For the past three years, I’ve had the privilege of chairing the Social Media for Government Conference in Ottawa. And I’ll be chairing the next conference to be held in just one month, from June 21 to June 24.

A great learning experience

This conference is an opportunity to learn about how social media is being used by government and to discuss the challenges and opportunities it presents.

Speakers from all levels of government – federal, provincial and municipal – will be sharing their experience with social media and the insight they gained. Organizations presenting case studies include: Public Safety Canada, Alberta Environment, Army Public Affairs, the U.S. Department of State,  the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, the Office of the Ontario Ombudsman, the Public Service Commission of Canada, the Ottawa Public Library,  the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, Norfolk County and the cities of London and Ottawa.

I’ll be speaking as well. On the day before the conference proper, I’ll be presenting a Social Media 101 Workshop and on the first morning of the conference, I’ll be co-presenting with Pierre Killeen about public engagement in the age of social media.

Save $400 off the registration fee for the Social Media for Government Conference

If you’ve read this far, it’s fair to say that you’re interested in learning about the adoption of social media by government. So, here’s a great offer.

People who registered for the conference before April 30 were eligible for an Early Bird Discount of $400. But April 30 has come and gone and that discount has expired. That’s the bad news.

Now the good news. Just mention my name when you register for the Social Media for Government Conference and you’ll receive a $400 discount off the registration fee. That’s the equivalent of the Early Bird Registration – and you can use my discount right up to conference day. It doesn’t expire.

Why I attend the Social Media for Government Conference

I chair and participate in this conference as a volunteer. I do it because it’s one of the best learning opportunities available to me in Ottawa.

Based on my experience over the past three years, I know you won’t regret attending this conference. You’ll learn a lot and meet some smart people. What more could you ask for?

I’d like to offer two students a chance to attend the Social Media for Government conference being organized by the Advanced Learning Institute (ALI) in Ottawa March 2-3.

What you’ll hear

The conference will feature a strong lineup of speakers presenting case studies of how government has used social media – both internally and externally. Sessions and presenting organizations will include:

• Engaging your employees before you engage the public, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada;
• Using social media to build relationships and reduce crime, Toronto Police Services;
• Developing a collaborative network in a hierarchical organization, Canadian Forces Aerospace Warfare Centre;
• Social Media And Government Communications: Using social media to communicate and engage the public while complying with government policies and laws, Government of Canada’s Community Communications Office;
• Making the business case for social media, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation;
• Social media strategy rules of engagement and evaluation metrics, Human Resources and Skills Development;
• Using social media to address the needs of a diverse audience, Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care;
• Using Facebook and Twitter to communicate in an ever-changing communications environment, Genome Alberta;
• Strategy before tactics, Public Safety Canada;
• Expanding your social media network while staying within your agency’s guidelines, standards and policies, Parks Canada;
• Using social media on both sides of the firewall, Canadian Tourism Commission;
• Social networking  to create a more agile and responsive organization, Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency;
• New web analytics for a new wave of social media, City of Ottawa;
• Using social media to foster innovation and drive change in a large organization, Royal Bank of Canada (Yes, not a government organization. But a very large organization exploring the use of social media.)

I’ll be chairing the conference and presenting a workshop on the day before it opens.

How you can attend

As I was preparing, it occurred to me that this conference would be a wonderful learning experience for a student interested in social media, communications, political science or journalism. But the registration probably puts it out of reach of all but the wealthiest students.

So … I bought a couple tickets to the conference and I’d like to give them to two students who will benefit from the sessions.

Interested in attending? Here’s how you can get one of these tickets.

Leave a comment below or write a post on your own blog explaining how this learning experience would fit in with your academic studies.

I’ll read the comments and posts and offer the tickets to the two students who I think make the best case. Simple.

So, if you’re a post-secondary student and you’d like to attend, tell me why. Also, if you know a student who you think could benefit from this opportunity, please point out this post to them.

