Twitter Election Map

Over the past year or two there has been a palpable surge of interest in using Web 2.0 in the public sector, and in most cases that’s a very positive thing. The added value that such platforms can bring to the services we deliver is obvious, opening new channels of outreach and improving engagement and involvement.

During last night’s election count, the City of Edinburgh Council were putting Web 2.0 to marvellous use by keeping citizens bang up to date with progress of the count taking place over at Meadowbank Stadium.

The following is a summary of what the council did on the night.

Disclaimer: I had no direct involvement in this – on the night I followed these channels as a local resident and any comments are my own personal views.

Twitter map

Perhaps the most visually impressive part of the coverage was the Twitter map, a Google Maps mash-up which displayed the latest geo-tagged tweet for each of the 5 constituencies. A relatively simple effect, but one which gave a very relevant, localised slant to the proceedings.

Edinburgh's Election Twitter Map

Twitter updates

Powering this was, of course, the Council’s own Twitter account (@Edinburgh_CC) which was used throughout the evening to tweet both localised, geo-tagged updates, as well as more general information and links to the blog referred to below.

For me, the people behind this did two things particularly well when using Twitter. Firstly, they managed expectations by posting the following statement on the website:

We’re sorry that we can’t enter into any real-time discussions about what we’re doing, but we will be keeping an eye on the feedback on Twitter to see what people think and what we can learn from the experience.

City of Edinburgh Council Elections page

This was a really important, preemptive move which meant that hopefully not too many people were trying to start a conversation with the team and ending up being disappointed.

However, early on in the evening they did respond to one tweet, relating to the use of geo-tags, so I thought I’d send them a quick question too:

@Edinburgh_CC Is it just the two counts?

@prettysimple

To which, sure enough, they replied:

@prettysimple two counts; five constituencies – blog post on the count process coming soon

@Edinburgh_CC

This is a great demonstration of the power of Web 2.0 – the immediacy of response married with high availability and reach make Twitter and its ilk potentially ideal platforms for speaking to your customers and citizens, and can deliver a positive experience not only to the individual concerned, but also to anyone else who happens to be watching (I intentionally asked a question that I thought others may be wondering too).

Blog

The Council’s emergency and news blog was used to great effect to post updates throughout the evening, not just on the results, but also on the process itself, including:

• A nice collection of stats, including the number of registered voters, polling places and postal votes. These were posted at a time when the updates had ran a little dry, thus keeping the interest of those following the progress
• A step by step guide to the count process, giving details of how each stage works, from the first and second count and the adjudication of doubtful papers, through to the final declaration
• A useful who’s who, listing the roles of the key players on the night
• A statement on the timing of the results from the Returning Officer

Flickr

An official snap from the count (copyright City of Edinburgh Council)

Finally, a handful of images were also uploaded to the Council’s Flickr photostream, providing citizens with a glimpse of the controlled chaos.

This added a wonderfully human touch to the process, and I’d have liked to have seen more photos (in the end there were only about 20). But it again shows great potential. One of the more appealing elements of count night is the very British scene of people pitching in and working together, often against the odds, and this kind of coverage does a great job of capturing that.

All in all, a triumph for Web 2.0 advocates and hopefully a continuation of what we’re seeing across the UK – a long-lasting, relevant and fruitful use of social media tools to engage and involve citizens and position them at the heart of everything we’re doing.

This is the day where all around the world, disabled and non-disabled people will blog about their experiences, observations and thoughts about disability discrimination. In this way, we hope to raise awareness of inequality, promote equality and celebrate the progress we’ve made.

Diary of a Goldfish

For this event last year I wrote a piece entitled Defining Disablism which proved popular and sparked some good discussions.

I’m still undecided on what I will cover this year, and indeed may wait until the day before finally committing. It will certainly have a web focus. Watch this space! (update – didn’t get a chance to do this on the day but pulling something together now and will post soon!)

Visit the Diary of a Goldfish site to see a list of other bloggers taking part in the day, as well as links to posts from previous years.

I’ll update it if/when I install more, and if you have any suggestions do leave a comment.

Akismet

Obviously. Am also on the look out for other plugins to help in the battle against spam. Suggestions? Jack recommends Spam Karma 2 so I’m going to check that out.

Bad Behaviour

Denies automated spambots access to your site. I’ve only just installed this so time will tell whether it has any impact on the amount of spam I get.

