This is Publishing

Listened in Wednesday on the C-SPAN coverage of the Potomac Forum discussion of new technologies and government: the Gov 2.0 Leadership, Collaboration, and Public Engagement Symposium. One phrase kept rattling through my head later in the day, stated by Jack Holt, Senior Strategist for Emerging Media for the Department of Defense, Defense Media Activity.

The Defense Department is doing a lot of innovative things in terms of communicating with the public. Holt was asked if there are risks that information might be revealed. His response was, you have to remember that social media is publishing. And he went on to say, there are rules when you publish something: rules about defamation, for example. One must, or should, follow the rules when publishing. That's a very productive line of thinking, because every local elected official should be familiar with the rules of the publishing road if he or she is going to become a publisher.

I'm going to dive into the wiki guide to a local official's use of social media some of us have been working on and add that phrasing. Remember, you are publishing. As detailed in my post a couple days ago, some government officials have got into trouble for thinking what they are doing on Twitter or Facebook is whispering. It ain't. It's distribution of a form previously undreamed of.

Meanwhile, the conference continues, and anyone who looks at Twitter can keep track of the action.

Tweeting Success

Wanted to crosspost a case history: how we used Twitter in Lakewood to recognize and fix a problem.

The Politician as Human Being

Lately what's been on my mind as a blogging councilman is what is going to happen in November after the election. We're going to have a lot of new local elected officials who have used social media tools like blogs, Twitter, Facebook and such in order to communicate and thus, in order to get elected. They are going to come out of the gate expecting to use these tools as local elected officials.

There isn't, to my knowledge, any way of orienting these folks to how they should behave once elected. So my plan right now is try to convene some other Washington elected officials and see if we can come up with something in a hurry.

Why am I concerned? Well, here's the deal. Three of the people who use social media in this state ran into trouble:

1. A councilman from Olympia got embarrassed by use of social media. I've known Jeff for a long time. He is a smart guy, and a conscientious person. If he can make a mistake, so can I.

2. And I did. I blogged during a council meeting when people don't expect you to type during a meeting, and paid dearly for it. Good intentions don't count. I don't know if I am as smart or as conscientious as Jeff, but I sure try. So that's two of us now.

3. More recently, a sister in the use of social media to communicate, a councilwoman from Mukilteo, got embarrassed via Twitter. Her situation also shows council members could maybe have known a little more about what business should be done in public and how meetings should be conducted. It's good the discussion among councilmembers came to light via her post, but maybe that wasn't the best way.

And it's clearly not a Washington thing. A political figure in Oregon was caught very publicly unawares because he apparently did not realize Facebook is a public forum whatever your privacy settings might claim.

None of us are idiots. All of us got caught unawares. It's up to us to come up with something to prevent others from stumbling over great tools. Some of us have been working on a wiki about the usual of social media that might help a lot. But surely there's more we can do.

Before Asking 'Where's the Digital Democracy," Ask if Anyone Wants It

I've been trying to decide if it's good or bad that I had not read Beth S Noveck's book Wiki Government before preparing this presentation for Barcamp Tacoma, a tech event near my home. Maybe it's good I didn't include her points, because the talk went on long enough. I was trying to summarize a wealth of information about how close, and yet so far, we are to tying people, participation, and government together in the digital age. It seems to me a truly collaborative government could not engage citizens but really solve some problems.

The Static Age: Challenges to a More Digital Democracy

View more presentations from walterneary.

You don't need to view the slideshow to follow the rest of this post, which refers to a paragraph from Noveck's book that hit me in the face like the proverbial gush of cold water. I just read it in a diner in Edgewood, Washington, and was so absorbed that I looked down and realized at some point I had eaten two chicken burritos and some white chili but had no memory of them. The book is a good read for anyone interested in the future of participatory democracy.

To be honest, it had not occurred to me that the problem is a lack of demand for digital democracy.

Clearly, there is widespread recognition we have a long ways to go. I will share more about the Noveck book, but I just had to share this comment from page 147 because it seems starkly on target and deadly right on:

While there has been a groundswell of attention to the problem of transparency in government and the need for government to release information that is accessible, searchable, and usable, there is no similarly widespread outcry for participation or collaboration.

