The video above was recently released on the GSA’s new Youtube channel. It outlines a wide selection of social media activities throughout the US government. A full list is included at the Whitehouse.gov newmedia page, and more extensive case studies are available at the National Academy of Public Administration’s wiki. Some of the most interesting examples of new media outlined in the video include:
- Library of Congress Flickr photo stream http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/
- National Park Service Facebook App to share stories and photos http://apps.facebook.com/mynationalparks/
- Peer-to-Patent project http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/peerpriorartpilot/
- Recovery.gov http://www.recovery.gov
- Serve.gov http://www.serve.gov
- State Department’s DipNote blog on Twitter http://twitter.com/dipnote
- State Department on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/Washington-DC/US-Department-of-State/15877306073?v=wall&viewas=0
- Troop Tube http://www.trooptube.tv/
- TSA blog http://www.tsa.gov/blog and other federal blogs http://www.usa.gov/Topics/Reference_Shelf/News/blog.shtml
- U.S. Government channel on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/usgovernment
- USA.gov http://www.usa.gov
- USA.gov’s government FAQs, email and online chat http://answers.usa.gov
- USA.gov on Twitter http://twitter.com/usagov
Ideas and policy
Govloop has details about the different range of social media policies for different federal agencies, and details of the GSA agreements with social media sites are outlined in a good post at Socialgovernment.com.
Some recent new media examples from the US government which I’ve been particularly interested in relate to the crowdsourcing of ideas. These include:
- National Dialog on Recovery.gov
- Open Government Dialog
Whatever the critics say about these initiatives, they represent a sea change in attitude towards public consultation. Beth Noveck, Vivek Kunda and others recognize that Government does not have a monopoly on the best ideas, and thus should solicit public participation and ideas in appropriate areas. While the ideas and votes submitted for these initiatives are not necessarily large (say in comparison to Open For Questions), they do represent a not insignificant level of engagement with those parties particularly interested in these areas. That cannot be a bad thing.
To keep up-to-date with many of these sites check out govfresh.com, or the new news.usa.gov site (a government-wide news feed service).
Socialfeds.com is also a great way to keep up with what’s going on in the Gov 2.0 world.