I’ll select the winning students at 5PM Feb. 25 and contact them that evening.

I’m speaking next week at a conference of health profession regulators. The theme of the day: Innovations in Regulatory Communications.

I’ve been asked to speak to the topic, “Social Media: What you need to know to be effective.” I think I can give them some good ideas – and I’ll post about the presentation and their reaction after the session.

In preparing for the session, the organizer told me, “We’re most interested in how social media can be used in the regulatory environment, given the challenges we face as regulators.  We’ve all been to conferences and sessions about how social media works as a marketing tool in retail and other environments, but we’ve always come away from those kinds of events thinking that these tools don’t really seem suited to us.  But as communicators, we also know that we want to do a better job of communicating with all our audiences – the public, the profession and others in the health care environment.  So essentially, how can we best use social media without compromising our regulatory duties?”

I thought this was an interesting glimpse of the basic conundrum the regulators face. They want to reach out to the public, but they feel that they have to be responsible to duties of fair process and being careful not to be seen as prejudging as well as staying within their assigned responsibilities and not straying into the realm of policy-making that the politicians have reserved for themselves.

But does that mean that they can’t use social media? I don’t think so. But rather than simply preach about the virtues of social media, I want to provide my audience of regulators examples of other regulators and government agencies who have used social media effectively. I think of the way the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada uses their blog to raise awareness of privacy issues and make us think more deeply about them, the way that the Ontario Ombudsman uses his Twitter feed to alert people to reports he will be releasing, to listen to public discussion and to convey a sense that there’s a real human being behind the title, the way that Canada’s Washington Embassy’s Connect2Canada program uses blogging, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social media platforms to bring together Canadians living in the United States, or the way that Ottawa Public Health used Twitter to inform the public about the H1N1 vaccination program.

Now, you may say that these aren’t really regulators. And you’d be right. So, I’m looking for examples of government and profession regulators using social media.

Do you have a favourite example of a regulator that has used social media well? How about an example of one that has used social media and regretted it?

What would you tell a group of government and profession regulators about how they can use social media?

I’m at the second day of the ALI Social Media for Government conference in Ottawa. I’ll be covering each of the sessions by tweeting myself and also by capturing the highlights of the Twitter stream from the conference.

If you’re interested in following the Twitter stream, search for hashtag #ALI. Or check here during the day and I’ll have live posts using CoverItLive to capture and provide you with the best of the what the conference presenters and attendees are saying.

Yesterday, I introduced Connect2Canada as a case study of government making effective use of social media. Today, I’m taking a deeper look at Connect2Canada, what’s going on and the results that are being achieved.

What is it?

Connect2Canada is a network of Canadians and Friends of Canada in the United States. Its goal is to reach out to these people and make them quasi-Ambassadors for Canada.

Conect2Canada was started as a Website on July 1, 2005. The Facebook page was added in late 2008. The Twitter stream, Flickr photos and YouTube videos were added at the time of the inauguration of President Obama (Canada’s Embassy has a primo location in Washington, a great place to take videos and pictures of the inaugural parade.)

What are they achieving?

Connect2Canada’s community is growing constantly in several dimensions:

New members are signing up for email newsletters on the Connect2Canada Website.

Today, members span the United States.

The Connect2Canada Facebook page continues to attract new fan.

Connect2Canada is attracting new followers every week.

Community and Engagement

Making the flow of information two-way is a high priority for Connect2Canada. They respond to Twitter comments and email. But they also work to enable conversations among members, linking to groups around the US and promoting real life events and other networks of Canadians in the U.S.

The Connect2Canada community is highly engaged with C2C. One indicator of this: An email to C2C members from Ambassador Wilson had an open rate in excess of 50%. That’s one out of every two people who received the email opened it. I think that’s a very high rate for a broadcast email.