Perhaps because the ideal of citizen engagement in government – as distinct from civic life – seems so unattainable or because our experience with citizen participation has been so anemic or because neither government professionals nor the public has yet embraced the theory of shared and collaborative expertise, no blue-ribbon commissions have been convened to address what it might require to reengineer the role of the public in governance.

(Walter interrupts the paragraph: Wow, I would have edited that last sentence differently, but read it again. It's a Zinger. What Beth Noveck is basically saying is that we are asleep to the potential of a stronger democracy)

Just as incumbent businesses are slow to rethink old business models, there does not seem to be a great deal of political will among professionals, who are understandably mired in the day-to-day, to use the newly available technology to develop more effective governance through collaboration.

That's a new way, to me, of considering the question. Creating demand: what will it take to get the public excited about the potential of collaborative government?

Facebook's Missing Nouns

As Facebook becomes more popular, it seems to become more effective. I posted a note asking for volunteers for our city's transportation board, and I already had a person respond to the Facebook post. That's better than I've seen via blogs or email.

Obviously, more testing is needed, but this is a good sign.

Yet I am leery of putting more time into Facebook. Here's where I see a problem with Facebook as the definitive networking solution. You can be a friend or a supporter, but you can't apparently just be a contact or monitor. The language used within Facebook has not caught up with its popularity. That can create awkwardness both in business and politics.

This has been nagging at me awhile, but a casual chat last night really brought it to mind.

One of my fellow Lakewood city council members has been on vacation in Hawaii. He has posted some pictures of himself scuba-diving. I mentioned after the meeting last Monday to the city manager that I was enjoying the updates on the councilman's trip and mentioned the pictures on Facebook. The city manager said something about how he really needs to get on Facebook, but then commented, "But that raises the question, should I be a "friend" of a council member?"

Well, that's a darn good question. The city manager directly reports to the city council. In a way, it's like asking if an employee in any job should friend a supervisor. And yet when public officials are in a spotlight, it seems reasonable to me that government employees would want to keep in touch with what they are doing via Facebook.

My inclination would be to tell the city manager, sure, 'friend' me and the other council members. But let's say I run for re-election .... would someone accuse me of being "too close" to the city manager? What do people, particularly those unfamiliar with Facebook, consider a 'friend?'

The reason this has been on my mind at all is because there are a couple of organizations I've thought about following on Facebook but haven't. That's because of how Facebook describes someone who follows a page. Right now, if you decide to follow my City Council page, you are listed as a "supporter" of Walter Neary, the councilman. Well, I'd love that ... but it also seems that someone who might want to withhold judgment or someone who might even want to run against me would want to follow my page. It's very strange for that person to have to sign up as a "supporter."

Myself, I'd love to follow a couple of business competitors of my employer, Comcast. I know people who work at some of the other companies; it's not like business competition has to be personal. I'd love to know what they are up to, and would be delighted if they showed interest in my company's local Facebook page. But it seems odd and awkward that I a Comcast employee have to sign up as a "supporter" of Verizon.

Here's a bit of an unusual wrinkle on this matter: There's one business competitor of ours in Tacoma that twice mailed to people attacks on the effectiveness of what I do for the company, community relations. Needless to say, I sure don't want to sign up as a "supporter" of folks who put out a mailing that misled my wife when she read it. That hurt. I'm no supporter of that. But I'd like to follow their page on Facebook, if only to see if they continue to say anything misleading about me or what I do.

So in business and politics, I see a disconnect between Facebook's use of the terms "friends" and "supporters," and it's growing use as a broad social portal and town hall. What do you think?

A postscript: Some of the readers who have been at politics and social media for awhile will have another question. If the city manager and I are friends on Facebook, might we generate email to each other outside the city email system that would have to be disclosed through the public records act? And wouldn't that be an archiving nightmare? Yes, and yes, so that alone might settle the question. But my point remains, does Facebook have the best language for its role as a social portal?)