….. What would @JackBauer do?
You hear the word Twitterthon and you almost want Noel Edmonds, Dave Lee (Hairy Cornflake) Travis et-al to come bounding out in Christmas jumpers, with comedy mobile phones for 24 hours of furious tweeting induced RSI. But alas no, today it is @tamesidecouncil who are tweeting about the calls they get to their service centre.
Speaking to the Guardian, Tameside Council Deputy Executive Leader Cllr John Taylor said:
It is important in these austere times that residents appreciate what we do, so they can better judge the value of services we offer. We know we have to save £100m over the next four years and we feel that by having an improved understanding of our services, residents will able to get more involved in the difficult decisions that lie ahead.
I whole heartedly agree with the sentiment that residents, service users, customers, call them what you will need to appreciate what Local Government actually do for the money they are given.
But first we had GMP 24 then we had Walsall Council 24, then we had….. you get the picture. Should we have learnt by now that there is a thirst for openness & transparency that needs to be quenched and doesn’t need the gimmicks of a Twitterthon?
Don’t get me wrong, I am a great advocate of Twitter and the benefits it can bring, but I am also a realist that Twitter is not the be-all and end-all when it comes to customer service. What Dan Slee has done in Walsall with Walsall 24 & the legendary Twitter Gritter is fantastic, but what now? Amanda & Kevin from the comms team at Greater Manchester Police, both get this social media lark but after all the 999 calls being tweeted what next? Granted they have got a lot of local officers on Twitter who provide crime prevention information and crime warnings in their local areas, but what of the 999 calls?
We shouldn’t be talking about these initiatives in hushed tones, ‘do you remember when..‘ we should be saying ‘remember when Dan Slee & GMP kicked all this openness & transparency stuff off on Twitter?‘
Likewise with Tameside, after the 24 hours is over then what? They will get some great publicity & media coverage from it but what next? Another council or organisation will do ’24 hours in….’ and get a little less publicity and this will go on and on. Maybe a council will do 7 days in…. at some point in the future to grab the headlines.
This notion of one- (or 6) upmanship isn’t actually as daft as it seems.
So what would Jack Bauer do?
I would hope that Jack Bauer and his team of crack twitterati & coders would actually develop a system that could take a short text field of say, oh I don’t know 140 characters, and publish to the web / Twitter as a permanent feature. The actual publishing isn’t difficult, the sanitising of the information however does take a little more thought. It could be as simple as adding a text field to the page the customer service representative has to complete as part of the call logging process.
Yes it will go wrong at some point, I can almost guarantee that someone will type something like ‘stupid old bag complaining about the bin men again‘ but everything comes with some risks and if we stop taking risks then we will never develop or improve.
Related Links
Twitter People Mentioned
@danslee
@amandacomms
@MrKevinHoy
@tamesidecouncil
Posted from Stoke-on-Trent, England, United Kingdom.
A really good thoughtful post, Mike.
I suppose there’s two ways of looking at these Twitter 24 events. Firstly, we can’t lose sight that they do have the capability to showcase what a public sector organisation does for people. If the Twitter stream is displayed on a council webpage it also reaches far beyond Twitter.
That’s for outside the Twitter bubble.
There’s been two seven day Twitter events. Shropshire Country Council’s #shrop360 and on a smaller scale a Walsall Council and Walsall Police event focussing on Walsall Town Centre called #walsall100.
However, I do absolutely accept so much of what you say. No doubt there will be diminishing returns if we all just copy what went before.
They are of most use when they are developing and innovating, shining a light and constantly striving to present information in a new way.
We always wanted #walsall24 to different and radical. But to use a geek analogy, we were really keen for it to appear very quickly as quaint and basic as a ZX 81 by other people innovating with the model and taking uit to different levels. The Southampton University Hospital Trust initiative #oceanward very quickly did that by tweeting a 12-hour shift focussing on the human stories – and pictures – on the ward.
In other words, it was something that developed and moved on.
Adrian Short made a brilliant point about how he was wondering how so much of what was tweeted in #walsall24 could be automated to become an established part of the picture. He’s absolutely right and it’s something we’re looking at.
For me, #gmp24 and in a small way #walsall24 was about opening up the door. It wasn’t an event about doors. I’m sure those behind #gmp24 suich as @amandacomms would agree.
Dan Slee(Quote) (Reply)
Thanks Dan.
I’m in no way dismissing the 24 events, as you say putting the feed on the website amplifies the output greatly.
Each council that does this now will get less and less publicity as it isn’t new and innovative any more.
I’m like a child at Christmas, I want the next big thing now, I don’t want people to say ‘we tried tweeting and saw no benefit’.
Michael Rawlins(Quote) (Reply)
Hi Mike.
What Dan said.
Also, via #walsall24 we were able to dispel some of the fear colleagues previously had at using this strange and unknown medium, when press releases and the website have been the norm for so long. More colleagues are now dipping their toes in the water (the twitter-stream, boom boom), or on the verge of doing so with a bit of help, and this can only be a good thing for real time two way communications with residents, visitors and commerce.
Time, and comms tools don’t stand still though, as I think both you and Dan commented. We’re lucky at Walsall in that we have the support of the senior managers, as well as having a number of councillors interested in communicating in new ways.
Kate Goodall(Quote) (Reply)
You’re absolutely right, Mike and I do take the post in the constructive spirit it was written in : )
There will be diminishing returns on 24 events.
But that’s not to say they shouldn’t in one form or another be done. As a way of breaking down internal barriers alone they are worth doing.
The drive is to think creatively. Expand. Innovate. Even mainstream.
Dan Slee(Quote) (Reply)
Damn there goes my idea for another Tweetathon!
Well actual I was exploring the idea of running a twitter session opening up a local health Organisation (I’ve got to get the board to agree hence anonymity). I hoping to use the twitter platform for 2 purposes, 1) Communication 2) Logging data entries. So using location and a coding system we can open up the organisation through moment by moment updates while developing a piece of open data.
Another potential project is based around ‘a day in the life of an older persons ward’ using Audioboo (therefore using audio, still image, tweets and tags). This is currently on a back burner due to other commitments but do want to return to the idea as I do have support to facilitate it.
Carl(Quote) (Reply)
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