Social Networking

On June 16/17thIPAC held its Governance Dialogue Knowledge Network. The theme for this meeting was “Virtually Yours: Leveraging Social Media and Building Relationships with Citizens”.

I unfortunately could only attend part of the session as I was flying out to Halifax to participate in the Nova Scotia Regional Group’s AGM (subject of my next post). But what I did hear about social networking and the increased use of web enabled technologies confirmed that governments in Canada still have a long road ahead of them.

On Monday evening, Brent Bernie, President of comScore Canada gave us an overview of the penetration of the internet into everyday life in Canada and around the world. From its start in the mid-1990’s the number of people now online has reached 815 million and is projected to hit 1 billion by March 2010! That’s a lot of people interacting in cyberspace. And the connection to the internet is a worldwide phenomenon – in 1996 66% of users were US citizen; in 2007 US citizens accounted for 20% of the 815 million users. In Canada, nearly 24 million Canadians are on-line – an astounding 72% of the population. This surpasses the US (60%), the UK (54%), Japan (42%), etc. And, Canadians spend the most time on-line at 45 hours per visitor per month (and you are doing it right now while you read this blog!!). What is even more interesting is that this “addiction” to the net is in all age and demographic groups – 77% of 2 to 17 year olds are on-line; 89% of 18 to 34 year olds; 87% of 35 to 54 year olds and 49% of those over 55 years of age. Canadians are not only addicted to the web in general terms, they also top usage of Social Networking sites like facebook, MySpace, etc. An astounding 84% of Canadian web users are using social networking sites. This same trend is evident for sites such as YouTube and for blogs. This means that Canadian citizens are using the internet to connect to government information and services and that government may be better able to connect with citizens using these networking sites.

On Tuesday morning, Joe Thornley, CEO of Thornley Fallis spoke about how governments can utilize the social networking explosion. He pointed to some examples where public organization have used the web – such as the Privacy Commissioner of Canada who has established a blog that pulls no punches, a video on YouTube and a youth site – go to http://www.privcom.gc.ca/index_e.asp and have a look.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is using YouTube as a “Question Period” from the public. Citizens have been encouraged to send in (via YouTube) questions for the PM and he will be answering the top-voter user questions. Check it out here - http://www.youtube.com/10DowningStreet . This may become an ongoing QP for the PM. The UK is also using the web for e-petitions. Basically, citizens can send in their petitions via the website and then one response is posted (see http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ for information). Imagine the time savings if you only have to post a response to a petition rather than sending out individual letters to every person who has sent in the same form letter!! And here’s a helpful tip for those in the communication business – the UK uses Twitter to send out short updates to journalists and others interested in the news from No. 10 (http://twitter.com/downingstreet).

It is not only No. 10 that is using the web – the Foreign Office is as well. The Foreign Secretary, members of different embassies, and a new professional each have blogs on the site (https://blogs.fco.gov.uk/roller/ ). As I write this today, there are blog posts from embassy staff in Zimbabwe.

So what does this all mean? According to Joe, this social networking phenomenon means that we are returning to the direct participation of citizens in government given the ease by which groups can be formed and people can come together. It also means that the government can no longer control the conversation – rather it can only play a part in it. The ease at which people can gain access to information (the democratization of information) means that no one has a monopoly on knowledge. Government is a source of authoritative information, but it is no longer the only source! Whereas in the past, governments may have focussed on a “campaign” to get their message out, we have now moved to a time when governments must develop a relationship with citizens.