Enter the Social Media Solution

As any business student knows, it is prudent to do a SWOT (strengths

, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis. Yet within the ranks of government, it is rare to find disciplined SWOT analysis of one of the biggest drivers of change today: the rapid global adoption of social media.

Social media will be used not only to push government to find solutions, but also to provide new support for collaborative governance. New York University professor Clay Shirky says in his book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations that Web 2.0 really signifies global interactivity among people."

Web 2.0 technologies is proliferating via free and low-cost social media software applications, but it is really about communication among people, including those who have never met one another, on a scale that is unprecedented. It is attracting innovative energies, driving mass amateurization, reducing barriers to entry, and reshaping knowledge worker habits.

The government community must grasp the risks and benefits of using social media applications, as well as the implications of the emerging phenomenon of social media use, whose impact Clay Shirky compares with the invention of the printing press. It is easy for social media fans to complain that government's rate of adoption is too slow, since a thicket of security concerns and information management laws must be navigated successfully.

However, it would be disastrous for citizen engagement, civic education, and future prospects for co-labor if public managers were to dismiss social media tools because those concerns exist. Two examples illustrate the new support for collaboration that is becoming possible in the public arena.

Civil Protection 2.0

At the November 2009 Web 2.0 Expo co-produced by O'Reilly Media and Tech Web in New York City, the government track included presentations of successful collaborations across sectors." Building Civil Protection 2.0" described collaboration between Italian government emergency managers and volunteers after last year's earthquake in Abruzzo, including such lessons as leaders were able to rise above the "my way or the highway" mentality what government workers and volunteers wanted was key to their continued engagement communication and training could be flexible and near real time using a social media platform the capture and organization of outgoing volunteers' tacit knowledge, to shorten the learning curve for incoming replacements, was critical and took a lot of time and energy week-long emergency drills increased the efficacy of volunteer efforts and substantially enhanced local government's ability to respond.

Enter the Social Media Solution

By: endeavor

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