Resources and Champions

Connect2Canada is run by one full time staffer in the Canadian Embassy in Washington supported by part-time contributions from a few others. They rely on the Canadian Consulates throughout the United States to provide local content.

Connect2Canada had senior level champions. The social media activities were approved and supported by both the Ambassador in Washington and the Assistant Deputy Minister (North America) in Ottawa.

The importance of relevant content

The biggest lesson learned by Connect2Canada? The importance of good content. Says Eric Portelance, the Advocacy Officer at the Canadian Embassy in Washington in charge of who works on Connect2Canada, “You can have the best ideals, but if the content isn’t interesting to your target audience, they won’t come back or they won’t come at all.”

Connect2Canada asks new members to indicate their interests when they register. The people behind Connect2Canada then use this information to tailor content to the interests of members, sending them only the streams of content that match those interests.

Source material

Eric Portelance recorded a video interview with me on May 12 when he spoke at the Advanced Learning Institute‘s Conference on Social Media for Government in Ottawa. I’ve also drawn on his presentation slides as well as my Twitter notes from the conference.

You can watch my video interview with Eric Portelance on YouTube or in the player embedded below.

In the autumn, the Government of Canada announced a new initiative to integrate social media into its operations: GCPedia, a government-wide Wiki.

GCPedia has been up and running for several months. However, because it lives behind the Government of Canada’s firewall, you and I can’t see it or track how the experiment is proceeding.

The curtain will be drawn back briefly for attendees at the February 2 Third Tuesday Ottawa. Jeff Braybrook, the Government of Canada’s Deputy Chief Technology Officer, will talk about GCPedia and some of the more promising social media for government pilot projects.

I believe that social media holds tremendous potential to bring government closer to citizens. And I’m looking forward to the discussion with Jeff.

If you’re in Ottawa on February 2, you can register online to attend Third Tuesday.

And thanks to our national sponsors, CNW Group, Third Tuesday continues to be a free event.

I hope to see you there.

Government has been much slower than business to adopt social media tools and practices.

Now, the Mayor of Ottawa is aiming to make Canada’s capital city’s government a model for e-government by embracing and adopting Web 2.0 technologies. To help him do this, Mayor Larry O’Brien established a Mayor’s Task Force on eGovernment, chaired by Rob Collins, a former CIO of Business Intelligence software company Cognos.

Before entering politics, Mayor O’Brien was a high tech entrepreneur and founder and former CEO of Calian. So, he knows technology and should have a sophisticated understanding of its potential.

In announcing Rob Collins’ appointment, Mayor O’Brien said,

Our community is a global technology hub, and our citizens expect more service online.

We will take advantage of new Internet technologies, such as Web 2.0. We will move beyond simply publishing information online and begin to interact online with the public we serve.

That screams social media to me. RSS feeds to enable citizens to subscribe to information by neighbourhood or topics that mean the most to them. Blogs from city departments offering information and updates about programs and the opportunity for people to provide feedback. Flickr photos and youTube videos of important meetings, proposed developments and plans and major announcements. And maybe even Twitter feeds from important departments like snow clearing, electricity services, police and fire that tell people what is happening at times of emergency.

Unfortunately, the task force’s written mandate, released weeks after the Mayor’s announcement, seems to provide the committee a fairly narrow scope. The detailed mandate that has been posted on the City of Ottawa’s Website states that the task forces will:

• Review available IT options;
• Review requirements and opportunities for all areas of the city and assess an appropriate role for information technology;
• Solicit input from internal IT providers and users;
• Examine the City of Ottawa’s current Information Technology Plan and all current or proposed projects;
• Make recommendations (short-, medium-, and long-term) for development of an information technology plan that improves interaction with the public while increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of city operations.

Where are the citizens in these terms of reference? It appears that the consultations will be entirely inward looking, dealing with internal IT providers (vendors?) and users.

I hope that I’ve missread the terms and that the Task Force does intend to consult citizens on how they would like to connect with their government online. It would be a pity if they missed this opportunity.

