NPSC Blog

While chatting with Matt Lane last week about what New Zealand examples of social media in the public sector we should add to the Government 2.0 Best Practice Wiki (a terrific initiative launched by Mike Kujawski, a Canadian public servant consultant) it occurred to me that by only including successes when we discuss with other public servants, or jurisdictions, how we use social media is both disingenuous and, potentially, harmful.

Let me set aside for the moment the distinction between Govt 2.0 and social media, because they are not one and the same thing (rather, one is a condition for the other); that can wait for another post…

Instead, I would like to explore some of the issues around framing these early attempts at government use of social media as almost exclusively success stories and the implications for this (entirely understandable) tendency.

Fear of failure

Why is it understandable? A couple of reasons. One is that public servants are naturally loathe to admit that they spent tax payer dollars unwisely, or worse, ineffectively. Consequently, there is always a temptation to adopt an overly optimistic assessment of the impact of a particular initiative. Of course, there may be cases where this view is supported by metrics. Or not.

Second, the people who are promoting social media in government are, by and large, enthusiasts; early adopters who champion these tools with – let’s face it, a zeal that is borderline messianic. The last thing these people want to see is the non-believers (principally senior management) arriving at the conclusion that this stuff is just hype, Or worse, that it doesn’t work. Thus the drive to label it all a runaway success.

With social media, however, it isn’t that simple. First, success – or failure – is not a value that we are able to ascribe ourselves. It is a co-production. We, ie., the government, can’t unilaterally decide that an engagement initiative with our publics was an unqualified success. They, those with whom we have tried to engage, have as much – if not more – say in whether or not the engagement was mutually satisfactory (mutual satisfaction being the key determinant of any successful relationship).

A good example of this for me is the Police Act Review Wiki. This received a lot of attention at the time, and continues to be one of the stock examples for a lot of commentators on what constitutes a successful public sector social media implementation. I don’t think it is that simple.

The Police Act Review was an outstanding piece of public policy work. It engaged a wide range of people and initiated an enormous amount of discussion. The overall communications programme would have to be regarded as extremely well executed.

But let’s be realistic about the social media element of the Review. It failed. Not a National Australia Bank sort of epic fail, but – in terms of providing a transparent forum for people to contribute their thoughts to how the Act should be reviewed, a failure nonetheless.

Is this sort of failure a bad thing? The wiki delivered what the Police wanted – some suggested changes to the wording of the Act and a lot of publicity/awareness, nevertheless it was shut down after less than a week. What sort of public consultation can take place in less than a week? What about those thousands of visitors to the site who arrived only to find that they were too late, the wiki was locked and it was all over? Did they consider it a success?

What price failure?

Which brings me to an important corollary. Failure in social media should not be stigmatized. For an emerging set of channels/tools, it is both inevitable and I would argue, welcome. Why? Because it is social. As long as you are engaging in a principled way, it is OK to make mistakes. Own them and learn from them; and do it publicly.

It is also welcome because we are unlikely to collectively improve our performance in this space if we are busy congratulating ourselves on what a good job we are already doing.

The real risk to your agency’s reputation is to continue to talk up your social media efforts as wonderful examples of engaging with citizens, while those selfsame citizens think that you have just built another creepy treehouse.

Photo: eelsmann