GOVERNMENTS AND SOCIAL MEDIAPreliminary findings from OECD analysis

Arthur Mickoleit (E-government policy analyst)

OECD

Visit of the Regional School of PublicAdministration (ReSPA) to the OECD

Paris, 3-4 February 2014

Politicians and institutions are there

The majority of highest state institutions in the OECD use either Twitter or Facebook.

Many use both.(Institutional accounts for president, prime minister or entire

government. Source: OECD data collection.)

27 out of 3416 out of 34

Virtually all political leaders have a presence on social media. (Example: Top 10 world leaders by Twitter followers. Source: Twiplomacy)

Rank Name Twitter account Followers1 Barack Obama @BarackObama 33,510,1572 Pope Francis @Pontifex (all papal accounts

combined)7,200,332

3 Recep Tayyip Erdoğan @RT_Erdogan &@RecepT_Erdogan

3,741,414

4 Abdullah Gül @cbabdullahgul 3,429,1685 Rania Al Abdullah @QueenRania 2,803,8456 S. B. Yudhoyono @SBYudhoyono 2,643,5037 Дмитрий Медведев @MedvedevRussia &

@MedvedvRussiaE2,601,155

8 Cristina Kirchner @CFKArgentina 2,113,4189 Enrique Peña Nieto @EPN 1,979,789

10 Juan Manuel Santos @JuanManSantos 1,975,183

…and are very active

…but politicians are clearly more popular than institutions

Popularity of highest state institutions and office-holders on Twitter, 2013Share of government Twitter account followers per population

OECD government policies

Current status: “Laissez-faire” and experimentation

Responsibilities for social media policies and use are dispersed in

most OECD countries. They mostly lie with individual

government ministries, agencies or departments.

A minority of national governments

formulate explicit objectives or have a

government-wide strategy for the use

of social media. (Sources: OECD survey 2013.)

Guidelines: some for institutions, less for individuals

(Source: OECD survey 2013.)

Uptake

People seem to care, to some degree

37 million or 11.8%

1 million or 0.7%410k or 0.5%

120k or 3% (compared to overall population)

But is this really satisfying?

Central government Twitter accounts in the UK and Chile reach the equivalent of 4% and 3% of the domestic population.

But, in the United Kingdom 57% of the population use social media (Eurostat, 2012).

In Chile, up to 20% of the population (depending on the source) use Twitter.

There seems to be much underused potential to better reach the target group of active social media users.

(Source: OECD data collection.)

Impact

Are governments and leaders addressing the right issues, the right people?

Government objectives or expectations

Public communications is no. 1 objective.

(Source: OECD survey 2013.)(out of 10 responding countries that indicate having specific objectives or expectations; up to three answers allowed)

Opportunities

• Re-creating trust• Innovating public services• Making the public administration more

efficient• Managing emergencies and disasters

But do governments have what it takes to create impact?

Few national governments have a dedicated plan to identify and develop the

skills and capacities needed for better social media use.

Only 3 out of 22 surveyed countries use metrics or

indicators to monitor the impacts of social media use.

(Source: OECD survey 2013.)

Some questions

• Is it a must today for any government – national, regional, local – to use social media?

• Is there a need for central government guidance on form, content, resources, capacities?

• Can governments go beyond communication towards using social media to solve underlying problems in government, society, economy?

• Is anybody measuring the impacts?• (How) do governments look abroad for

guidance?