To help encourage this, I’m inviting Rob Collins to be our guest at a special Third Tuesday social media meetup. This would provide him with an opportunity to gather ideas and input from the people in Ottawa who are exploring and using social media. I hope he accepts this invitation.

Colin McKay is one smart guy and as experienced as they come in social media. He’s been blogging as Canuckflack since 2003. Earlier this year, he launched a second blog, SoSaidtheOrganization, focusing on government communications and social media.

Colin also has a day job as the Acting Director of Communications at the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. And he’s used that position to launch what is arguably the most successful example of a government blog so far in Canada – the Privacy Commissioner’s Blog.

Colin was our guest at Third Tuesday Ottawa last month. During his presentation and in a lengthy question and answer session, he offered a candid view of how he managed to obtain the support to initiate the Privacy Commissioner’s blog and how he sustains it.

How has Colin been successful in introducing blogging and other social media tactics into a government environment that has been slow to embrace social media? His Third Tuesday discussion provided some practical tips and observations based on his experience.
Build a business case

“I’d been spending four years slamming my head against a wall bringing up social media and building some sort of conversation within a much larger department. And I think everyone who’s worked in a bureaucracy realizes at some point or another that there are institutional barriers to social media – fairly strong ones. But what I realized coming into a smaller organization like the Privacy Commissioner … if you enter an organization that has at least one or two people who recognize the benefits of social media, if you build a strong business case … something that drives along a business case model that identifies risk and how you will mitigate risk, you can convince … people to try something new…”

Don’t deny risk. Tackle it head on.

“At the Privacy Commissioner, I don’t have a Minister or a Deputy Minister. I have an Agent of Parliament. That means that my description of risk and my expression of the way that I would mitigate that risk and deal with crises as they evolved did not have to reach the same level of sophistication they would with a normal government department, with a department with far more people, far more issues and the possibility of many more things, either on a policy or a program level, going wrong.”

…

“What you have to be able to do is to say that we’re going to limit our experiment to this environment, to this particular policy, to this particular program and here are the five ways it could go wrong and here are the ways we’re going to kill this experiment if it does go wrong.”

Social media isn’t a stand alone. It’s part of a coherent strategy.

“The first thing I did when I arrived [at the Privacy Commissioner's Office] was I took a look at what we were doing in terms of communications and marketing and what we doing to reach out to specific audiences and whether we were missing audiences. It seemed to me that we had our stakeholder relations program down pat … and we were speaking to them through our traditional programs. … But we didn’t have any popular aspect and we didn’t have any techniques that would approach people who thought of privacy from a different point of view. …That was my access point to suggest that there are some fairly easy to deploy technologies that will let us communicate with these people in an experimental way.”

Help IT to understand that social software won’t punch holes in security.

“… communicators have to stop taking IT people’s denials and the assertion that the infrastructure needs to remain secure as gospel. … There’s no reason why a department couldn’t host a blog externally and link it to their internally hosted server. There’s no reason why the software can’t be deployed. It’s so easy there are twelve year old Russian boys doing it. If there’s a thirty-five year old man or woman telling you that the IT policies state that you can’t do it because of the integrity of your network, then they’ve got some worries about their network that relate to really poor construction and serious structural weaknesses. In which case, you have to work through your business case with the IT management to make them understand the options available and not depend on your IT people to sell it for you.”

Good things happen.

“I was surprised from the first day we were getting positive comments. We haven’t gotten a lot of comment SPAM. … What has appeared are a lot of supportive messages and a lot of comments like, “I was giving a presentation to my children’s grade school today and I saw your video and I’m going to pass it along to the teacher to show to the class. Which is exactly the sort of ‘home run’ I was hoping for.”

Colin and Third Tuesday host Ian Ketcheson talk about these and other issues in the following highlights audio clip.

