Listen, Participate, Transform.

We have just published the second think-piece from the project, called Listen, Participate, Transform. A social media framework for local government. You can download the paper in pdf from our website, or view it on scribd. Any feedback/comments are actively encouraged!

There are already lots of excellent publications around social media and local government, and our intention was to capture their essence in a simple framework that helps local government (or any agency really…) structure their social media activity around. It builds on this excellent social media framework developed by the global media  firm MEC.I won’t go into detail explaining the framework here, but we’ve tried to build upon MEC’s  largely communications orientated framework and go through the implications of using social media i.e.  it’s capacity to transform the way things are done. This stage of the framework is the exploratory bit. The efficiency agenda has brought into sharp focus the need to transform the way local authorities work and social media clearly has a role to play. But the reluctance of many local authorities to wholeheartedly embracing social media means that concrete examples of how social media has led to the redesign, replacement or remodeling of services and approaches to working are hard to come by. We are sure it’s happening in some places and we are sure there will be more examples soon, but if you know of anything that is relevant please do let us know.

There was another great report pertaining to this ‘transformational’ point released yesterday by NESTA. Radical Efficiency argues that rather than just looking for efficiency gains from new suppliers or new resources, it’s possible to get better and cheaper public services by searching for incites from new customers, which are ignored under present systems, and new insights into users. Well worth a read.