We have a host of other new media ideas that we hope to develop as well. At DoD, we are constantly experimenting with new ways of delivering information, realizing that the way the public consumes information is constantly evolving.

GovDelivery invites anyone with interesting government-to-citizen communication issues to discuss to be guest bloggers on reachthepublic.  Please contact product at govdelivery dot com with your ideas.

Is Web 2.0 the end of government-to-citizen email communication?  Not likely, but effective public email communication is the foundation of taking better advantage of Web 2.0.

I have been really pleased over the past year at how much government has embraced Web 2.0 as a way of improving service to the citizen, but I sometimes wonder if my enthusiasm for Web 2.0 is cluttering up our message as a company that effective email communication remains a fundamental / foundational step for any government city/county/agency that values communication with stakeholders.

Prior to our more vocal embrace of Web 2.0, we had the opposite problem.  Our clients were asking us whether GovDelivery is going to "get into Web 2.0."  The sense was that government-to-citizen email communication, where we are the world leaders, is very Web 1.0. 

So, we're trying to strike middle ground.  I'm completely bias, but what we are trying to communicate and support is that while the potential for Web 2.0 to help government improve service and lower cost is exciting, we are 99% certain that email will continue to play an important role in government-to-citizen communication well into the future. 

Consider this evidence:

• By most measures, email is one of the most effective communication channels in history:
  -Over 85% of citizen online time in the U.S. is spent using email (Jupiter).
  -Virtually all adults that are online use email; email is the number 1 use of the Internet.
  -Even people under 25 say that they would rather get official communication via email; you don't want to get your financial aid application in your Facebook inbox.
  
  
• Email is asynchronous which is why even my gmail chat, facebook updates, and twitter feeds rely on my email account to keep me connected.  Email never sleeps.
  
  
• Email use has actually increased since RSS has become more readily available. 
  -Why?  Because we all have hundreds of different types of communication we want from government/marketers/media/friends/etc.   I don't want notices of changes to my local park hours via RSS feed, I want them by email when they occur (which is not very often)
  -RSS feeds are useful for a very limited number of news sources.  I use RSS to follow a handful of blogs and other updates, and I am a heavy RSS user by most measures.  One study recently suggested that 8% of Internet users use RSS regularly vs. 98% that use email.  RSS feeds make Web browsing more efficient and are great for creating content mashups, widgets, etc.  They are poor for proactive communication.
  

What does GovDelivery mean when we say that we embrace Web 2.0?

1. We believe in open systems.  For example, a government agency using our service can trigger an email alert by updating an RSS feed on the agency's website or on the agency's YouTube account or blog.  In this way, our clients can offer highly-specific updates from across their hosted and external Web enterprise.  RSS feeds are machine readable so we rely on the openness of others to make interfacing with our system easy (side note: any feed that validates at www.feedvalidator.org works to trigger messages in GovDelivery).
   
   
2. We have created a revolutionary level of collaboration between our clients which helps breakdown silos between government agencies.  You can read more about this in our recent announcement.
   
   
3. We have launched a new Discuss this Email blogging capability which leverages an off-the-shelf blogging capability to give our government clients a blog that is easier to manage and actually gets readers.
   
   
4. We are using the vast amounts of content flowing through our systems (80 million messages in September; on track for over 1 billion in 2009) to create new types of tag clouds that pull the most popular and interesting content forward.
   

There's more in progress and more to come, but these are a few good examples.

So, given email's prominence, I believe that it is not an interim solution for communication as much as it is one of the key building blocks to creating an audience for your content that you can further engage through a broad range of approaches made easier by Web 2.0.

Our press release today got me thinking... what we are doing for our clients is valuable, but it raises this question:  Are we continuing to make the important case for email communication while also embracing these new areas?  I welcome your feedback.