UKHomeOffice2.0 : towards a more engaging UK Home Office?
Extract of email sent to UK Home Office on Monday 25 February 2013...
Dear UK Home Office,
I thought to share some feedback regarding your social media engagement, with the view to enhancing your activities and resources.
It is superb to see this UK Ministry making use of various social platforms. This spans twitter, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. The twitter account makes regular postings, which link back to web site entries or link to other UK Home Office social media websites. The Flickr account shares Ministry info-graphics and photos from recent police seizures in support of UK Home Office objectives. This initiative is to be commended, particularly given the sparse resources sometimes made available to extend existing communication channels (email, phone, posted letters, printed articles). The regular updates is important for social engagement, this is because it entices more frequent viewing by others and could lead to greater engagement and collaboration. The simple layout of the web pages makes for easy navigation, with core text in main body of web page, major sections listed across the top banner of the web page, web links to related content in the right side (with clear delineation of links to twitter and Flickr content), links at foot of page that include complaints, terms & conditions, etc; and an opportunity for the user to share articles via various social media platforms.
Some suggested enhancements:
- The links from homeoffice.gov.uk/ to the official social media tools do not always offer a web link when they perhaps should. In general, if there is a reference to one of the social media tools, then ideally the text or icon/graphic should link to the UK Home Office's account on that platform.
Example 1: missing links to official social media tools on Twitter policy page http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/media-centre/our-twitter-policy - There should be links to the related social media accounts used by UK Home Office.
Example 2: links to twitter and Flickr toward bottom of main text on http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/media-centre/news/renew-passport - Suggested enhancements: the text regarding Twitter is "Follow on Twitter with #beatthepeak", this could link to the @ukHomeOffice twitter account (additional ideas listed in the next paragraph).
Alternative links for twitter on this web page: could provide web link to a twitter search for tweets containing the hashtag #beatthepeak. I would not recommend this simplistic approach as the results might include tweets that have no relationship with the @ukHomeOffice campaign; this is because there is no ownership of a Twitter hashtag. Indeed, the same key word could be used by another twitter account for other purposes. A better option might be to link to tweets containing both @ukHomeOffice and #BeatThePeak: this can be done using the following URL: https://mobile.twitter.com/search/%40ukHomeOffice+%23BeatThePeak - If you prefer to scope the search results to tweets published by @ukHomeOffice (not those published by any other twitter account) that contain the hashtag #beatthepeak, then use URL https://mobile.twitter.com/search/%40from:ukHomeOffice+%23BeatThePeak - In both cases, the results will only contain the recent 6-9 days of tweets, if there are any matching tweets. - The policy governing how the UK Home Office uses social media to be published on the UK Home Office website - This could be linked from both the "About Us" and "Contact Us" sections of the UK Home Office website.
This goes beyond a "Twitter Policy", which is available on http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/media-centre/our-twitter-policy/ (and which is linked to from "Publication" section on the right side of the Media Centre web page http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/media-centre/). Indeed, a Social Media Policy is likely to play a role in the digital strategy, and perhaps merits a section on the website: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/about-us/corporate-publications/ho-digital-strategy/what-needs-to-change - It is perhaps representative that at present the Digital Strategy and Twitter policy appear to be disjoint, with no cross links, and lacking an overarching Social Media Policy. Such a policy might explain the approaches being used, the intended uses, how often the Social Media policy is to reviewed, who conducts the review, and how any external input is solicited and appraised.
Neil Williams, Digital Product Manager within UK Government Digital Services, has published a template guide (for Twitter) for UK government departments. This is a 20 page guide that is available online http://www.scribd.com/doc/17313280/Template-Twitter-Strategy-for-Government-Departments - Additionally, in 2011, Neil and colleagues published a consultation paper on this topic http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2011/05/24/a-vision-for-online-consultation-and-policy-engagement/
Related Idea: if the Home Office requires a policy or guide for *internal* staff's use of social media, I would recommend referring to the IBM guidelines that have been made public, and used by a number of other organisations for their own internal policy: http://www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/guidelines.html
(disclaimer: I previously worked for IBM, and might therefore be deemed biased; I share this information on my own initiative) - Twitter account @ukHomeOffice appears to be used for broadcast only, with some retweets.
The twitter account does not seem to make any response to other Twitter users. This appears at least to be consistent with the UK Home Office "Twitter policy" http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/media-centre/our-twitter-policy which states that messages to the @ukHomeOffice account will be reviewed daily, and which also states that twitter messages toward the @ukHomeOffice account might receive a generic response suggesting that the message sender make use of an alternative communication tool (email, phone, posted letter).
