The Information Commissioner of Canada, Robert Marleau, provided his own personal reaction to a blog posting by Paul Wells, a columnist and blogger for Macleans magazine.

Commissioner Marleau followed up on his comments during a longer discussion with Wells, which Wells blogged this weekend.

The Information Commissioner, like my boss, is an independent Agent of the Parliament of Canada.

and I’m jealous of all the other Brits, heading off to their facilitation get-togethers, their community building projects and their semi-secretive social media initiatives for government.

Look at this recent twitter from Simon:

@Canuckflack Wait til you see next week. We’re going mashup crazy.

Meanwhile, he’s also pointing to experiments like the twittering of the next diplomatic mission to Washington. This from the official statement from 10 Downing Street:

“…Gordon Brown will visit the US next week, his second trip to the country as Prime Minister.

The Downing Street website will run a live microsite including images, rolling updates and a Twitter feed throughout the PM’s stay from 16 - 19 April. Log on from Wednesday to follow the PM’s activities.

Mr Brown is expected to visit Boston, the United Nations in New York and meet President Bush at the White House in Washington. His meetings will focus on the global economy and other areas of mutual bilateral interest.

Gordon Brown’s first trip to the US as PM saw him travel to Camp David in July last year.

Seeing as I AM a social media nerd, or a real politics nerd, I would ask:

• does this mean there’s a communications assistant responsible for the twitter feed?
• what sort of vetting process is there for twitter messages? On the fly?
• is the content going to concentrate on policy announcements? Any chance of side remarks about the entrees at the state dinner? Snide remarks about the little kids handing over flowers at events?
• what sort of twitter app are they going to use? Is it on a BlackBerry, Treo or other PDA?

Technorati Tags: government communications, United Kingdom, Gordon Brown, twitter, public diplomacy

Do you want an informative hour long discussion on the details of launching a government blog? Joe Thornley of ProPr and ThornleyFallis was kind enough to record the Third Tuesday session last month, where I was the A in a lengthy Q &A session on the steps and strategy needed to launch a social media campaign for a government organization. Ian Ketcheson was the moderator that led me down the garden path.

I find you always sound more important if someone else filters your words and extracts the soundbites, as Joe did:

“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…”

If you every had an urge to hear my voice, Joe has also posted an mp3  of a substantial part of the discussion.

How does your budget account for blogger outreach? Is it couched within a larger media outreach or stakeholder relations program? Or is it simply a one-off contract with a public relations firm?

Many social media experts counsel organizations to build a relationship with bloggers, to maintain contact and ensure a steady flow of information and comments in both directions.

Many governments find relationships easier to build with bloggers of a like-minded political bent - even if their total blogger outreach program attempts to build links with bloggers across the political spectrum.

How transparent is this relationship? Are your contracts airtight and free of any hint of conflict of interest or self-dealing?

Even more importantly - how much of a “chinese wall” has been established between your blogger outreach program and your day-to-day communications work?

Unfortunately, bloggers are still viewed as possibly biased, poorly sourced and likely conflicted.

One Minister’s office in Ottawa is facing this problem. It appears they hired a consultant to produce some communications work - a consultant who happens to write a politically friendly blog.

No matter how this contract was developed, or the distance between the consultant’s personal blogging work and her professional communications work, there is an appearance of impropriety.

It’s never a good thing when your spokesperson has to say “We do not pay bloggers in our office.” (Ottawa Citizen)

This week, I’ve had some opportunity to experiment with blogger relations in reaction to a fast-moving story. How do government spokespeople and representatives “engage” with bloggers, especially if your online conversation begins to outstrip your internal policy development process?

That’s the basic problem: program and policy decisions are rarely made quickly, especially in a government organization with responsibility to administrators and politicians.

There’s been some discussion lately of a blogger outreach code of ethics - particularly at Ogilvy. What would a blogger outreach code for government look like?

First, a caveat. Blogger outreach, in many cases, has involved a freebie of some sort. Unless you work in a tourism promotion program, you probably don’t have freebies.

Instead, blogger and social media outreach in a civil service context revolves largely around ideas, issues and public affairs.

With that in mind, I suggest some social media outreach maxims for civil servants:

• Know your strategy - your strategy for policy development as well as communications. Your contact and discussion with bloggers and social media must fit into your overall strategy for outreach, consultation and legislative action.
• Build a detailed outreach list. Make sure you’re speaking to influencers and bloggers well-versed in your issues and concerns.
• What does it take to win? Agree on your organization’s goals for your outreach.
• Explain how your outreach program can go wrong. Map out for others how a comment stream can go negative.
• Be thoroughly aware of the “state of play” in your issue or program. What are you trying to say? What are the limits to what you can say?
• What is the logical next step? Be ready to continue the conversation or debate.
• Be straightforward about your limitations. Don’t just drop a conversation or comment thread - explain your reasons for disengaging and identify how your organization may pursue the subject in other ways.
• ALWAYS be clear about your identity and level of authority. Communications staff shouldn’t wade knee deep into a technical conversation.
• Link and Point - don’t just restrict the conversation to your own knowledge. Point to other sources of information and commentary, especially if its buried deep inside the site map of your own organization, partners or international organizations.

Any thoughts?

UPDATE: Kaye points out in her response (linked in the comments) that quite good codes already exist, including that developed by WOMMA. I still feel that some work needs to be done to help bridge between the existing and traditional policy development process and the new world of social networks, honest conversation and frank discussion.

Technorati Tags: blogger outreach code, blogger outreach, government communications, social media code

I’ve volunteered to write a chapter - okay, a one page note - on how government communicators will have to adjust to dealing with the the members and issues embodied by new online networks and affinity groups for the new e-book being corralled by Gavin Heaton and Drew Mclellan:

… And out of that blogging conversation and a few e-mails, Gavin & I concocted the idea for an e-book about this new era of communications we’ve all entered together. But not just any book. It has to be a quick book. Exciting. Sharp. Inclusive. It had to be a book about community and conversation that came from that community and spoke the same vernacular. The title — The Conversation Age.

I’ll post my contribution when possible, I promise!