16 awesome ways to use social media for e Governance

When people everywhere are embracing social media by the millions, no reason why e-governance should be left behind. Here are 16 successful uses of social media for e-governance from around the world:

Monitoring Power Outages

North America’s energy grid is ageing, and marred with frequent outages. The average outage time for the grid in a year is as high as 214 minutes in the North east (the comparable figure in Japan is only 4 minutes). Overhauling the grid would, of course, require a lot of money. So, what the power companies there are doing is taking recourse to the social media.

To get a better handle on the real-time source information on outages, they are using geotagged posts (social media posts with location information included). It is no secret that customers flooded in darkness in turn tend to flood sites such as Twitter and Facebook with complaints. Most of these complaints are sent from their mobiles, including smart phones. Municipalities and power companies can use the social media monitoring and analytical tools to find out the origin of posts as well as the quantum of complaints. This helps them make the right assessment as to how serious the outage is and allocate appropriate resources to address the same.

A Tale of Three Cities

In a survey of their websites and usage of social media, three US cities came out tops: Seattle, Louisville, and Chicago. The trio was ranked relatively high on the interactivity index and noted for their initiatives. Seattle is applauded for its neighbourhood planning and citizen participation, and Chicago for participatory policies such as community policing and using Twitter to solicit budget ideas. In the same vein, the mayor of Louisville is said to have held regular Q&A sessions online. All the three cities are relatively more active in their use of social networks for reaching out to citizens. Each mayor is said to be active on Twitter, for instance.
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Macau Wants to Know How

In a global ranking, Macau was among the top 50 in the world in e-government. To make further inroads with optimum use of the Internet and social media, the University of Macau published  research about the situation of Internet and social media usage in Macau. At 70% penetration, the Internet is in a mature stage, and web forums and social sites are assuming more importance and influence over the people.

As per the survey, while 34.65% of users are satisfied with the layout of portals, content and services provided by Macau e-Government, as many as 45.21% of users expressed no opinion. However, a very high percentage of users (77.19%) said they would rather use social media than browse a website for government information.

The survey clearly indicated that the features of ease of use directly affect the usefulness of Macau e-Government. The government is using the survey results to further improve its services and enhance social media interactions.

Detecting Earthquakes just in time

The U.S. Geological Survey is aggressively working on TED (Twitter Earthquake Dispatch). It uses specialised software to gather real-time messages from Twitter, applying place, time and keyword filters to create real-time accounts of shaking.

The inspiration came from an event in 2011, when a 5.9-magnitude earthquake shook the North east. It was then that many New Yorkers learned about it on Twitter seconds before the tremors actually occurred.

Typically, such alerts can take two to 20 minutes to be issued. Tweets from people at the epicentre near Washington, D.C., outpaced the quake itself, providing a unique early warning system. The department is now building on such crowdsourced warnings.

Cherokee Draws More Likes

One of the fastest growth segments of Cherokee County’s population is a millennial generation that is buying homes and building families. Interestingly, most of them are turning to the Internet and social media as a primary resource for local news. This drew attention of the county leaders, who decided to rev up the county’s digital and social media presence and leverage it to compete with other local communities across the country in economic development and attracting new employers. The Cherokee County Board of Commissioners developed a plan for creating content for their website and social media networks to educate and inform stakeholders, constituents, businesses and C-level executives. The new content marketing and social media programme has resulted in about 53% increase in fans on Facebook; 241% increase in followers on Twitter; and 40% follower growth on LinkedIn. The County has also established a strong presence on Instagram. In fact, its Klout Score, a measure of social media influence, has increased by 300%.

Not just the number of likes and followers, what is impressive here is that the County has seen an increase in citizen engagement and civic reporting, greater citizen awareness about their local government, and more economic development leads.

Tweet for a Clean Street

Turning to Twitter for garbage collection may sound weird, but the social media platform worked wonders for the residents of Vancouver. Due to erratic pick-up schedules, there were greater chances of collections beings missed, resulting in overflowing bins on streets and in homes.

To streamline processes, the city took to Twitter. It set up a website where residents could sign up the night before garbage and recycling collection. With specialised bulk tweeting and scheduling tools, it got smoother. The city now boasts of cleaner streets and excellent customer service at a much lower cost compared to traditional phone centres or email.

Using Facebook for Disaster Warning

The Philippines is one of the countries with a very large number of Facebook users. This, perhaps, is one reason that the Filipino Government intends to encourage the use of social media as a disaster warning tool. According to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC), they have tested the application of these tools during recent events of flooding and storm.

The government’s Weather Watch Facebook site issues hourly updates on road, sea and town situations, warning people about collapsed roads, incoming monsoons, cold fronts, and dangerous sea conditions for fishermen.

During the recent floods, about 131,580 people were reported to have used the Philippines Information Agency Weather Watch website to receive updates. However, the use of social media as an effective disaster warning system is still restricted as a majority of Internet users in the country are based in Manila.

Money via Facebook?  Why Not!

For customers tired of signing in tokens to make bank transactions, Singapore headquartered Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) has launched an innovative micro-payment service that enables customers to transfer funds using Facebook, mobile and email.

The smartphone-based service, OCBC Pay Anyone, supports payments of up to S$100 to any bank account in Singapore. By simply selecting a payee from the contact list on mobile phone, email or Facebook and keying in the password, a sender can make payments. The recipient, however, will need to key in his bank account details and enter the same pass-code to complete the transaction.