Whilst the use of Twitter, together with other social media tools, to disseminate information is meaningful and useful, this does not take full advantage of these platforms for social engagement and client focus. The use of one-way messaging limits the benefits of social media as only a news outlet. This might also stifle feedback, by raising barriers to communication. A more engaging approach might include responding to queries with personalised message that directs the user to a specific web page or FAQ on the UK Home Office website, or absorbing feedback received via the various social media tools used by the UK Home Office, and responding in a manner to indicate how this feedback will proceed through internal UK Home Office systems.
The "Twitter policy" page indicates that "At the moment we are only following other governmental Twitter accounts." This might be sensible, yet there is a lack of consistency. Amongst the 30 accounts followed by @ukHomeOffice (on 25 February 2013), there are at least 2 non department twitter accounts: @martinbeckford - editor for Mail on Sunday, and @TimesCrime - editor for The Times. Furthermore, it is not the case that *any* government twitter account is followed, only those relating to *UK* government departments. Perhaps you might update the Twitter Policy to state that only official "UK Government" twitter accounts will be followed by @ukHomeOffice, and that these will be complemented by following "reputable and related UK media" (specify the criteria, perhaps also with a defined mechanism for proposing additional twitter accounts to follow). The @ukHomeOffice account could then make use of "Twitter Lists" to clearly identify those accounts that are UK media, rather than UK government departments.
Twitter policy has a section titled "Direct messages" that appears to confuse the nomenclature used within Twitter. The Twitter terminology of "Direct Messages" (aka "DM") refers to private messages sent to another Twitter account that follows you. The Direct Messages section starts with the text: "In most circumstances we will not reply to direct messages". Given that @ukHomeOffice only follows UK department accounts (and 2 media twitter accounts), it is unlikely that there will be many cases where @ukHomeOffice will receive Direct Messages on Twitter. It might be appropriate to amalgamate the two sections on the UK Home Office Twitter policy web page, perhaps referring to the section as "Responding to your Twitter messages". This section could simply state that tweets to @ukHomeOffice are reviewed daily, yet not all will receive a personal response via twitter; and that the approach used by @ukHomeOffice at present is to suggest that any feedback or queries be submitted via other routes, such as email, phone, or posted letter.
Whilst it is the case that twitter limits messages to 140 characters, this does not necessarily mean that it is not feasible to provide meaningful responses via Twitter. This goes back to creating a policy of engagement across the social platforms used by UK Home Office (see related comments in section 2). In a recent tweet by William Hague, UK Foreign Secretary, it appears that the FCO has an engagement social media strategy https://twitter.com/WilliamJHague/status/304958583819358208 - there is a recent example of FCO's social media engagement with @RDavisFCO twitter based Q&A that used the hashtag #MiddleEastQA (see related newspaper article http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/politics/dubai-based-british-diplomat-bombarded-on-twitter-q-a). In the near future, it might be reasonable for the @ukHomeOffice to respond to comments received via the various social media platforms, including Twitter and YouTube. This should be consistent with the UK Home Office digital strategy, rather than done on an ad-hoc basis.
Neil Williams, Digital Product Manager within UK Government Digital Services, helpfully provides a curated list of UK departments using twitter, this might simplify the task for selecting the UK government Twitter accounts for @ukHomeOffice to follow : http://neilojwilliams.net/missioncreep/2009/the-uk-government-on-twitter/ - Published information graphics on UK Home Office Flickr account are not legible, see http://t.co/XtnMRAdFQo - The names of towns are pixelated, making it hard to read. Consider using higher resolution images for #BeatThePeak info-graphics, so that these can be read after being published online.
On a related note: the info-graphics for the #beatthepeak campaign only provide data for 4 grouped areas of UK: Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland, the Midlands, and North East & North West England. As this information has only recently been published, perhaps it is the case that the other regions will be released in the near future. Why not indicate the reason for only sharing 4 "regions" within the article? Will more data be published at a later date? Will you also release World Wide data relating to the passport applications made from overseas? - Invalid links to icons resulting in links displaying a question mark...
Example: links on right side of webpage do not appear to find valid icons to be used http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/agencies-public-bodies/ips/ - instead the links have an icon of a question mark. It might be the case that the graphical images have been moved.
This error appears to be repeated on other web pages on the UK Home Office website, see right side links on page http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/agencies-public-bodies/ips/press-releases/nir-destroyed and http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/agencies-public-bodies/fsr
My desire is for these suggestions and comments to be positively received. They are intended as constructive input into the ongoing evolution of UK Home Office services.
Please note that I have posted these onto a personal blog, such that they can be reviewed and augmented by others... making use of social media to crowd-source additional suggestions and feedback.
