Managing Social Media in your Agency
Developing an Online Engagement Strategy
Version 2.5a
Coordinated by Pia Waugh & Allan Barger
Office of the Australian Government CTO
Technology and Procurement Division, Department of Finance and Deregulation
http://www.flickr.com/photos/birgerking/4731898939
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Contents
Perspective vs. Process ...............................................................................................................................................3
Case Studies ................................................................................................................................................................5
One day at Senate Estimates ..................................................................................................................................5
Lessons from QLD Police – engaging with the public and the media .....................................................................5
Top Twitter Accounts Right Now ............................................................................................................................6
Applying Social Media for Specific Purpose ...............................................................................................................7
Skills for your team .................................................................................................................................................7
Activity ....................................................................................................................................................................8
Example community fora: food for thought...............................................................................................................8
Activity ....................................................................................................................................................................8
Case study – Public Sphere (consultation and co-development) ...........................................................................9
Design & Discovery .............................................................................................................................................9
Conversations .....................................................................................................................................................9
Consolidation ......................................................................................................................................................9
Activity ..............................................................................................................................................................10
Managing Agency Staff Online .................................................................................................................................11
Get a policy ...........................................................................................................................................................11
Some considerations for policy ............................................................................................................................11
Dealing with Trolls ....................................................................................................................................................12
Tools .........................................................................................................................................................................14
Social media and records management ...................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
Compliance ...........................................................................................................................................................15
Management ........................................................................................................................................................15
Do records of all social media interaction need to be kept?................................................................................15
Important to consider: third-party sites ...............................................................................................................15
Policy.....................................................................................................................................................................16
Assistance available from the National Archives of Australia ..............................................................................17
Where to from here..................................................................................................................................................17
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Perspective vs. Process
What are you trying to achieve?
A quality online engagement strategy requires clarity and definition around this single question. If your online
community detect that you are only ticking boxes, then you will invite a world of pain. Getting the tone right is
vital. Understanding online engagement – the difference between:




Communication & Conversation – getting your message out, or alerts, building a public narrative,
setting the public record. Egs – QLD Police, DIAC, Census 2011
Consultation – getting public feedback on something. Example. – Public Sphere, legislative consultations
like Pittsburgh Open Data Legislation wiki
Co-development/Crowdsourcing – developing something with or collecting information from citizens.
Egs – Trove, Apps4NSW/GovHack, Emergencies
Customer service – directly supporting citizens online. Egs – DIAC close but not prevalent in government
yet, industry examples like DHS, Fairwork.
Building a public narrative is about recognising the importance of filling the vacuum with facts, evidence and
credible sources. The imperative is on us to be an authoritative source of knowledge
Who are you talking to?
Who is in your community of interest? Where are discussions already taking place? Who are the thought
leaders? Getting away from an ‘us vs. them’ mentality is vital. It helps if you can see citizens and other parts of
government as genuine collaborators.
Who is talking for you?
Do you have a community manager or a team who are publicly visible, engaged in the online narrative and
trusted by your community? Community managers are vital to ensure some continuity to your online
engagement adventures in between individual campaigns or consultations. No one should be forced to go
online, so identify appropriately engaging, sensible & enthusiastic individuals for this.
How do you define success?
What are the tangible outcomes that make your online engagement a success? And how meaningful are they?
Often people get caught up with how many followers they have, or page views, or “hits”. Figure out what
success means for your department and establish success criteria and appropriate reporting mechanisms that
align with your goals. Ensure you review the approach on a semi-regular basis.
Would it interest you?
Pithy as it sounds, empathy is one of your best tools in doing online engagement well. Put aside for a minute
your job, your project goals, your business case, your success indicators and messaging, and ask yourself
whether what you are doing would actually interest you as an individual, as a citizen.
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Some golden rules to publishing might include a requirement to say yes to at least one of the following with
what you want to say:

Is it interesting/useful/informative? This can possibly best be defined by whether there is a genuine
public audience for it. Not just an audience you want to have, but a group of people who want to hear
about it. Humour can also help make things more interesting. It can be helpful to road test it with
someone completely outside your project.

