Here I would like to look at effective ways the federal government of Canada, as well as the provincial government of Ontario, have used forms of social media to connect with their publics.
The federal government has its own internal wiki, called GCpedia. This past fall the Chief Information Officer of Canada announced that it had been working successfully. The site, a “collaborative text editing environment for federal government employees”, grew to over 8, 600 members and across 95 federal government departments. It began as “a repository for government information", but grew in its uses by the collaborators on the site. Users began to place documents on the site to be shared instead of being stored in their email accounts and being sent around when needed, which would take up bandwidth.
Government agencies have made themselves accessible on all platforms of social media, as well on mobile applications. The Public Health Agency of Canada have a page on their web site encouraging users to “stay informed and stay connected”. The agency is on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, with widgets for users to add to their own blogs and social media sites, and mobile applications available.
The provincial government in Ontario is also present in social media. “The province is employing a variety of Web 2.0 tools such as wikis, RSS and blogs to enable government employees to share information and collaborate on various projects.” The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Affordable Housing, Ministry of Natural Resources and Foodland Ontario all have Twitter accounts, which provide informational updates to their followers. While Foodland Ontario has over 3,000 followers and MNR has over 1,000, MAAH only has over 200. How effective are these initiatives if they are not getting attention? Does this show that the public is only interesting in engaging certain agencies in certain forums?
The Ontario Public Service also has its own version of a social networking site, in lieu being able to access Facebook, called OPSedia. It allows users to create profiles for themselves, write blogs and connect with other members of the OPS. However it is a strictly internal entity. This means is it is not a true form of social media, with access to the public and ease of information sharing. This attempt to control access to information on the government’s part shows there are still many hesitations on their side to embrace fully what social media is, as well as a fully open discourse with the public.
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