Social Media and Public Sector Policy Dilemmas

While I rarely like to use my blog as a dumping ground of PDF’s, this one I really wanted to share with you. It was written by Toby Fyfe and Paul Crookall on behalf of The Institute of Public Administration of Canada (IPAC). The title of the report  is “Social Media and Public Sector Policy Dilemmas“. This is by far the most comprehensive and well written report on the subject this year. If you work for the Government, especially the Government of Canada, you need to read this.

BC “Apps for Climate Change” contest needs your vote!

I love open data initiatives; Especially when they are Canadian (my home turf). I wrote about the premise behind the Apps for Climate Change contest back in April, and now that we have submissions, I want to remind you to vote. The total number of submissions that met all requirements is 16, a huge success in my opinion given the infancy of apps contests in Canada. You can see demos and vote for your favourite apps here.

Poorly written “social media” RFP’s

Now that various public sector organizations are slowly starting to realize that social media engagement is not really an option but rather an imminent requirement, numerous “Request for Proposals” (RFP’s) have been coming out of government with “social media” as part of their titles. Unfortunately, in most cases the RFP dictates required elements which are predominantly tactical in nature:

• We want to build a social network
• We want to create a blog
• We want 5000 friends/followers on channel X

I always double check to see if I missed something, something like a page which states “objectives”, or “purpose” or answers the question “why?” Really, any of those will do. To my dismay, no such page is missing, it’s just never thought of.