More Blogging in Government

I do a lot of talking to tech savvy audiences who have already bought into the ideas I'm talking about. So it is a really nice change to talk to a group of people about an idea or concept they know little or nothing about. Most of yesterdays audience fell into that category. Everybody had heard the term "blog" and about 10 percent of the audience visited blogs on a regular basis. A few people even owned up to having a personal blog. However I believe very few people in the audience had considered using blogs as either internal or external communication tools. Demonstrated by the fact that I couldn't find a single central government blog when researching my talk (if you know of one, please let me know).

The talk began with a bit of an overview of blogging. What blogging was, how blogging evolved and the features of a typical weblog. I then discussed the ascendance of blogging from a minority geek pursuit to an important part of the countries media culture.

I talked about how events such as 9/11, the US elections and the war on Iraq had effected the popularity of blogging in the US, and how the recent UK elections and the London tube bombings had done the same in the UK. I mentioned how people were becoming jaded with the mainstream media and increasingly turning to blogs for news, debate and the ability to hear different perspectives and opinions.

I also talked about the motivations behind blogging, and conversely why people read blogs and participate in the blogging community. I even, rather embarrassingly, had a slide titled "the 'blogsphere'" where I discussed the size and shape of the community. Later I was asked if I knew of any research done on the number of blogs and bloggers. I didn't, but if anybody knows of some reliable papers, please let me know.

Next, I discussed how government could use internal weblogs. I talked about how weblogs were essentially free (or very cheap), lightweight and disposable content management systems. They were easy to install, and provided search and RSS out of the box.

Many government institutions get fixated on content management systems, both internally and externally. They will run lengthy feasibility studies to work out their requirements then commission a huge, all singing all dancing system that costs a fortune and doesn't solve the core problem of needing somebody with the necessary skills to manage the content in the first place. I honestly think some organisations think that a CMS will just sit there and manage content on its own. If only that was the case.

Instead of this, I suggested that weblogs were perfect as small, ad-hoc CMS systems. Rather than running a lengthy consultation on the viability of a new Intranet application, you could simply install some blog software and see if your idea was feasible by actually doing it. If your concept failed, you wouldn't have wasted lots of time and money on expensive software and studies.

I talked about how weblogs were great for internal communication and a way of cutting down the huge weight of email most large companies are drowning in. I suggested that department heads could set up weblogs to communicate with staff members, or committees could use weblogs to post minutes, to-do items and the status of projects.

I also talked about how blogs could be used for internal knowledge management, by encouraging key staff to blog their collective knowledge rather than keeping it locked up. After the presentation one individual told me that his job was basically to monitor newspapers and the media and let people know what was going on via email. This was such a perfect example of how an internal weblog could be used. Rather than emailing the information, you could blog about it, and anybody who was interested could subscribe to the feed. What's more, all this information would now be searchable.

Next, I talked about the benefits of blogging to management, and how staff blogs could help managers know what was going on in their organisation. Conversely, it would also let staff know what their manager was doing. After the talk another person said that it would be fantastic if their manager had a blog because their staff never knew where they were or what they were doing.

However the thing I was most interested in was how governments could use external blogs to connect with the people they served. An external blog could really help demystify the workings of government, while at the same time creating a sense of empathy and trust. For the ministers and departments themselves, a blog would be a great way of getting important information out to the public, unfettered by the media. If blogging became popular, editors and journalists would subscribe to government blogs so it would be a great way of getting information out to the media as well.

I can't see it happening any time soon, but how cool would it be if the Prime Minister had a blog? You could subscribe to his RSS feed and it would really give you a window into his life. I even joked that other country leaders could subscribe to each others feeds to know what the other person was doing. How great would that be for international détente?

I finished up by discussing how government institutions should handle staff that blogged. I said that their staff would blog whether they liked it or not, and being draconian about things would just send bloggers underground. As such, I said the best option was to create a fair weblog policy that let staff know where they stood.

After I'd finished, I had quite a few people come up to talk to me about how their departments could use blogs, both internally and externally. It seemed that their was definite interest in blogging amongst the audience and it would be great if the UK government became the first to really make use of social software such as blogs. And it would be even better if the UK had the first blogging Prime Minister. I'd add that to my RSS feed. Wouldn't you?