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Authentic. Engaging. Conversational. Open. Spontaneous. Honest.
6 words that perfectly describe the spirit of social media. The filter is broken down and communication is instant, passionate and direct.
For The Canadian Government, however, a different set of 6 words can be applied to the social media strategy.
Calculated. Moderated. Ordered. Planned. Detailed. Focussed.
New social media guidelines were issued earlier this month for public servants and their use of everything from Twitter and Facebook to Wikis and Blogs.
Josh Greenberg, a social media expert and associate professor at Carleton University's school of journalism and communication, said the guidelines reflect the tensions of a government that espouses openness, transparency and accountability but governs with a firm control on communications and centralized decision-making.
"It reads like it was written by senior bureaucrats and their legal teams who are afraid to let their communicators communicate," said Greenberg.
Bureaucratic social networking must first go through a tangle of red tape before it can enter the series of tubes. Instant messaging will become approved messaging in the hopes that nothing goes off the rails.
Officially Clement is the Treasury Board Secretariat President and the event is being called a "moderated tweet chat" on the topic of Open Government.
Moderated. That word sounds familiar.
The English chat will take place today between 5 and 5:45 p.m. EST, following the hashtag #opengovchat, while the French-language version will run earlier, from 4 to 4:45 p.m. EST, and will follow the hashtag #parlonsgouvert.
The discussion will be hosted on the official Twitter accounts of the Treasury Board Secretariat, @TBS_Canada in English, and @SCT_Canada in French.
Clement said he sees a future for the use of social media interactions to develop government policy.
“I’m very interested in crowdsourcing technique as a way to help government in the future make decisions and ultimately perhaps in some instances pushing down the decision making away from government, away from Ottawa to actual citizens making decisions for themselves on matters they deem to be important,” he said.
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