GovTwit Week in Review 9/14 – 9/20 » Community

Lots of interesting stories and discussion continued the week after Gov 2.o Summit, so let’s get to it…

As pointed out in a Washington Post story, Tweeting Their Own Horns, many politicians spend most of their time on Twitter promoting themselves. This according to a study of 6,000 tweets over the summer by researchers at the University of Maryland. The story calls out GovTwit sister site TweetCongress as it reports that members of Congress spent just 7% of their time interacting with citizens when using the microblogging platform.

Jim Gilliam (creator of Act.ly, NationBuilder and the upcoming GovLuv), Alan Silberberg (co-founder and CEO of You2Gov), and Nisha Chittal (of New Media Strategies and Politocoholic) joined myself, Adriel Hampton and Steve Ressler Sunday on Gov 2.0 Radio to talk a bit about how the legislative branch is struggling to get its arms around using new media tools to interact more effectively with constituents. The guests also filled us in on Congress Camp. Interesting conversation; you can listen here.

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Over at the White House blog, new media directory Macon Phillips posted about how to better manage 1978’s Presidential Records Act obligations in today’s digital world. The Act requires the preservation of records created or received by the President or his staff, and that of course covers posts on Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and more. As Macon points out:

“The PRA was written in 1978. It doesn’t have a section on email. But everyone agrees that these electronic communications meet the Act’s broad definition of presidential records, and that the White House is legally required to preserve them.

The emergence of social media has created new forms of communication. Instead of sending an email, people often now post on someone’s profile or comment on a video or photo that’s been uploaded. When people want to tell the White House what they think, they’ll often do the same thing on our social media pages. A lot of times, we solicit this feedback because we want to hear from you.

These new types of communications from individuals to the White House, even though they take a different form, are governed by the PRA. Working with NARA, we’ve concluded that comments and messages the White House receives on its official pages are presidential records. That means the PRA requires us, by law, to preserve them.”

To that end, the White House has posted a draft request for a proposal for an automated archiving process. It will be interesting to see how this shapes up.

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Federal Computer Week’s Federal List issue was published and GovTwit was honored to be ranked at the number two spot in their list of “10 Social Network Sites to Keep You in the Loop.” Also featured were GovLoop (at number one, of course), NAPA Collaboration Project (3), The Gov IT Wiki (4), NASA CoLab (5), The Federal Contractor Network (6), GovStation (7), Sensorpedia (8), FedScoop (9) and MeritTalk (10). Glad to be in such great company.

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Stumbled across a must-read case-study on how the military tweets from Corey Christiansen (an undergraduate Communication/Social Science student at University of Washington). Probably one of the most in-depth independent looks at how the U.S. DoD and it’s many moving parts have gravitated toward Twitter as a channel (small GovTwit shout out as well).

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The Federal CIO Council released its guidance on security & social media. One of the big themes in the document centers around workforce education, something I’ve been talking people’s ears off about of late. Seriously, do you go out and try to chop down a tree without training on the right way to do it (see this for answer)? My Deloitte colleague Mike Smith (@rybolov on Twitter) was a reviewer/contributor to the guidance. Check out his excellent blog The Guerilla CISO.

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GSA launched its Apps.Gov cloud service and Google said it would follow in 2010 with a government-centric cloud of its own. Interestingly enough, Twitter was absent from the first cut of Apps.Gov

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3121, a new social network designed for congressional members and staff launched after several months of testing. The National Journal says its “walled-off Web site offers a secure directory of contacts, communications tools and customizable news feeds so users can find and collaborate with colleagues and create personalized news filters.”

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Interesting Additions to GovTwit Directory Tweeted Last Week:

Added @craigstoltz (who joined USDA) to directory

Added @jsc_a to directory: Joint Sustainment Command – Afghanistan

Added @NASATweetUp to directory

Added @sbgovwins, managed by ASBC.org, tweeting small biz gov wins

Added @NIEMExecDir to http://govtwit.com; learn about the National Info Exchange Model DOJ/DHS partnership here: http://www.niem.gov/whatIsNiem.php

GSA’s Industry Relations division now on Twitter @GSApbsIRD & in GovTwit

Added @ILDOI, IL Dept of Insurance to http://govtwit.com; new acct with only 5 followers, show them some love

Added @nhlbi_nabel (Dr. Elizabeth Nabel, Dir of Natl Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of NIH)

Added @gopoversight & @oversightmaj tagged to the-hill, house sections

Added @bacadem, Baca County Emergency Management in CO