The Canadian Government Awakens to social media – forget the buzzwords, it’s time for action!

What a week. I must say I haven’t been so excited and engulfed with new public sector social media developments in a while. First of all, I have noticed an influx of articles, reports and network formation in this field. It must have something to do with the “Fall” season and everyone getting back in their game in preparation for what looks to be a landmark year for government service-delivery in a Web 2.0 era.
Here are some things I learned this week:

1. The Federal government has created an official, inter-departmental, cross-functional team of consultants, managers and directors to come up with a Social Media government engagement strategy. While, to many this may sound like just another stagnant bureaucratic, process-focused team that will lead to nothing, I beg to differ.Why? let’s just say I met some of the team members at a presentation I was giving to the Public Service Commission this week and there is nothing stagnant about them. Many come from the private sector and they are interested in obtaining results, FAST. I’m looking forward to hearing and especially seeing more from them soon.
2. I think it’s safe to say that Web 2.0 has now officially passed the “buzz-word” stage in government communications and marketing departments. There are no more blank stares and/or surprised eyes when I mention things like Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogs, etc… during presentations. Most of our clients are aware of the rapidly evolving online landscape, if not through their own use, then through their kids use! It has finally come down to the “action” stage from more than just the early adopters. They want to act now and many are experimenting on their own. Try searching for “Canadian Government” in Facebook and see for yourself)
3. Blogging by program managers and directors working for the government will soon (i.e. 2008) be very prevalent. This is not to be confused with the one-way PR “bullshit” that often comes out in press releases, or one-way static HTML senior executive web sites with the word “BLOG” written on them as a title and fake entries sounding like they came out of a constipated robot.
4. Monthly social media community gatherings are popping up in both large and small cities all over the world. For those interested, here in Ottawa we have a meetup group called “Third Tuesday“. The largest social media gathering is still PodCamp Boston (in it’s second year), which has spawned scaled down PodCamp’s all over the world. People are genuinely interested in sharing, collaborating and learning this evolving field together. My prediction is that these general social media conferences/meetings will soon branch off into industry specific groups with very specific shared goals.
5. Finally, interesting articles and reports are coming in from all angles. Here’s some that you can download from my FTP:

• Newsletter from Public Works and Government Service Canada (PWGSC) showing some interesting blog developments.
• For even more inspiration, read about some international government blogging developments as stated in this IBM Government Blogging Report.

Some humour to close off…

The influence of Web 2.0 on American politics

I find it interesting that Social Media Networks show Barack Obama and Ron Paul as leaders for the Presidency (when using amount of “friends” as a popularity metric), whereas every traditional poll conducted recently shows Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani having commanding leads.

What are your thoughts on this?

Is it that the amount of people using online channels is far smaller and irrelevant? Does this prove that the amount of “friends” is meaningless? Maybe its the fact that Barack Obama and Ron Paul supporters are younger and/or have a more open attitude towards social media?

Personally, I think its a combination of factors. The main one being that Barack Obama and Ron Paul supporters have a particular radical attitude. They want change, they are influencers and trend setters in society, they are more liberal, they use new media channels, they want a new leader with the same mindset.

So why do traditional polls not show these candidates at the top while social media networks do? Simple: In terms of raw numbers across the nation, their supporters are still the minority even though they comprise the majority of actively engaged online users.

For more on this topic read this blog entry

Eric Schmidt talks about Web 2.0 vs. Web 3.0

Explanation of the still very young term “Web 3.0″ from the Google mastermind himself. It seems to me as though the marketing world is just hungry for a new buzzword now that use of the term”Web 2.0″ has hit the mainstream…