Mashable has a great post on Government 2.0 today. The post talks about Government adoption of Social software, and social media tools such as Twitter. There are many examples in the UK of areas of Government using Twitter. I currently follow various local councils on twitter, along with DowningStreet and CommunitiesUK. These provide a much easier platform with which to interact with Government. Also, having ministers like Tom Watson on Twitter, provides Government with a much more social and friendly interface. It is easy to interact and send messages to real people, rather than to email addresses or web forms. When you get to know someone, including miscellanous details about their lives (on their terms rather than through newspapers), it enables more empathy with them and understanding of their views.
There are lots of US Government agencies and representatives on Twitter with a great list at fly4change. Using this medium as a communications tool and to engage with the public in conversations has the potential to change perceptions of Government departments and Officials. As comcastcares, and others have demonstrated, the more social and real the method of communication, the more understanding, patience and respect people will have for the message. As such, an increase in the use of social software and social media to interact with the public, has the potential to transform the current cynical view many people have of politicians and civil servants. Once Government can be seen on a more human level, hopefully the appreciation and respect we have for official entities will increase, allowing for a much more grown-up discourse.
Today I was speaking on the phone to a HR manager (not for the company I work for) and talking about wikis. After speaking about using them for perhaps 5 minutes, I was asked the questions one of the – if no the number 1 – most popular wiki question:
1). What’s a wiki?
I tried to answer that it’s an editable webpage that anyone can change and updated. I then elaborated on this with the example of wikipedia. She then asked what I guess is the second most popular wiki question
2). What happens if people put the “wrong” information up?
This was coming for the perspective of someone working in HR. I guess when she said “wrong” she ment inaccurate information although I’m not sure. I explained how wikis rely on the concept of the wisdom of crowds and how it is up to the community to monitor the content on wikis. Also, within enterprise environments users are usually logged in using LDAP mechanisms which means there is no anonymous editing allowed.
In the end the HR person said ‘oh, we have an intranet so we probably wouldn’t use it’. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to explain all the benefits and accepted this remark. The company – one of the big 4 – does have a global wiki installed, but it goes to show it benefits and opportunities haven’t reached their HR department yet. This is a pity as the HR department in any organisation can use wikis to help with collaboration and knowledge sharing. The benefits of wikis need to be explained and shown though in real life scenarios before adoption can flourish.
Wiki adoption and case studies
There is lots of resources available on how to grow wiki adoption. Some of my favourite include:
In order to gain adoption it’s often necessary to explain case studies of other companies using wikis. The is lots of other information at http://community.e2conf.com/index.jspa and on various vendor sites. Hopefully, my next conversation with this HR individual will allow me to explain more of the benefits and possibilities available with using wikis.
Just watched a great video of a presentation “An anthropological introduction to YouTube” by Mike Wesch. The video is the Library of Congress a mix of the presentation interspersed with various YouTube videos. It’s a fantastic explanation of the rise of the YouTube community, how people interact with it and how it presents a mirror of ourselves back to us.