Dean’s Permalink Migration

A very useful plugin, this. When I started blogging, the URLs of my posts where just a random string of numbers (e.g. http://www.prettysimple.co.uk/blog/?p=568). Not very user friendly. So eventually I decided to use meaningful permalinks. Trouble is, if you simply change the format of your blog’s permalinks, all of your previous URLs (as linked to from other blogs, Tweets, webpages etc) will no longer work. This plugin lets you migrate to a new permalink format whilst preserving the old URLs via 301 redirects.

Sociable

A handy plugin for offering social bookmarking links at the end of your posts (see the end of this one for an example). You can pick and choose from over 60 sites (Digg, Delicious, Twitter, Facebook etc), and Sociable then serves up small icons to allow users to quickly and easily share your post.

Twitter for WordPress

Nice and simple plugin for displaying your latest Tweets on your blog. It detects URLs and @usernames and serves these up as hyperlinks which is nice (I’ve seen some plugins that don’t offer this). Jack recommends Twitter Tools so I’ll probably look at that one soon as well.

Ultimate Google Analytics

Automatically inserts your GA tracking code into posts, making it a doddle to collect stats.

WordPress Database Backup

Automates the backup process and can even email you the backup file periodically (from every week to every hour). Great for peace of mind!

Related links

• WordPress Plugin Directory
• 10 most downloaded WordPress plugins of all time (apparently)
• 17 Really Useful WordPress Plugins That Probably Are Essential – Smashing Apps
• Also see Gary’s (of the Dog’s Blog) list of plugins and widgets for more ideas

The whole thing is brought together by a public page on Netvibes (a personalised web portal, similar to iGoogle). You can find it at www.netvibes.com/talesofonecity.

Tales of One City Netvibes page

The page has a customised theme (with an image of books as the header) and an embedded Google Search bar. It then serves up 12 widgets, pulling in information from various sources.

The widgets include:

Delicious

A feed from the brand’s Delicious bookmarks – mostly links to the various applications listed on the Netvibes page itself, but with a few other useful links (lots of room for development though).

Tales of One City blog

A blog, which has been running since February, by Library Service Manager Liz McGettigan.

We blog about lots of different things on Tales of One City; public libraries, community regeneration, impact studies, web 2.0, library 2.0…

Tales of One City Blog

There are also feeds from three other library-related blogs.

Social networking sites

Facebook, MySpace and Twitter accounts give the brand a strong social networking presence, although these are still seen as being in development.

Multimedia content

YouTube and Flickr provide the platforms for various multimedia content, including images of various libraries.

Potential and risks

The possibilities presented by this kind of approach are immense. Web 2.0 provides an exciting and relevant way of engaging with our citizens, targeting them in the places that they already frequent on the web (rather than relying on them coming to our corporate site to find out what we’re doing).

Accordingly I’m now looking at using a similar approach to promote other Council services, and I’ll blog more about these once we’re up and running. Of course, such an approach has to be managed, and there are many risks and issues to be aware of. For example:

Ownership

Most social applications are designed to be person-to-person, not organisation-to-person. Any presence on Facebook, Twitter et al should ideally appear to be from an individual, or at least a small group of individuals, rather than a ‘faceless corporation’. It’s vital to build up a personality online, and for that to work people must take ownership of the accounts. These people have to know what they’re doing, and also want to do it. Additionally, sustainability must be built in to mitigate against changing circumstances – if a person leaves the organisation, the accounts must not simply fall silent and die a death.

Accountability

Despite aiming for a ‘personal’ voice, it’s still vital that the person is accountable to the organisation for what they say. There have been countless horror stories of brands taking serious damage through social media mistakes, and as a public sector organisation we have a serious obligation to be accountable for what we are putting out there.

Exclusion

It is, of course, important to remember that not everyone has access to the internet, or even a computer, and also that many of the third-party applications discussed here have varying issues to do with web accessibility. For this reason, it is vital to ensure that the ‘digitial divide’ is not made greater by concentrating solely on these kinds of ventures and ignoring more traditional channels, as well as ensuring that content is made accessible or, at least, an alternative provided.

Negative feedback

This is a major concern for many of the people I talk to about Web 2.0. The fear is that if we enter into conversations with citizens, many will use the opportunity to publicly berate us, whether justified or not. Whilst this may be true, it’s also true that such conversations are already going on out there – it’s crucial that we join in with them and hopefully learn from them.

