Social Media in Government

P.K. Kannan, Harvey Sanders Associate Professor of Marketing and director of the Center for Excellence in Service, and Ai-Mei Chang, professor of systems management at UMUC , is studying how the web affects interactions between government agencies and the public.

They found that government agencies should be proactive instead of reactive, engaging their constituents on social networking sites and other online communities instead of waiting for community members to reach out to individual agencies for information and/or assistance.

This new style of communication would allow governments to gather feedback from users, including criticisms on services they offer, website design and content distribution. A government using Web 2.0 technology can build trust and loyalty among citizens who see different agencies reaching out to the public in social forums. Interactions will become less formal than before and as a result content must be delivered in a less former manner, allowing users to sift though and easily find the information they need to proceed.

Leveraging Web 2.0 in Government is a research report published by the IBM Center for the Business of Government and is available online. For more information, e-mail P.K. Kannan.