Is it timely? Social media is very fast paced, so talking about something timely makes it more likely to be
shared and appreciated.
Maintaining the integrity of the public service
Occasionally you will face some challenges in this space, especially during election periods, where the lines
between Government and the public service can be more difficult to keep clear. It is vitally important to ensure
you maintain the integrity of the public service by maintaining an apolitical approach to your public narrative.
The Finance Social Media 101 guide provides some clear advice drawn from the APS Code of Conduct:

being apolitical, impartial and professional

behaving with respect and courtesy, and without harassment

dealing appropriately with information, recognising that some information needs to remain confidential

being sensitive to the diversity of the Australian public

taking reasonable steps to avoid conflicts of interest

making proper use of Commonwealth resources

upholding the APS Values and the integrity and good reputation of the APS.
If asked for anything that might compromise any of the above principles, public servants should feel confident to
refer to the APS Code of Conduct to determine an appropriate public service approach. For instance, perhaps a
departmental tweet to a page about a program rather than retweeting a Ministerial link to a campaign page, or
a blog post with facts about a policy.
Defining an official APS account
We consider an official Australian Government social media account to be one that is operated by an APS entity
and provides timely information and/or promotes positive public discussion on social media. Accounts should
not be simply a named individual but rather a position title to assist in the continuity of the narrative once the
current person leaves the role, organisation or program.
Activity
Identify what type of online engagement you (or your agency) are currently doing? Describe the success criteria
you’ve set up for at least one of these.
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Case Studies
One day at Senate Estimates
Estimates precedent (2010) “TF Meeting”. Social Media defended by Secretary:
...we have a policy in the department where we allow access to Twitter and Facebook and those sorts of
things because we think there is value in social media. The government has a policy around Government
2.0. We looked very closely at access of Finance employees to that and we worked very closely with the
Public Service Commission on developing the guidelines that Mr Sheridan referred to. We then
superimposed onto those our own guidelines. We are monitoring the situation. Sure, you are putting a
certain amount of trust in your employees when you allow this sort of thing, and the guidelines there are
meant to be the behaviours that people should follow. As a secretary I cannot guarantee that in 100 per
cent of cases that is being done appropriately. We monitor the situation. We try and ensure that we get
people to behave appropriately. We give them incentives to do so by providing certain freedoms, and
there is an element of trust that goes on. I have not come across a serious breach. In fact, I have not
come across a breach at all—and, as I said, we do monitor the situation -- parlinfo.aph.gov.au
Lessons from QLD Police – engaging with the public and the media
There were several key lessons learnt from the experience that Queensland Police have built into their ongoing
strategy for online communications (from their case study). Primarily the lesson of being a visible authoritative
voice:
1. If you are not doing social media, do it now. If you wait until its needed, it will be too late
2. Rethink clearance processes. Trust your staff to release information
3. Add a social media expert to your team. While there should be shared responsibility for uploading
information and moderating social media sites, expert technical advice and trouble-shooting will be
necessary from someone with an IT background
4. Do not treat social media as something special or separate from normal work processes. It should be
integrated as standard practice
5. Do not use social media solely to push out information. Use it to receive feedback and involve your
online community
6. Established social media sites are free and robust which can handle volumes of traffic much larger than
agency websites
7. Ensure that information is accessible. A PDF is not the most accessible way to deliver information.
Machine-readable information such as geocoding allows the information to be more accessible and
usable for others.
The key benefits they found were:


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Communications – pushing single rapid fire source of vital information that got replicated everywhere.
Communications – able to correct the record on misreporting.
Crowdsourcing – able to gather information from citizens to assist in emergency response management.
Customer support – able to answer citizen queries quickly and efficiently.
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Top Twitter Accounts Right Now
As at 29 of April 2013, Australian Government Twitter accounts combined had 502,305 followers. A large
proportion of the accounts (92) have more than 1000 followers and only 15 have less than 100 followers. The
most followed account @Australia (recently known as @see_australia) has over 42,000 followers - which brings
us neatly to the top 20 most followed APS accounts;
#
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Twitter
@Australia
@2011Census
@CSIROnews
@RBAInfo
@dfat
@auscouncilarts
@ato_gov_au
@artsculturegov
@TourismAus
@NatGalleryAus
Followers
43,057
16,802
15,908
14,105
14,018
13,333
12,708
12,526
11,548
11,536
#
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
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Twitter
@AusAid
@AboutTheHouse
@nlagovau
@AusHumanRights
@ABSStats
@ScreenAustralia
@HealthAgeingAU
@business_gov_au
@AustralianArmy
@AuSenate
Followers
11,011
10,985
10,692
10,608
9,984
9,291
8,609
8,442
8,316
6,758
Applying Social Media for Specific Purpose
The same basic principles apply to all online engagement:
1. Identify what your are trying to achieve;
2. Identify what success looks like;
3. Identify who your audience is, where they are, how to reach them, and what they can (broadly)
contribute;
4. Identify the best one-to-many tools for your community;
5. Ensure you have a team with the right skills;
6. Be as transparent and open as possible, even going so far as to say you are interested in feedback to the
process and how you can improve. People respond well to feeling listened to;
7. Put yourself in the shoes of a participant and make it as great an experience for them as you possibly
can;
8. Ensure your outcomes are meaningful, that you recognise the contributions of individuals (internal and
external) and that you take an iterative approach to build upon the learning as you go; and
9. Establish a strong presence over time.
Ensure the tool fits the purpose. Eg. Twitter = public discussion. Facebook = personal relevance.
Also, with regards to cost, a good consultation doesn’t need to cost the world. You can use whatever resources
you have at your disposal quite strategically if you get the basics right. Identify what skills you have and don’t
have, what resources (venue, software tools) you have, what cloud services you can leverage, what you need to
talk to your communities and then you can best identify where you need to spend money to add value to your
strategy.
Skills for your team
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Community engagement / management – encouraging participation, discussion and debate (where
appropriate) using a ‘light hand’ approach moderating only when absolutely necessarily and identifying
areas of possible engagement.
Research and analysis – using available tools to collate available data into useful forms, deconstructing
both the content analysis (themes, ideas, sentiment, trends) and the contextual analysis (relationships,
conflicts of interest, affiliations, agendas). This gives you an understanding of how representative a
perspective is of the broader community.
Collaboration & co-design – working to develop a solution or policy in an open and transparent way
with your community of stakeholders to get the best evidence based policy outcomes.
Monitoring and escalation mechanisms – recognising the difference between genuine complainants
with real issues as opposed to trolls seeking a negative reaction. Being able to monitor trends on an
ongoing basis and engage with citizens and stakeholders appropriately.
Iterative policy – build in the governance, monitoring and measurement mechanisms for your policy to
grow and change according to new opportunities, threats and community feedback.
Data visualisation – the ability to distil complex data into an easy to understand visual representation,
thereby lowering barriers to entry and encouraging greater engagement.
o For an example view theopenbudget.org
Technology skills – embracing your (inner) geek, becoming an early adopter and understanding the need
to adapt to the ever-evolving online landscape. Or engage a geek in your team. They will be worth their
weight in gold.
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
Logistics – simply the skill of keeping all the plates spinning, outcomes progressing, timeliness
maintained, and goals achieved.
Activity
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At your table, map your team skills against the above.
Name some activities (actual, planned or imaginary) suitable for your organisation along each of the
categories of communications, consultation, co-development and customer service.
Example community fora: food for thought
A particular Twitter hashtag, LinkedIn community, Facebook community page, a trusted YouTube vlogger,
magazines, particular print media, ad space in appropriate places, virtual environments, piggybacking on a
relevant announcement to that community, government programs, incubators/pitch clubs, websites, bloggers,
conferences/expos, membership organisations, agencies in that space, custodians, a roadshow, town hall
meetings, councils, the traditional media, politicians, universities.
There is also a question around identifying and encouraging internal contributors who may have valuable
insights. Often internal skills and expertise is overlooked.
Thought leaders can include achievers in that area, analysts, prolific writers, organisation leaders, lobbyists,
famous people, or anyone who has a ‘one-to-many’ impact in that community.
Activity
Your group has been provided with a project - keeping this goal in mind brainstorm the following;

