I’ve witnessed indigenous communications teams in government agencies dismiss the use of social media in indigenous engagement out of a belief that indigenous Australians prefer face-to-face communication and that those in remote communities had significant access issues to the Internet. While these two views may be true, it’s good to see some actual research on…
On Tuesday 16 September I participated in the panel for the National Library’s Digiculture event: Social Media and the Public Sector, along with Facebook’s Mia Garlick and the Department of Finance’s John Sheridan. It was well attended and well-discussed on Twitter (under #digiculture), with the biggest laughs of the afternoon coming from the surprising (blooper)…
I’ve been tracking the number of Australian Federal politicians using Australia’s leading social channels for two years now, seeing the number using at least one of Facebook and Twitter grow from 79% in April 2012 to 90% in November 2013 to a current level of 92%. What’s even more interesting is in the details, which…
A few years ago I heard it said by political advisors that one hand-written letter to a Minister counts for more than 100 emails on the same topic. The perception was that if someone sat down and wrote their thoughts in long-hand it showed more interest and commitment than if they typed and posted them…
A challenge today for politicians and public servants is how easy it is for a photo or frame from a video to be reused out-of-context to parody, well, literally anything. We’ve seen the increasing use of ‘photoshopped’ images on social media to support all kinds of political and social positions, ranging from the clever and…
One of the most major challenges for governments and societies around the world today is the rapidly declining trust in politicians, institutions and governance systems. I’m willing to make the claim that politicians today are no more corrupt, self-serving or beholden to special interests than politicians were fifty, a hundred or even a thousand years…
The Queensland Government recently introduced a new approach to communicate departmental social media policy to staff, a light and humorous video featuring ‘Social Media Man’. It’s the latest in a line of video-based tools used to communicate social media policy to public servants in Australia, following some great work from Victoria. The first, in March…
There’s been a great deal of scrutiny of the APSC’s revised guidance on social media participation by public servants since it came into effect in early 2012 (coincidentally about the time I left the public service). Initially dubbed by some parts of the media as the ‘Jericho amendments‘ (sorry Greg!), the 2012 guidance has regularly…
During the UK riots in 2011, the UK Prime Minister suggested shutting down social networks in future riots to prevent information sharing amongst rioters. Now Turkey has blocked access to Twitter, stating the service was ‘biased’ and did nothing to stop the ‘character assassination’ of politicians in the current ruling party accused of bribery. Like the UK,…
From 12:30-1:30pm (AEST) today, Content Group is holding the second of its live webinars, this time on Content Marketing in Government. The webinar features a panel including Gina Ciancio, Senior Social Media Advisor at the Department of Human Services, Kanchan Dutt, Senior Manager Media and Communications at ACT Government, and myself. It will be broadcast on Canberra…
This archive mirrors the original eGov AU blog — Craig’s professional commentary on AI, digital government and technology in public life, running since 2006.
'; loop.parentNode.insertBefore(w,loop); })();