Presentation to Welsh Scrutiny Officers Network

1. How Can Social Media Improve Scrutiny? Dave Mckenna Overview & Scrutiny Manager Wales Scrutiny Officers Network Rhayader 20 th May 2011

3. A Little About Us

4. Our aim To provide ‘critical friend’ challenge to the executive (and decision makers) by undertaking a range of overview and scrutiny activities to ensure that improvement is delivered, sustained and embedded

5. Our structure Child and Family Services Children, Young People & Learning Environment & Communities Health, Social Care & Wellbeing Performance and Finance Partnership Business Overview & Scrutiny Boards Overview & Scrutiny Committees

6. Our Social Media

7. Seven Reasons Why We Have Invested in Social Media

8. 1. No one really downloaded our newsletter…

9. 2. Surveys told us there was low awareness of what we do Staff (157 responses) Do you agree that you have a good understanding of the work of overview and scrutiny? 2010 2009 Strongly agree 10.4%(16) 6.6%(9) Tend to agree 42.2%(65) 39.7%(54) Tend to disagree 32.5%(50) 40.4%(55) Strongly disagree 14.3%(22) 12.5%(17)

10. 3. We thought it would help us gather evidence for our reviews…

11. 4. We thought it could widen involvement in the work of the boards and committees

12. 5. We wanted to overcome council formality…

13. 6. …and engage people in issues that really matter Recycling Corporate Parenting Shared Services Literacy in Schools Community Alarms Adult social care Cycling Youth Services Public Transport Regeneration Projects

15. Seven Social Media Tools to Support Scrutiny

16. Wait! The First Rule of Social Media Don’t focus on the technology, technology itself doesn’t do anything, there is a saying that we use in my council “there is no such thing as an IT project, there are only business projects”. The key message here is YOU need to focus on business problems and issues and if social media tools are part of the solution then great. But don’t force social media where it isn’t needed or wanted. Carl Haggerty, Devon County Council

17. 1. Blogging – for news sharing and comments

19. 3. Facebook: For reaching the public (hopefully)

20. 4. Scrutiny Timebank: A dedicated Welsh resource

21. 5. Yammer: For engaging with your co-workers

23. 7. Linkedin: For engaging with business and professionally

24. ...and many, many more...

25. Oh, and don’t forget email. Yes, really.

28. Seven Ideas for Your Social Media Plan

29. 1. Redesign your webpages

30. 2. Give each committee their own homepage

31. 3. Work with your councillors to build their capacity

32. 4 Think about how to ensure staff engagement

33. 4. ... by building links through your internet / intranet?

34. 5. Link up with others in your council who are using social media

35. 6. Build social media into everyone’s day job I really don’t know how they have time for all this emailing and such – maybe they don’t have enough work to do?

36. 7. Think about social media as a method of public engagement

37. 7. Think about social media as a method of public engagement

38. Finally, where do we want to get to? Citizen Integration Conversation Communication Caution Collaboration “We are keeping a watching brief” “We want to raise awareness and share news about our work” “We want two way dialogue about the things we are scrutinising” “We want to share resources and contribute to the work of others” “We want to build our work around direct engagement with individual citizens” *Developed from an idea by @DanSlee and @CarlHaggerty The ladder of sociable scrutiny*

40. Thanks for listening – please keep in touch! @SwanseaScrutiny [email_address] www.Swansea.gov.uk/Scrutiny