Misuse

Another major concern is the misuse of the channels that we create (for example, if we create a space on Bebo and people use it to solicit inappropriate contact with children). Most of these risks can be reasonably managed, though, depending on the platform, but it does highlight the need for constant monitoring of the channels, which must be built into someone’s regular workstreams.

Look out for a progress report soon.

Interesting links

• Simon Wakeman’s oft-cited piece on why council’s shouldn’t be on Facebook, actually featuring some good reasons why we should
• Dave Brigg’s summary of ‘bits and pieces’ relating to social media in local government
• Ingrid Koehler’s excellent 10 local government social media myths
• Anyone in local gov wanting to discuss these issues further should sign up for Communities of Practice, where there are some useful Web 2.0 and social media groups

This is the day where all around the world, disabled and non-disabled people will blog about their experiences, observations and thoughts about disability discrimination. In this way, we hope to raise awareness of inequality, promote equality and celebrate the progress we’ve made.

Diary of a Goldfish

Accordingly, I’m writing a blog post (EDIT – the post is now live) about what the term ‘disablism’ means to me, and looking at how broadly the term can be applied.

I’m also working on a post about my efforts to improve the accessibility of my organisation’s online content by providing video content in British Sign Language, with audio description and captioning (available soon).

Visit the Diary of a Goldfish site to see a list of other bloggers taking part in the day.

I love argument, I love debate. I don’t expect anyone just to sit there and agree with me, that’s not their job.

Margaret Thatcher

Debate and discussion are vital to the progress and development of web accessibility. With that in mind it’s great to see that, as ever, there is plenty of discussion going on out there in the fora, blogs and Tweets of those interested in the subject.

For anyone looking to get stuck in, Accessify Forum offers an ideal starting place. Expect plenty of well-informed and well-meaning conflict around all things accessible.

Meanwhile, Henny Swan has sparked an interesting, albeit oft mooted, discussion on her blog (iheni.com) about whether accessibility is only for people with disabilities. My opinion is that it is – we have other terms (usability, availability, etc) for talking about the needs of other users. Any attempt to broaden the scope could lead to losing sight of that – although all are, of course, inextricably linked. Not everyone agrees, though. Go see for yourself and join the debate.

And elsewhere, Ann McMeekin of pixeldiva.co.uk is running a poll on the use and location of a site’s Accessibility link. Plenty of discussion already, with a surprising number of people unsure of what such a page is. Should it offer practical tips, a technical statement of conformance, or both? And should it be proudly placed at the top of the page or squirreled away elsewhere? Cast your vote today!

And for Local Gov types, this year’s Better Connected report from SOCITM is at the centre of a little bit of discontent over at the E-Access Bulletin, which has put what some consider to be an overly negative spin on the results. Given that it heavily focuses on findings based on the superseded WCAG 1.0, it was obvious that debate was on the cards.

These are just a few examples of the wonderful discussions going on, and it’s only through engaging in these debates that we can reach the right conclusions and increase the efficacy of our own attempts at building an inclusive web.

So don’t just sit there – go debate!

Wish me luck!

Update 23rd Jan – yes, you’re reading this on my new WordPress installation. The migration was very smooth, now I just need to work on a customised design.

Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. Some handy uses of Google Alerts include:

• monitoring a developing news story
• keeping current on a competitor or industry
• getting the latest on a celebrity or event
• keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams

www.google.com/alerts

I set up a number of alerts based on various topics of interest and the emails started coming thick and fast (I opted for ‘as-it-happens’ alert frequency in most cases, but you can also specify daily or weekly digests).

What has been most useful is hearing about the various blogs which are talking about the organisation and its website, as well as seeing which sites are linking to us. A large proportion of the alerts come from news sources too, so I can also keep tabs on the media. Not only is this an important Comms issue, but it is also a crucial step in becoming proactive with Web 2.0 technologies in general

Company Buzz is another interesting application, this time for users of Linkedin. Powered by Twitter, this application pulls in links to sites that are talking about your company (for better or for worse!). It also gives you a list of Buzz Words.

With these sorts of tools, as well as through monitoring prominent local and national blogs, I’m hoping to build up a robust ‘early-warning system’ to help us react to the conversations that are taking place. Once this is well established, I’ll be looking to see how we can work it into our strategies for more effectively engaging with web technologies across the board.

