At least 70 agencies on Twitter across all layers of Australian government

Being sick in bed at the moment, I’ve used the opportunity to review which Australian Federal, State and local government departments and agencies are now using Twitter.

My count is 9 federal, 24 state and 37 local government agency streams – excluding politicians and public servants. A total of 70 government streams in Australia, which I take as indicating it’s moving from early adopters into early majority.

There’s also at least 4 Premiers and the PM using Twitter – which is more than 50% of our most senior elected officials. In terms of population, this includes the three most populous states.

It’s a shame there is no official online tool tracking these streams so at least government could understand the extent of its own tweeting.

This tool could pull data via Twitter’s API to give a total number of tweets and followers by Australian governments – able to be viewed by state as well as in aggregate. That’d be a useful project for someone with technical nouse and some spare hours.

In lieu of that, I’ve updated the Government 2.0 Best Practice wiki with all of these streams on the Australian Tweeple page.

If you know of, or operate, any Twitter streams that I’ve missed, please add them to the wiki.