1) The document discusses the role of social media in public sector organizations and provides guidelines for its use. 2) It provides examples of how government agencies like the Spanish national police have successfully used social media to engage users and fulfill their core missions. 3) The document outlines important considerations for public sector organizations in developing a social media strategy, such as understanding target audiences, which platforms they use, how to leverage personal and corporate accounts, and setting governance guidelines.

1. FROM # TO IMPACT:
What role for social media in
public sector organisations?
Arthur Mickoleit (@arturelis)
OECD
Directorate for Public Governance and Territorial
Development
OECD Development Communication Network (DevCom)
18-19 May 2015, Paris

2. • Purpose
• Audience
• Corporate «» personal
• Traditional »» social
• OECD checklist and framework to guide public
sector institutions
Social media angles

3. Social media use has to derive from your
institution’s purpose

4. Engaging users and communities since 2010:
• Plain and natural language
• Earnest, not pretentious
• Focused on core mission: inform, prevent, raise
awareness, fight crime
Intermediate results:
• 1.5 Million Twitter followers
• 256k Facebook fans
• 6 Million video views on YouTube
Good practice: Spanish national police
More information: “@policia: las historias de un éxito” by C. Fernández Guerra (2014)

5. Community engagement supports the core
mission
14 Jan 2014:
arrest warrant
15 Jan 2014:
arrest

6. Audience 1: Understand who uses social media –
and who does not
68% of Britons with
high education level use
social media,
…but only 31%
of those with
no or low education.
Source: OECD calculation based on Eurostat data for 2014.

7. Audience 2: Know which social media are used
It took the German government
four years on Twitter to get 370k
followers. Re-tweet and comment
rates are still quite low today.
It took only four months on Facebook to
get 76k likes. Comments and shares are
frequent.

8. Audience 3: Note how people (e.g. the young)
use social media
…but less than 10%
to discuss political or civic issues
84% of young Austrians use
social media,
Source: OECD calculation based on Eurostat data for 2013; basis: 16-24 year olds.

9. Personal accounts are usually more popular than
corporate accounts
National
government
leaders
National
government
institutions
Sources: OECD data collection & Twiplomacy. Based on a comparison of 2013 data for government leaders
and top executive institutions (office of president, office of prime minister, government office).

10. Leverage both for purpose, not confusion
National
government
leaders
National
government
institutions
Sources: OECD data collection & Twiplomacy. Based on a comparison of 2013 data for government leaders
and top executive institutions (office of president, office of prime minister, government office).

11. • BYOD and proliferation of social media means
everybody becomes a (perceived) ambassador
• Set rules and expectations – for senior
executives, junior employees and new recruits
(the latter might have the biggest social media
footprint)
Manage personal social media use

12. From traditional to social –
new modes of interacting with communities
Commercial services
Public service
Traditional mode: competition / barrier Social mode: cooperation / collaboration
The case of national employment services.
Purpose: servicing job seekers and employers.
Challenge: declining relevance in the face of commercial service providers.

13. • Objectives and
expectations
• Governance modes &
guidelines
• Legal compliance needs
• Skills and resources
• Collaboration and
community management
• Managing the risks
• Monitoring and
measuring impacts
A checklist to guide governments

14. Monitoring and measuring impacts

15. Thank you
www.oecd.org/gov/public-innovation/government-and-social-media.htm
arthur.mickoleit@oecd.org
@arturelis