A move that is being viewed as a way of enhancing customer stickiness and keeping a competitive edge, it will also resolve the users’ challenge of remembering the account numbers. According to the bank, the system adheres to security standards for the online banking and fund transfers, and they expect 15% of all funds transfers on mobile to be using this service over a period of one year.

White House SAVE Award

The SAVE Award, an annual crowdsourcing competition organised by the White House, is an opportunity for federal employees to float ideas that will help the government save money.

The winning idea in 2013 suggested a change in the way the Department of Veterans Affairs operates. The department used to send the majority of outpatient prescriptions to patients via mail. So to track the delivery of the mailed prescription, the patients needed to call their local Veteran Affairs Medical Center, which was not very convenient for them. At the same time, it was a time consuming affair for the pharmacy staff.

To make it simpler, it has been recommended that the package tracking information be made available to veterans online through the existing web portal of the Veteran Health Administration.

Policing with a Blog

The Queensland Police Service has set up the myPolice blog, which endeavours to keep a digital eye on the Gold Coast area.

The blog allows officers to interact with members of the community that may not be able to get to the station or to a Neighbourhood Watch meeting.

Developing social media channels has provided police services units a 24-hour two-way communication system. In a recent incident of late night assault that occurred at 11 pm, within hours, several eye witnesses had contacted the police via social media, helping it track down the assailants.

The department is now working on developing processes to allow the information provided through social media to be incorporated in the formal information flow.

Social Mania in Kenya

The Presidential Strategic Communications Unit in Kenya has launched an interactive platform on social media where the public can field questions to senior officials across ministries and get real time answers. The platform will help ministries bridge the communication gap and understand what the people expect of them.

The questions posed by the people are sent to the database where they are recorded for response. The ministries not only answer the queries, but also seek feedback. The Ministry of Labour was the first in the league to use social media to connect with the public.

The State House Digital Team will soon also deliver a website and Android app for public use.

China’s Modern ‘Marco Polo’

Even though the Chinese government has banned social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook in the country post 2009 riots, it definitely believes in the communication effectiveness of these tools. The government has set up a Facebook page to pull visitors to the country and even hired a Briton to run the page.

The page has been set up to promote the country’s fast-growing city of Hangzhou to overseas businesses and tourists. Hangzhou is looking to attract both businesses and tourists and is pushing its links to Marco Polo the explorer who was one of the first Westerners to visit the area.

Through the page, the government intends to tell the world about the city. Hangzhou is famous for its tea, silk and traditional medicine and does not have the smog and other problems associated with the more industrialised cities in the country.

When Obama Got Reddit to Talk to the World

It’s not everyday that you get to question the President, but when you do you don’t let the opportunity pass. Precisely, this is what happened when the US President Barack Obama participated in the AMA (ask me anything) session on the social news site Reddit. About 200,000 people tuned in and submitted over 6,000 comments in barely 34 minutes of the session.

Obama responded to a variety of unfiltered questions put up by Reddit users, on everything ranging from tax cuts to Internet freedom and even the White House beer recipe. Interestingly, governments of all levels have also used similar Q&A sessions on Twitter to interact with the high and mighty. HootSuite and other social media management tools can help monitor keywords and hashtags during these events, allowing conversation of thousands unfold in real time.

Of Zombies and Disease Control

Fear appeal succeeds in most social marketing cases and it worked here too. The Centres for Disease Control in the US published a scary blog post titled Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse.

The write-up started on a gripping note asking readers: Where do zombies come from and why do they love eating brains so much?The post was actually meant to explain how to get ready for real emergencies.

This was an innovative attempt by the CDC to attract readers and it in fact pulled over 1,200 comments, debating intricacies of zombie culture and emergency preparedness. More recent posts on the blog focused on what the popular board game Pandemic can teach about how disease spreads.

Using compelling to read posts, the CDC blog has illustrated how governments can use online channels to engage and educate.

$1 Million in Donations in a Week? No Problem!

When the Australian Environment Minister scrapped the Climate Commission last year, donations through social media helped resurrect it. The social media campaign was a runaway hit and raised $900,000 in less than a week.

The commission originally was set up to provide public information on global warming, but was axed by the new government, citing that the move will save the government $1.6 million a year and also streamline processes, while the climate change analysis would be provided by the Environment department.

Dubbed as “Obama style” of fundraising method, the campaign received donations from about 2,000 individuals and most of those were small donors, with an average donation of about $50. To begin with, the councillors aimed to raise $500,000 in a week; however, collections far exceeded the original targets. Once donations reached close to $800,000, they upped the target to $1 million on Facebook.

Twitter in the time of cholera

It was a double whammy of sorts for Haiti back in 2010 when cholera spread in the wake of an earthquake. Cholera spread throughout the neighbourhoods faster than health care workers could respond, claiming over 6,500 lives.

The authorities resorted to Twitter to take control of the situation. Aided by specialised software, they were able to track the number and location of cholera-related tweets, pinpointing outbreaks well in advance of official warnings.

The sheer quantity of public data shared on Twitter, Facebook and other networks makes social media an invaluable reporting and tracking tool. With the right software to filter and analyse keyword streams, authorities can identify trends from outbreaks to traffic problems, in almost real time.

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