 

 Colin McKay and Ian Ketcheson talk at Third Tuesday Ottawa [10:51m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Third Tuesday Ottawa has a speaker this month who’s been there, done that, and is finding ever better ways to do it.

Colin McKay has been one of Canada’s blogging pioneers since he started posting to Canuckflack in 2003. Since then, he has built a loyal following of readers who count on Colin’s eclectic interests to take them on a voyage of discovery through the profound, the whimsical and the offbeat. His inventive posts have driven Canuckflack to #65 on the AdAge Power 150 – the highest rated Canadian blog authored by a single person.

Earlier this year, Colin set up a new blog, SoSaidTheOrganization, to provide him with a space where he could post primarily about “how government organizations communicate and integrate social media.”

With all this experience, it’s not surprising that Colin is the moving force behind what is currently the state of the art Canadian government blog for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. Colin has demonstrated that a government blog can deal with issues of real consequence and stimulate broader debate in mainstream media as well as the blogosphere in a way that enhances trust in the blogging government institution.

If this isn’t enough to make this event a must-attend for you, I’ll give the final word about Colin to Colin himself. The About section of Canuckflack leads off with the following:

Supremely disappointed that he was neither raised by beavers nor moose, Colin McKay never heard his name being called during the closing “mirror” segment of Romper Room. An owner of Generation “X” in first run hardcover, he feels uncomfortable saying things like “for shizzle” and “peeps.” He’s old enough to remember when advertisers only wanted your cold hard cash, and had no aspirations to move in, become friends with your cat and get invited to Thanksgiving dinner.

How can you resist spending an evening with the author of that passage?

If you’re in Ottawa on November 19, plan to attend Third Tuesday. You’ll meet some smart people and have a chance to talk about the latest developments in social media in Canada. Guaranteed.

This past week Canadian Member of Parliament Garth Turner was ejected from the Conservative Party Caucus. His expulsion was linked to his blogging. It was suggested that the Prime Minister and his fellow Conservatives were fed up with Turner’s penchant for stating his views on his blog, views which did not always adhere to the Conservative line on key issues.

Some have suggested that this illustrates that blogging is incompatible with government (differentiated from politics.)

I disagree.

I think that the Turner expulsion illustrates that, regardless of medium, people will adhere to rules of membership that they agree with, and that organizations are entitled to withdraw membership from those who fail to live by their group’s rules. In other words, this affair is about the specific approach to control of information adopted by the current Conservative government and the refusal of one independent minded MP to play by those rules.

This same story played out a few years back when the more aggressive supporters of then-Finance Minister Paul Martin would regularly BlackBerry messages to sympathetic reporters with details of secret caucus discussions from inside the room while those very discussions were underway.

In an earlier era (and still today), this story played out in leaks by “unidentified sources” who provided insider information with a large dollop of spin to carefully selected reporters in the hope that the exclusive coverage would tilt strongly to the leaker’s perspective.

What’s different here is that Garth Turner has used his blog to speak openly and forthrightly about his views. He has not used the anonymity of the unidentified leaker to state his positions.

For its part, the Conservative Caucus has responded with the ultimate sanction – banishment. That’s their right. But, unfortunately for them, they’ve tried to spin their move in the traditional command and control way. While Garth Turner appeared on national television facing the cameras straight on with a backdrop of the Canadian flag as he explained his belief that MPs should speak their views clearly and without fear, the most memorable picture of the Conservative Caucus was of a series of hunched backs fleeing the camera and refusing to talk about what had just occurred. From a communications perspective, it was a blow out. Turner wins. (The politicial story, of course, has yet to play out. Turner may ultimately pay a much greater price, perhaps even losing the next election. But that’s for another day…)

Blogging is here to stay. We should recognize that other incidents like this will occur and that the parties will be judged as much by how they react as the blogger will be for what he or she posted. And my money is always on the person who seizes the high ground of honesty, sincerity and transparency.

What do you think?