Government Agency to Offer Social Media Training
The question is how will the government use this information?
By Jack B. Winn
Imagine if your company offered to teach you how to use Twitter or FB, or create a Wiki. For twelve weeks. And you got credit for doing so.
Well, imagine no more.
According to NextGov, General Services Administration (GSA) is offering a twelve week course via its Web Manager University starting Feb. 7.
Tuition and fees are $299 for government officials. Classes take place at the GSA's headquarters in Washington, D.C.
The courses are expected to cover traditional social networks such as Facebook, but also niche websites such as Quora, DokuWiki, and platforms, such as, IdeasWalk and Web Storm.
In addition to lectures, the sessions will feature presentations by government officials and industry leaders, hands-on projects and other tasks as well.
But just as all agencies aren't created equal, so are their social media strategies. It is a point that isn't lost on the course instructor, Gadi Ben-Yehuda.
"The government is not monolithic," Ben-Yehuda told NextGov's Joseph Marks. "An agency like the State Department is about engagement. Another agency like the Justice Department is not about engagement per se, but enforcing rules. They have such widely divergent goals that their social media tools are going to be different."
Beh-Yehuda should know. As social media director of IBM's Center for Business in Government, his day job is thinking about the various ways government uses sites like Twitter and Facebook--to collect and share information, store data, communicate with the general public and make sure agencies perform their job in an efficient and timely fashion.
But participants won't just learn how to hit 'enter' on their Facebook profiles. The classes will be heavy in theory as well--from community formation and digital communication, to how a wiki module works.
What Ben-Yehuda can't teach his students is how their social media tools will be used by the people they interact with--or whether they'll be used responsibly at all. It's a very different world from the town halls and face-to-face meetings participants are used to--many of whom have never had to interact with social media at all, let alone in the office.
"If you stand up and talk in a real town-hall meeting you have to show your face." Ben Yehuda said. "After the meeting someone can confront you about what you said. And these are your neighbors, literally people you have to live with. In social media, you can hide behind a mask of anonymity and leave you snarky little comment and run away, and that pollutes the entire conversation."
Already the government has made a large footprint on the face of the internet--Facebook and Twitter included. The White House already has 4 million social media "fans" on Twitter and Facebook, and the State Department and the CIA already have their own wikis with names like Diplopedia, and Intellipedia.
The GSA also has a wiki as well--BetterBuy--although it has come under fire in the past for lax policing and configuration errors. According to Federal Computer Week, in 2011 auditors found a multitude of spam comments on the site. Web application security procedures were also not followed, leading to a compromising of users' personal information.
As Facebook and Twitter becomes more ubiquitous within government, the question is how will the government use this information? It is a question Ben-Yehuda hopes his students will be able to answer when they walk out of the classroom.
"More than anything, that's what I want people to start thinking about," He said. "asking, can we add a social layer to this program? Then if we add a social layer, what are the best tools to use? I want to get beyond talking about Facebook, Twitter and Flickr."
WebManagerUniversity is a joint project of the GSA's Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies and the Federal Web Managers Council.
www.ohmygov.com
The question is how will the government use this information?
By Jack B. Winn
Imagine if your company offered to teach you how to use Twitter or FB, or create a Wiki. For twelve weeks. And you got credit for doing so.
Well, imagine no more.
According to NextGov, General Services Administration (GSA) is offering a twelve week course via its Web Manager University starting Feb. 7.
Tuition and fees are $299 for government officials. Classes take place at the GSA's headquarters in Washington, D.C.
The courses are expected to cover traditional social networks such as Facebook, but also niche websites such as Quora, DokuWiki, and platforms, such as, IdeasWalk and Web Storm.
In addition to lectures, the sessions will feature presentations by government officials and industry leaders, hands-on projects and other tasks as well.
But just as all agencies aren't created equal, so are their social media strategies. It is a point that isn't lost on the course instructor, Gadi Ben-Yehuda.
"The government is not monolithic," Ben-Yehuda told NextGov's Joseph Marks. "An agency like the State Department is about engagement. Another agency like the Justice Department is not about engagement per se, but enforcing rules. They have such widely divergent goals that their social media tools are going to be different."
Beh-Yehuda should know. As social media director of IBM's Center for Business in Government, his day job is thinking about the various ways government uses sites like Twitter and Facebook--to collect and share information, store data, communicate with the general public and make sure agencies perform their job in an efficient and timely fashion.
But participants won't just learn how to hit 'enter' on their Facebook profiles. The classes will be heavy in theory as well--from community formation and digital communication, to how a wiki module works.
What Ben-Yehuda can't teach his students is how their social media tools will be used by the people they interact with--or whether they'll be used responsibly at all. It's a very different world from the town halls and face-to-face meetings participants are used to--many of whom have never had to interact with social media at all, let alone in the office.
"If you stand up and talk in a real town-hall meeting you have to show your face." Ben Yehuda said. "After the meeting someone can confront you about what you said. And these are your neighbors, literally people you have to live with. In social media, you can hide behind a mask of anonymity and leave you snarky little comment and run away, and that pollutes the entire conversation."
Already the government has made a large footprint on the face of the internet--Facebook and Twitter included. The White House already has 4 million social media "fans" on Twitter and Facebook, and the State Department and the CIA already have their own wikis with names like Diplopedia, and Intellipedia.
The GSA also has a wiki as well--BetterBuy--although it has come under fire in the past for lax policing and configuration errors. According to Federal Computer Week, in 2011 auditors found a multitude of spam comments on the site. Web application security procedures were also not followed, leading to a compromising of users' personal information.
As Facebook and Twitter becomes more ubiquitous within government, the question is how will the government use this information? It is a question Ben-Yehuda hopes his students will be able to answer when they walk out of the classroom.
"More than anything, that's what I want people to start thinking about," He said. "asking, can we add a social layer to this program? Then if we add a social layer, what are the best tools to use? I want to get beyond talking about Facebook, Twitter and Flickr."
WebManagerUniversity is a joint project of the GSA's Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies and the Federal Web Managers Council.
www.ohmygov.com