After all, if we wish to engage with the conversations taking place, we need to know where they are and what people are saying.

Headstar’s E-Government Bulletin has an interesting report on the recent E-Democracy 2008 conference, addressing the issue of blogging and digital dialogues. This got me thinking about the subject (you’ll see my initial thoughts at the end of that very article), and I’ve since been looking further into the world of public sector (and more specifically, local government) blogs.

Some examples

Technorati reports that it is tracking the existence of 112 million blogs. Surprisingly, then, it was a little difficult to find really good examples of well-executed local government blogs. Here are some examples, though, listing the good and the bad points of each:

Kent County Council Leader’s Blog

Plus points:

• Last post just 9 days old at the time of writing, with 3 or 4 posts a months on average
• The posts seem to relate well to current events
• The post titles are brief but descriptive
• The posts offer relevant hyperlinks
• Commenting not available, but an e-mail link offered
• Some honest and personal views

Minus points

• A very obvious political agenda
• The only image is one of the blogger himself
• No RSS feed available

London Borough of Lambeth Leader’s Blog

Plus points

• Well established blog – archive going back to October 2006
• Good range of topic covered

Minus points

• Erratic frequency – some months have 5+ posts, other months have none
• The more recent posts appear at the bottom – big mistake!
• Lack of images makes the pages very samey and uninspiring
• No RSS feed available

Wiltshire Extranet Blog

Plus points

• One post each and every week
• All the trappings of a proper blog – archives, calendar, feeds, feedback

Minus points

• Bizarrely, each post is a report of what the blogger will be doing, with no obvious follow-ups
• An internal blog, meant for internal readers, available externally
• No information about the blog or blogger (presumably due to its internal nature)

Durham County Council Leader’s blog

Plus points

• Blog is combined with a diary to view upcoming appointments
• Option to add comments, and the blogger has even responded to one
• Fairly regular posts (although only been running less than 2 months)

Minus point

• The blog launched in October, yet the ‘archive’ looks like it goes back to January. You can’t click on any of the months prior to October, adding to the confusion.
• Again, lack of images makes for dull pages.
• Not only a lack of corporate branding, but also a horrendous pink theme (OK, that one is subjective)

Pseudo-blogs

One issue which arose during my search related to the design and functionality of the blogs I encountered. Many blogs seemed to have been integrated into the main corporate website, and in fact in many cases were not technically blogs in the typical sense, but rather normal static web pages presenting chronological articles. Whilst there is nothing inherently wrong with this, it does rather stretch the blog metaphor. A typical blog has features such as categories and labels for filtering articles; the ability to comment on posts; RSS feeds or subscriptions to easily access new posts; automatically generated archives; and all manner of other widgets including polls, related links and tagclouds. These are important elements which define a blog as a Web 2.0 technology.

Lessons learned

The Durham blog is a great example of understanding the blog metaphor and adapting it to the interests of the users. By incorporating a diary, and then blogging about the events afterwards, you have a great premise for generating interest and engagement.

Lack of images was a big problem across the board, and is in fact an issue common with many blogs worldwide. A local gov organisation should have access to a wealth of stock photos which could be thrown in, where relevant, to liven up the pages. A crucial element of engaging the public is to make your channels of communication interesting, and the use of images seems like an essential ingredient in this.

The regularity of posts seemed to vary wildly, but a key point is the importance of consistency. One post per week is fine if that offers a summary of the week’s events. Any less than that and the blog risks looking sparse and unresponsive to events. A greater frequency might be appropriate but it has to be sustainable. Probably far better to stick to the weekly format unless urgent issues arise.

Although many of the features of the traditional blog are perhaps overkill, some key functions should remain. Allowing comments makes perfect sense – after all, the point of the blog is to create a dialogue. Archiving is obviously a must – that’s one of the things that makes it a blog. Promotion is a key issue, as the blog must be easy to find. RSS feeds will then make it easy for people to follow.

Conclusion

Blogs provide an excellent channel of communication with your citizens, and can very easily fit in with your other comms strategies. They are incredibly easy to set up, but far from easy to maintain to a high quality. They’ll demand lots of time, thought, creativity and buy-in. Because of this, the failure rate is likely to be high, but the rewards are there for the successful few.