Interesting report published by Quocirca on behalf on IBM, on the topic of the opportunities web 2.0 and social media offers the public sector:
Social networking can help public sector bodies interact to a far greater extent with citizens as well as with internal and external resources. Full policies are required to be put in place to mediate social networking, and back-end technology needs to be chosen carefully to include support for the majority of clients likely to be found within a consumer-focused end-user environment, as well as kiosks and other systems aimed at the non-computer owning citizen.
Usig web technology presents a huge opportunity to engage with people on a scale that wasn’t possible before. But we do have to acknowledge that it can only ever be a part of a consultation strategy. Too many people don’t have web access, or don’t want to engage with that medium, for more old-school methods to be ignored.
Ya gotta love the idea of “mediate social networking”. It’s hardly surprising that the consultancy class feels as threatened by this as everyone else and so feels the need to create the myth that ‘this’ can be controlled, subsumed or ‘mediated’. I agree that this goes so much further than a new trick for focus groups. The problem is that at least ‘social networking as consultation’ can fit into the Gantt charts and tick boxes.
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