Council Gritter Twitters Leading The Way?
Posted by Brian Kelly on February 16th, 2010
A recently published SOCITM Report “shows how Councils are starting to use global social networks like Facebook and Twitter as well as hyperlocal, community websites operating in their areas, to communicate with their residents and businesses when local emergencies arise“.
The 16 page report is free for SOCITM members (and costs £25 for non-subscribers). An accompanying summary of the report entitled “Twitter gritters: council use of digital channels in local emergencies” described how a recent structured survey of 125 councils across the UK “looked at how councils were publishing information about service disruptions during the period of snow and ice. It looked at their use of Twitter and Facebook to communicate with the public and analysed the data from the Website take-up service to see how traffic to their websites was affected“. It seems that “in January 2010, traffic to council websites rose sharply, with further analysis suggesting that 75% of the increase in January’s traffic related to the impact of the severe weather“.
This report on how councils exploited Social Web services during the recent bad weather contrasts with another recent SOCITM survey on council’s attitudes to providing access to Social Web services. As described in an article published by PublicTechnology.net the Socitm report fires a social media warning shot to the public sector. The article described how “around 90% of respondents revealed some level of restrictions were in place to prevent employees to access social media in the workplace, with 67% confirming a total ban on its use“.
Such inconsistencies might not be unexpected. It does seem to me, however, that library and museum staff who are frustrated at not being able to engage with their user communities through use of Social Web technologies may be able to use the Gritter Twitter story to persuade local authorities to liberalise their access policies.
February 16th, 2010 at 10:44 am
I suppose there are 2 different angles to Twitter. (1) Using it as a read-only resource and (2) Using it to communicate with others. I don’t know which of the two is the biggest concern to Councils when it comes to accessing Twitter. However, if a Council is using Twitter to provide its local population with information, it should also allow its employees to view these tweets. Even if councils who normally block access just provided an embedded Twitter feed in the corporate site, it would at least allow employees to see these updates and therefore access what is sometimes the most up-to-date information.