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Identify private and public organisations as well as thought leaders for your topic
Identify the online and offline fora to best engage in - with specific details like which mailing lists, what
hashtags, websites, tv shows, etc
Identify the tools you will require to engage with the fora and some appropriate engagement strategies.
Identify some success criteria for your project
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Case study – Public Sphere (consultation and co-development)
This methodology was developed by Pia Waugh in collaboration with Minister Kate Lundy for public policy
consultations. Details and examples are available at http://www.katelundy.com.au/public-spheres
Design & Discovery
1. Define – the definition of what you are trying to achieve, how meaningful it is and how necessary is it.
2. Draft – the drafting of a basic outline of the consultation, its goals and how it will assist a government
consultation or policy development.
3. Community Development – investigate the people and groups in government, industry and the broader
community that would be either interested in the consultation or affected by the outcomes. A healthy
combination of expertise, experience and opinions is important. This is the most important stage of the
consultation as it will determine buy in. People must be assured their contributions are valued and the
goal is meaningful. Research should be done into existing initiatives, publications and community groups
around the topic. The best tools for communications, contributions and collaboration should be derived
from an understanding of the communities who will contribute and what best suits them. Also take the
opportunity to identify fora you don’t want to engage with.
4. Codesign the Plan – work in collaboration with key champions and stakeholders to fine tune the
consultation draft. This will both improve the quality of the consultation whilst also gaining buy in from
valuable contributors in the space.
5. Launch – Launch the topic, encouraging communities of interest to spread the word and start the
conversation online. Ensure the launch includes a webpage with information about how to contribute,
when and where the event is, how their input will be used. The launch documentation needs to give
people a roadmap for the consultation so they can trust enough to want to engage.
Conversations
1. Discuss – Encourage participants to discuss the consultation, gathering their thoughts, responding to
ideas and feedback. Concerns and expectations must be managed so people know input & ideas are
valued.
2. Encourage Contributions – Encourage people to post ideas, feedback and talk submissions to the blog,
to help populate the live event with a diverse range of ideas.
3. Monitor – Keep an eye on contributions, emerging themes, communities and individuals participating,
engage and encourage people to get involved, but also keep an eye out for any issues that come up.
4. Live Event – Run a live event that is streamed over the internet such that people can come along in
person or participate online. One of our Public Spheres had several Remote Nodes, community run
events that tuned into the live streamed video and contributed their ideas whilst bringing local
communities of interest together in several locations simultaneously. This was a great way to show how
the Public Sphere model can scale.
Consolidation
1. Publish Data & Analyse – publish all the collated data as soon as possible, ideally the next day. That is,
the Twitter hashtag log, the video footage from the day, comments collated through any additional tools
such as Zing, etc. Email all registered contributors and post a blog post to let everyone know how the
event went and to let them know the process from here. This will get people thinking, analysing the
information and continuing to provide feedback. Analysis is then extremely important, with both data
analysis to understand the content and community responses to ideas put forward, but also
relationship analysis to understand the context of the information provided.
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2. Publish Draft – Public a draft of the ideas put forward, community feedback to these ideas and specific
recommendations on a wiki. Email all the registered participants and publish a blog to announce the wiki
is open for editing and for how long. We chose to require registration to edit the wiki, but content open
to browse without.
3. Promote and Monitor – Promote the wiki regularly, encouraging and recognising the contributions
made as they happen to encourage more contributions. Monitor the wiki for any problems.
4. Finalise and QA – close the wiki and add the recommendations to an endorsement system to act as a
final quality assurance. This means the community can vote up certain ideas and show their priorities,
given any last comments, and identify any unrepresentative last minute additions to the consultation.
5. Publish & Thanks – Ensure the results and data is all published publicly, and that appropriate thanks are
made to any helpers, organisers, contributors and all participants.
6. Submit – Ensure the final documentation is submitted in a public fashion, and communicated to all the
participants so they see the results of their contributions.
Activity
At your table, map the following for your topic, in this order. Each element should influence the next:

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
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Observed data – statistics, trends, sentiment. What observed/inferred data would help your project?
What other Government entities (all three spheres) would be useful for your project?
Research Materials – identify useful background reading for your staff and to put up publicly to help
inform your community of participation whilst also demonstrating that you have looked at what has
come before
Preceding government engagement and how to build on it – identifying existing lists of people from
other consultations or communications
Escalation path for issues with online engagement – what do you have in place to deal with online
engagement and to escalate to if problems arise?
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Managing Agency Staff Online
Get a policy
If your department doesn’t already have a Social Media Policy it’s time you (or you media and communications
team) had one. This doesn’t need to mean you build one from scratch. There are plenty of examples out there
and below you’ll find the links to three approaches from within the APS;




