Gov 2.0 Examples – Mayor of London

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Boris Johnson the Mayor of London is now on twitter.  However, just because you are on twitter does not make you Gov 2.0.

 

1,318 people following you, and you are following no-one? Not very Gov 2.0.  OK, so lets tell Boris; lets feedback to him that we would like to be able to engage with him better.

Over on the official www.london.gov.uk site we should hopefully have some way of working with Boris.  Under the ‘Contact’ link we can email, write or Fax – OK, so we can get to him somehow. Looking around the site I cannot find a Blog, I can find a news feed, but no blog. Using a search engine you can find his blog here: https://www.boris-johnson.com/ but it is not mentioned on the site, there is no link between the two.

There are other elements on the site that could be used in the Gov 2.0 world.  There is a photo section (terrible photos by the way) but it is built into the site instead of using something like flickr which means that all of the community tools such as https://www.taggalaxy.com/ will not bring in those photos.

 

Likewise with the video clips, they are built into the site and therefore cannot be linked into other sites or blog posts, reducing their impact.

Poking around the net, Boris also has a FaceBook group, however it was last updated on 29th December, 11th November and 2nd October before that and some photos from 8th October.  Once you sign up 22,000 supporters, you run the risk of alienating them if you don't interact.

So some lessons learnt:

  • If you are going to do it do it properly – If you want to use tools such as twitter you need to use them to gain a two way conversation.  By utilising Gov2.0 to produce a broadcast mechanism you will only gain a fraction of its effectiveness and risk alienating people
  • Make it a cohesive strategy – You need to ensure all of your online efforts work together.  By having your site not referencing your blog you will loose valuable traffic
  • Make it open – One of the most powerful ways on leveraging the online world is through sharing.  With photos and videos that cannot be embedded or used by other tools you loose the ability of people to spread the message for you.