Federal workers not leveraging social media, survey finds

Only 4 percent of government workers utilize social media during their work day, according to a recent survey from research firm Market Connections of Chantilly, Va. Of the 321 federal employees surveyed, 60 percent said they use social media at home or work, 36 percent said they were not using social media and 5 percent said they "don't know what online social media is."

"We, who have been so deeply steeped in social media for the past couple of years, should really take that number to heart, because there's still a large portion of this community who are very new to these tools and who require quite a bit of training to ensure that they're using these tools in a way that reflects the organization's principals, values and objectives," said John Kagia, research manager of the study, at a July 27 industry event in McLean, Va.

Even when agencies are using social media--a recent GAO testimony found 22 of 24 major federal agencies maintain a presence on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube--many workers are often unaware of their agency's Web 2.0 strategy. Only 29 percent of the government workers surveyed said their agencies were using social media, 48 percent said their agencies were not using social media, and 23 percent said they didn't know whether or not social media was being used.

"A lot of the social media that agencies are currently undertaking is outward facing, its targeting constituents, citizens, external stakeholders," said Kagia. "Perhaps there's not been as much internal-facing social media use within the agencies or communication about what is taking place within the organization."

Kagia suggested that if agencies are engaging with these tools, it should be communicated across the organization. That transparency may encourage workers to align Web 2.0 strategies with their segment of the agency.

Doug Mashkuri, director of Business Development for GovLoop, and president of Mash Digital Strategies, said there needs to be a focus on educating and "demystifying" the use of social media in government. Agencies shouldn't be afraid to appeal to people's egos by designating them social media champions and, most importantly, letting these people know it's ok to experiment, he said.

The most powerful tool for helping agencies adopt social media is to look to examples from other agencies that have already done it and done it successfully, said Bev Godwin, director of New Media and Citizen Engagement at the General Services Administration. "Within my office at GSA we have a website called webcontent.gov and the original audience was web managers, but now other people are using it because we have a compendium of those kinds of things," added Godwin.

Too often social media is seen solely as a promotional tool and not a product development tool, said Godwin. "I encourage the government to move from marketing to collaboration and co-creation," she said.

While many agencies are missing opportunities to encourage public participation, those that are currently using crowd sourcing don't have everything figured out just yet, either. A big question, said Godwin, is what to do with all of the information once an agency opens up a topic for dialogue or ideation brainstorming.

"The tools help you a little bit, because you can categorize [feedback] up front and the public can vote on the questions and the most important questions to the audience can come to the top," said Godwin. "But they're really not sophisticated enough to do analysis of that level of data. So, how you take what we're getting from the public and really make it usable in terms of better policy, better programs [and] better services, is a challenge."

For more:
- see the Market Connections study overview (.pdf)

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