The APSC guidance on making public comment and participating online is quite useful and can be used
as a default online engagement/social media policy
Social Media 101: A beginner’s guide for Finance employees
National Library Social Media Policy
Department of Human Services Social Media Policy & Video
While all three deliver very similar information they do so in different ways. Simplicity is gold as it makes it easier
for staff to easily reference and follow.It is also useful to look at what industry are doing in this space. The
Further Reading document has additional examples including government and private sector for you to consider.
Telstra: “When engaging in social media you be clear about who you are representing, you take responsibility
for ensuring that any references to Telstra are factually correct and accurate and do not breach confidentiality
requirements, and that you show respect for the individuals and communities with which you interact.”
Some considerations for policy



The requirement to find the delicate balance between mitigating risk and encouraging the productive
use of social media by your staff. Are you constantly using risk as a reason to not engage online at all?
Do your staff feel supported to use social media and to escalate problems somewhere clearly defined in
your agency? Are you having any actual issues arise?
Dealing with issues and escalating when required. Are you reviewing your policy, your success criteria,
your measurement and monitoring, and your general online engagement approach on a regular basis?
Tasking someone with this will mean your strategy will always be iteratively improving.
Media and customer service training – reuse the skills you already have in your organisation. You can
also use your policy makers and subject matter experts to engage and support your clients. Get training
for your staff.
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Dealing with Trolls
Overfeeding may help. The best weapon for good online engagement is to build trust & community, to engage
constructively, to convert passion into contributions, and to always conduct yourself with dignity and respect.
Has a comment
about the ACT
Government or
particular
Directorate been
identified?
YES
Is the comment
inaccurate or
misleading?
Post an
appropriate
response which
corrects the
inaccuracy.
YES
NO
Is the commenter
requesting assistance
or advising they are
unable to access a
government service or
resource?
NO
You do not need to respond to
the comment but it may be
polite and conducive to
community building to do so.
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YES
Post an
appropriate
response which
directs the
commenter to a
relevant touch
point for
assistance.
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Tools
We have compiled a list of tools for your reference that is included in your information pack. Below are some
talking points to work through today.
1. Types of online engagement:
a. Blogging – Used to promote discussion or provide information via a series of ‘posts’ by an
author or authors, example of this platform is WordPress.
b. Microblogging - A simpler blog with shorter more succinct messages than a large blogging
platform, usually but not limited to textual content. The most popular microblogging service is
twitter.
c. Video – For the sharing of video content (everything from entertainment to training videos and
vlogging), the most popular service by far is YouTube. Amongst professionals Vimeo is popular
too.
d. Audio – Wether it’s a song or a podcast there is are lots of options for your audio content the
most popular audio ‘social network’ is SoundCloud.
e. Data visualisation tools – ways to present data and information in a more accessible way.
f. Others – There are plenty of other online tools to get your message across; Slides (Slideshare),
photos (Flickr, 500px or Instagram), collaborative content development (GovDex, GroupHub and
Basecamp), chat (IRC), surveys (survey monkey), mailing services (mail chimp), ideation,
prioritisation tools, event logistics (eventbrite), RSS(the old reader)
2. Accessibility and Access and Equity considerations
a. Some social media platforms are inaccessible to some people with disabilities – is your social
media information also available on your website?
i. CAPTCHA can prevent some people from signing up to participate
ii. Lack of keyboard access in the platform can prevent people unable to use a mouse to
navigate, e.g. due to blindness or physical disability
b. Audio is not accessible to people who are Deaf or hard of hearing – have you provided a
transcript? Note also that transcripts will be indexed by search engines; audio files are not.
c. Video also contains audio and requires both captions and a script/transcript
i. Captions can be provided in multiple languages to help address the needs of people
from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Some media players allow for
multiple language choice when selecting captions.
ii. Speech and interview videos – these are often just ‘talking heads’ and thus the video file
is just an alternative to a good transcript. If the speech transcript is provided as the first
link on your website, then the video link can be claimed as supplementary making
captions less necessary (be sure to provide the transcript on all platforms).
3. Available whole of government services and support
4. The role of “apps” and mobile computing in your social media strategy
5. Monitoring & managing social media – following your brand, creating notifications, identifying problem
areas, setting success criteria, tracking trends, themes and sentiment of online discussions
6. Analysis tools – how to get the most of social media data, mapping your participating communities, how
to identify if you are being “gamed”.
7. Tools to support an iterative policy approach
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Social media and records management
NAA content contribution, April 2013
Compliance
Did you know that when you use social media, you may be generating Commonwealth records?
When you send a tweet, update the status on your agency’s Facebook page, comment on a forum or
post a blog you may be creating a Commonwealth record, if it contains evidence of your agency's
business activities.
Australian Government agencies have an obligation to ensure that accurate and sufficient records of
government business are created and kept in a useable and accessible form for as long as they are
required to support agencies’ business, and to ensure that agencies can account for their actions under
administrative law.
The Archives Act 1983 does not define a record by its format. Generally, records created as a result of
using social media are subject to the same business and legislative requirements as records created by
other means.
Management
The same records management principles apply to social media content as to other records created in
your agency. Staff using social media tools for official purposes need to understand which records need
to be kept to comply with agency records management policy. If in doubt, discuss this with your
records management unit.
Do records of all social media interaction need to be kept?
Different information has different values and, therefore, different requirements for creation, capture
and retention as records. For example, spam may be disposed of immediately. However, more valuable
social media records such as feedback about policy would need to be retained appropriately. The
decision is not always clear cut, and a judgement must be made about the material’s relevance to
agency business. Records management staff can advise on an agency’s information management
needs.
Important to consider: third-party sites
In Section 3 of the Archives Act 1983, records are defined as the property of the Commonwealth.
Information residing or stored on third-party sites (including social media sites) may not be regarded
legally as Commonwealth property and consequently may not be a Commonwealth record.
If it is necessary to ensure that Commonwealth records of your agency activity on social media sites are
kept, then those records will need to be captured and stored. Methods of capturing social media
content as a record may vary according to the tools being used in your agency. Contact the records
management unit for specific advice.
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Agencies often use popular third-party social media tools. However in some cases, for example when
setting up a blog, using an agency-hosted or Government-hosted tool may be a viable option that
would also ensure that the information remains Commonwealth property.
Policy
Every agency should have a social media policy. When developing your social media policy, the
National Archives recommends that you:


