Straight talk about Twitter
You may have noticed by now that we have a Twitter account. 260 of you have taken the step of following @privacyprivee – a remarkably optimistic and patient act on your part, as we haven’t been consistent or active in how we use that account.
Twitter poses an unusual problem for a federal agency charged with serving a country with two official languages. As a tool, it encourages the quick exchange of information, links and opinions. Most tweets look nothing like the traditional and often boring messages Canadians expect to get from the government, thanks to the use of #hashtags, @replies and shortened hyperlinks. A stream of tweets often looks like a thousand individual conversations taking place all at once, in public.
There are clear benefits in being active on Twitter. Among our 260 followers I can identify individual citizens, academics, journalists, privacy advocates, open government activists and others. Recent discussions categorized under hashtags like #privacy, #dpi, #dhsprivacy, and #crtc demonstrate that Twitter users share many of our concerns and are following many of the same issues. They are reacting quickly to developments in technology, changes in policy and the possible infringement of privacy rights the world over. Their Tweets often contain shortened hyperlinks to conventional reporting, first person accounts of events, copies of their formal testimony to legislative bodies, sophisticated technological analysis, and their personal observations.
Let’s be blunt. It’s hard for a federal agency to communicate this way. We’re not used to it. We don’t have the same freedom to comment on issues. We have to respect public service and parliamentary procedures. In our case, particular cases or issues brought up in the Twitter stream might be the subject of a formal investigation or an audit.
More importantly, it’s difficult for any organization to present a personal AND authoritative voice on Twitter. Many organizations choose to use Twitter as a broadcast tool, alerting their Twitter followers to the publication of relevant material on their other sites. Behind other @s, you will only find customer service staff or a lone communications staffer. Some organizations allow specialists to use Twitter and similar tools to communicate with their peers.
But how does an Office like ours represent itself well in such a fast moving medium? We’re advocates, but we also have legislated responsibilities. We are interested in a wide range of issues and policies, but recognize that there may be more authoritative voices than ours.
This brings us back to @privacyprivee. We’re still learning how to use Twitter. We’re trying to find a voice for the Office on Twitter that is reliable, authoritative AND respects government policies. We recognize that the tool is extremely useful, and that we should be using it more effectively. This will take some time. I thank you for your patience as we find this voice.
* A note on official languages: in order to respect our linguistic duality, our outgoing Tweets will be posted in both English and French. If a Canadian (or anyone else) decides to send @privacyprivee a message, we will respond in their language of choice. That’s to say, our official communications will be in both languages, our conversations will be in your chosen language (as long as it’s English or French. Otherwise, we’re turning to Babelfish)
11 Responses
12:31 pm
What about having two distinct Twitter accounts? One for English and one for French? That way your followers are given the choice of which language to follow communications/conversations in.
12:48 pm
Thanks for succinctly explaining what many Government of Canada departments are dealing with, including my own. The fact you’ve initiated a blog and Twitter account to explain your interest, issues and decisions is admirable and should be commended. Mr Hay’s suggestion of two Twitter accounts has merit (I think). Connect2Canada (DFAIT) does this, and it appears to work well while meeting our bilingual commitments. Onward!
1:08 pm
Two channels makes sense – if we had a big team. The reality is, there’s only one voice behind the Twitter account, and that’s me.
1:25 pm
Hey Colin,
I’m very pleased to hear that you will be using the user’s “language of choice” for all replies. Otherwise you would fall into the “1-way broadcast” trap in addition to a serious delay in response time, thus defeating the whole point of Twitter. As for the “official communications” issue, having two separate accounts would obviously be better, so long as everyone understands that it’s not a “communication” tool , but rather as a “conversation” tool. I realize that you are personally aware of this, however as you and I well know, many public servants are not, and they will surely be looking at you as a best practice (as with the blog).
I look forward to your conversational tweets!
Cheers,
MK
2:26 pm
Thanks very much for the clarification, and I look forward to the evolution of this Twitter stream!
7:34 pm
Twitter is a private company, with a business plan (well… analysts question if they will really be able to turn a profit but the point is that their investors eventually want them to.) Same idea with Facebook and Youtube etc.
When governments use these services, they are supporting these (American) businesses. As mentioned, their longterm business plans aren’t really sustainable so what happens to all the content generated for Canadian taxpayers when the services disappear or switch to a paid access model? Should a private company be allowed to put ads next to, or in the middle of, Canadian government messages? Is there a Canadian equivalent to these companies that we could be supporting? Should the government be paying these services for the ad space – similar to governemnt ads on old school media like radio/TV, or should the services be paying the government for providing content? Or maybe that one is really a wash because both sides benefit. ‘Engaging’ over the web and email is one thing – those are platforms that support multiple applications and providers that generally interoperate. No one company can shut it down or control it. Twitter, Facebook and Youtube are closed networks.
10:56 pm
I think your use of twitter is both innovative and appropriate.
While you may not be able to use it to give opinions on issues as freely and quickly as some other users (though I do not see how this is drastically different from a large listserv, or some of the policy positions you take in speeches or on your website), it at the least fits in well with the public education portion of your mandate.
I think it’s a great tool that should be utilized more and look forward to see what you do with it in the future.
9:09 am
Hi Frank. Thank you for your observations. Your’re right – the government shouldn’t rely on private sector networks to communicate and engage with Canadians. We do have to follow the crowd, so to speak. A significant part of the privadcy advocacy community is experimenting with Twitter, for example. 11m Canadians have tried out Facebook (although we’re not on Facebook in an official capacity).
We do make sure that any statements, observations or responses worth preserving are published on one of our four sites: priv.gc.ca, this blog, dpi.priv.gc.ca or youthprivacy.ca.
1:18 pm
Hey Colin,
Even though you are one person you could, if using the right Twitter agent, be able to manage both within the same application.
If you’d like to talk about this more I’d be happy to have a phone conversation with you. You can find my contact information in the resume section of my blog.
8:25 am
Chapeau for getting on Twitter.
I think that using private mediums aren’t a bad thing. A more important issue, IMO, is making the data available in a format that can be leveraged in other applications. The data is the foundation on which useful applications/mashups can be built. In this case, Twitter offers an RSS feed that in theory could be archived if such a thing was important to you. I wouldn’t rely on YouTube being the one and only repository of my video files, but I think it’s a great platform to share these videos.
11:22 am
Re: Enrosing ads and companies – Gov pays for Microsoft and adobe licenses. Pretty sure gov can look into smaller companies or open source s/w, but they dont.
american companies, with lots of canadian brains. move on from that.
bilingual: One channel is enough – its more important to get the message out than to massage to everyone’s liking.
Many major minorities out there in Canada, 20 twitter channels perhaps.
Colin – great work. Canada wants information in all the ways it wants to receive it whether RSS, mail, email, TV, radio, twitter, facebook, flickr, whatever.
the more people like you, the less chance the message will fall through the cracks and no one will hear it.