Social Media

Is it theft if you personalise & retain an official social media account when you leave an organisation?

One of the legal and ethical dilemmas organisations are beginning to struggle with is the ownership of social media accounts. When a staff member creates and uses a social media account solely or mainly for official organisational purposes they can build a large following over months or years based entirely on their paid work activities.Read… Read more »

Guesting on #GovChat today

This week I am the guest on #GovChat, a Canadian operated weekly Twitter chat through PSLeader, featuring high profile public service and thought leaders from around the world. The chat starts at 10:00AM today for Aussie east coasters, 9:30AM in the middle and at 8:00AM if you’re in the west. For participants around the world:Read… Read more »

My thoughts on the Clerk’s 19th Annual Report to the Prime Minister on the Public Service of Canada

Even as an external consultant, every year I very much anticipate the Clerk’s Annual Report. It’s usually full of solid guidance quotes and it gives a good sense of some of the challenges faced in the prior year (albeit carefully written). This year, my favourite excerpts are as follows: “…the traditional relationship between government andRead… Read more »

Social Media Defined

Once in a while I like to go back to the basics. A while back I wrote a post clarifying the meaning of the word “marketing” and corresponding terms such as social marketing, social media marketing, and social media engagement. The key problem I see now is people using the broad term “social media” whenRead… Read more »

Social Media: Does the 24-Hour Response Rule Apply?

Last week, GovLoop member Julie Jenkins, a Communications Analyst with the Internal Revenue Service, posted a popular forum question in which she declared, “At some point we have to say, enough social media; time for real, live socializing,” and asked: “Where is your social media ceiling?” DorobekINSIDER host Chris Dorobek and I talked about theRead… Read more »

What’s the State of Social Media and Government in 2012?

Last Thursday, I delivered the presentation below for several Federal agency heads at the Chicago Federal Executive Board. I quickly affixed the title, “The State of Social Media in Government,” though I’m not sure that’s an accurate description of the content. Here’s a quick sketch of my outline: How Are Americans Using Social Media? (dataRead… Read more »

Social Media to the Rescue

The last couple of weeks have been tumultuous at different agencies in the US government. For the fourth time in as many months, Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta faced the media last week to state that the “actions of a few do not reflect the character of the US military”. It sounds so much likeRead… Read more »

Value for the Money: What governments need to tell the tax-paying public

Most of us paid our taxes this week, and didn’t grumble too much. But taxpayers may not have had a great sense of satisfaction about it either. By Eric Rabe, Fels Senior Advisor A Pew study last year found that most Americans are “frustrated” with the federal government — a number that has been aboveRead… Read more »

If Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus and MySpace were Aussie states

Many of you are probably aware that Facebook’s active membership is larger than the population of the world’s third largest country, however the numbers are getting too big to relate to Australia. So I’ve taken the idea and compiled a view of Australia by state, including the main social networks used by Aussies as ifRead… Read more »