When Bureaucrats Met Twitter:From “Need to Know” to “Need to Share”

Kevin Kim, CIPP/C, MFC

Quick analysis

Public / PrivateCorporate Twitter

AccountPersonal Account

Twitter vs. government Open/Public Ethereal Sharing Fast Gossipy Unpredictable Experimental Young Conversational

Closed Heavy Secretive Slow Nervous Cautious Reluctant Old Often one-way

A Fail Whale?

What is social media?

4Es of Social Media

105,779,710 users

~ 300,000 new users per day

55m tweets per day

100,000 apps

600m search queries per day

Narcissism

ADHD Stalking

Social Media Venn Diagram by pescatello

Twitter for what, then? Announcing and monitoring Early-warning issues management Emergency management Direct-to-citizen communication Put a human face on the organization Identifying / directing resources and

information

How to use it? Pure Corporate Brand

Corporate with Persona

Employee with Corporate

Association

Pure Personal Account

Roadblocks Awareness

Old guard

Red tape / Bureaucracy

Security / Privacy Risk

Gag orders

Issues to address Legal and copyright

Information management

FOI and privacy

Communications

Legal and copyright “Business” use, copyright,

intellectual property rights, liability.

Oath, Code of ethics, email policy,

communication policy and ministries

policies.

Site terms of use: user owns content

but agrees to share.

Information management In-house, outsourced, or 3rd party

sites?

Metadata, tagging, primary steward.

Records management.

Information in the “cloud”: outside of

Canada.

FOI and privacy All the “public” tweets: Archiving?

Copying? What to do with FOIP requests? Twitter Privacy Policy Privacy conundrum in cloud

computing Making sense of privacy and

publicity Making publicly available data more

public Being publicly available v. being

publicized

Communication No surprises – Issues management

Communications department

Ministry spokesperson(s)

Tweet, participate, monitor, adapt

What level of sensitivity allowed?

Who and how to monitor?

Twitter best practices Policy – create one, or reuse? Procedures, guidelines, rules of

engagement Level of detail

Mind the comments Confidential information Privacy Disclaimers

Social media guidelines Be transparent Be judicious Post meaningful, respectful comments Write what you know Perception is reality It’s a conversation Are you adding value? When disagreeing with others, keep it

appropriate Your responsibility

Dos and Don’ts Use Twitter as a point of customer service.

Twitter is not just for automated feed

dumping.

Be conversational

Have fun, be human. (e.g., @MarsPhoenix)

Don’t share classified information.  (bad)

A Twitter-like Twitter rule

Be professional, kind, discreet,

authentic.

Represent us well. Remember that you

can’t control it once you hit “update.”

Socialnomics “Fail fast, fail

forward and fail

better.”

Not just

technology

“Ongoing beta”

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