include information and records management guidance for social media
involve records management staff in the development of the policy.
Collaboration with your agency’s records management staff when preparing your social media policy is
important, as your agency’s records management policy will need to be updated to include guidance
on the management of social media records. The content of these two policies must complement one
another and be linked to ensure they are updated and maintained together.
The level of detail that your agency includes about information and records management
responsibilities in the social media policy may vary, but at a minimum it should include contact details
for your agency's records management unit and it should refer to your agency's records management
policy.
Your social media policy may also include:







a reminder that when using social media, staff may be generating Commonwealth records
a definition of a social media record, for example: 'social media records can be defined as
information which contains evidence of your agency’s business activities'.
the information and records management responsibilities of content creators, web
administrators, ICT staff, communications staff and records management staff
a statement highlighting the importance of taking ownership for content, and assigning
responsibility for managing records
clearly defined information and records management requirements and protocols for
collaborative social media sites which are hosted by one or more agencies
information and records management practices for social media—such as how records will be
captured, and how often
contact details for the agency or department's records management unit and a link to the
records management policy for more assistance and advice.
The National Archives also provides advice on social media as a record on its website at:
http://www.naa.gov.au/records-management/agency/digital/socialmedia/index.aspx and
http://www.naa.gov.au/records-management/agency/digital/socialmedia/social-media-policy.aspx.
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Assistance available from the National Archives of Australia
The National Archives Agency Service Centre can give advice on problems that agencies face in making
decisions on the information and records management obligations that arise from their use of social
media tools. Contact us by:
Phone: (02) 6212 3610
Email: recordkeeping@naa.gov.au
Web form: http://www.naa.gov.au/records-management/help/index.aspx
Where to from here




Support mechanisms including the Cross Agency Social Media Forum on Govdex
Existing policies and legal advice
Leverage precedents and principles from public sector to date
Gov 2.0 community
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