E-governance, Social Networks and Public Policyby Dr D.C.Misra

State of e-Governance: Need for Speed

E-governance, Social Networks and Public Policyby

Dr D.C.MisraeGov Consultant

• Address: C-183 Madhuvan, Madhuvan Marg, New Delhi-110092• Tel: 22452431; Fax: 42445183; E-mail: dc_misra@hotmail.com• Blog: www.egov-india.blogspot.com; Twitter: DrDCMisra@Twitter.com

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I. The Growth of Social Network Sites S.N. Site Apr-08

Total Minutes(000)

Apr-09 Total Minutes

(000)

Year-over-Year PercentGrowth

1 Facebook 1,735,698 13,872,640 699

2 Myspace.com 7,254,645 4,973,919 -31

3 Blogger 448,710 582,683 30

4 Tagged.com 29,858 327,871 998

5 Twitter.com 7,865 299,836 3712

6 MyYearbook 131,105 268,565 105

7 LiveJournal 54,671 204,121 273

8 LinkedIn 119,636 202,407 69

9 SlashKey N/A 187,687 N/A

10 Gaia Online 173,115 143,909 -17

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Source: Nielsen Online 2009

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II. Examples of Social Network Sites

(i) You Tube (www.youtube.com) (Video Sharing)(ii) Dopplr (www.dopplr.com) (Travel Plans)(iii) Flicker (www. flickr.com) (Photo Sharing)(iv) Italki (www.italki.com) (Language Learning)(v) Ning (www.ning.com) (Social Network Creation)

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Examples of Social Network Sites(vi) LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) (Business Networks)(vii) TIG (www.tigweb.org) (Information Technology for Youth)(viii) BlogTalkRadio (www.blogtalkradio.com) (Citizen Radio Broadcast)(ix) Ryze (www.ryze.com) (Business Networks)(x) Plaxo (www.plaxo.com) (Shared Address Book)

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Examples of Social Network Sites

(xi) Digg (www.digg.com)(News Sharing)(xii) Jott (www.jott.com)(Personal Transcription)(xiii) Shelfari (www.shelfari.com) (Virtual Bookshelf)(xiv) MySpace (www.myspace.com)(General)(xv) Facebook (www.facebook.com) (General)

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III. Government Functions in Social Media

Four functions of government in social media1. Inward sharing (sharing information within agencies), 2. Outward Sharing (sharing internal agency information with

entities beyond agency boundaries),3. Inward sharing (obtaining input from citizens and other persons

outside the government), and 4. Outbound Sharing (communicating with and/or empower people

outside the government). Source: Drapeu and Wells (2009)

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IV. Public Servants and Social Network Sites (SNSs)

• Some public servants have started joining these social networks. • Why should public servants join social networks as they have their own

conduct rules? • What do they indeed gain from joining such networks as they have their

own clearly defined responsibilities and career paths. • Two extreme positions are available : (i) There should be no restriction

on the public servants on joining social network sites as at present (by default) (ii) Total ban on public servants on joining social network sites.

• What should be the policy in this regard?

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V. Risks in Social Network Sites

• The easy availability of personal profile and personal details like, e-mail address, telephone numbers, address, etc. in social network sites (SNSs) make these sites risky for members.

• The The U.S. Federal CIO Council Guidelines identify three major risks: • 1. Spear phishing (“an attack targeting a specific user or group of users, and attempts

to deceive the user into performing an action that launches an attack, such as opening a document or clicking a link”,

• 2. Social Engineering (“relies on exploiting the human element of trust,” (p-10), and • 3. Web Application Attacks (These subject users to new vulnerability).

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VI. Twittersphere• A tweet is a short message not exceeding 140 characters sent via

sms, web, and mobile web. It answers a simple question: what are you doing? and thus enables people to stay connected.

• A tweeter is one who tweets, that is, posts messages on his site or follows others. Twitter has three types of tweeters:

• (a) Following: When a tweeter follows other tweeters (for which no permission/intimation is required),

• (b) Follower: A follower is a tweeter who follows others by automatically getting tweets of the person being followed (American actor Ashton Kutcher has more than a million followers!), and

• (c) Friend: Tweeter A follows tweeter B and tweeter B in his turn follows tweeter A. In such a situation tweeters A and B are said to be friends.

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Third Party Applications

• Third parties have created their own applications. • Tweetdeck (http://tweetdeck.com/beta/about/), for

example, enables one to connect to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.

• Twitter Fan Wiki (http://twitter.pbworks.com/WindowsApps) lists a number of applications for Windows. Its three key features social networks, live searching and link sharing (Johnson 2009) make Twitter a unique and valuable phenomenon.

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VII. Government Response

• Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in United Kingdom, has come out with a template for Twitter strategy for government departments (Williams 2009).

• There is a GovTwit (Government Twitter Directory) at http://govtwit.wordpress.com/.

• Shri Shashi Tharoor, Minister of State for External Affairs, got into controversy by calling economy class air travel as cattle class but subsequently regained ground in popularity by asking people to work on Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday and not observing it as a holiday. He had 292,010 followers on Twitter (as on October 6, 2009), probably highest for any public servant in India.

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XVIII Why People Use Social Networking Sites?

Piskorski Findings• Online social networks are most useful when they address real failures

in the operation of offline networks. • Pictures are the killer app of social networks. • Women and men use these sites differently. • 90% of Twitter posts were created by only 10% of users.• To be successful, you need to shift your mindset from social media to

social strategy. (Source: Silverthrone 2009, Harvard Business School Working Knowledge)

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IX. Social Networking Sites and Digital Inclusion

• Social Networking Sites offer an excellent medium for digital inclusion

• They can bring public servants (ministers, civil servants) closer thus narrowing citizen-state divide

• Public servant-citizen interaction can improve public policy

formulation and implementation of public programmes.

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X Conclusion

• Public servants should be allowed use of social networking sites.• Due caution is, however, needed in use of these sites• A public policy is needed in this regard.• Social Network Sites can help in narrowing citizen-state divide.• They can improve public policy formulation and implementation of

public programmes.• They can make governments more accountable.

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End of Presentation

Thank you.-- Dr D.C.Misra

Questions?

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