A Tale of two public entities: Social Media’s uses in the public sector

In the Augest e-bulletin, the National Library announced that it had embraced Twitter and is not tweeting away like there is no tomorrow (well only 25 tweets thus far since July 25th – however it has been interacting with its followers and is even running competitions which is a great start for a new public body tweeter! Lets hope it continues. You can find their twitter page here. TweetID:NLIreland 

Speaking of Public bodies, I have come across two local county councils  who have also begun using twitter. As somebody who loves local government in general, I think Twitter offers another port of call for local councils in particular, to engage with its citizenry but also to become even more transparent in its dealings with members of the public.

It also allows local councils to keep up to date with what is going on within its communities in a whole new medium and possibly being in a position to be even more proactive outside of the day-to-day management of their respective areas. This also allows for Innovation and best practice within our local councils to develop from a whole new angle, one which they should embrace in these “straightened” times, given the reduction in the Local Government Fund (LGF) this year, as well as the evaporation of Development levy contributions. The LGF is made up of receipts from Motor Tax contributions and an Exchequer contribution to the fund, in 2008 the fund totalled just shy of €1bn. Development levy contributions were payable on all new properties developed commercially – in 2006, it totalled some €700m at the height of the boom and was designed to be channelled into specific projects to develop the councils. 

• Cavan County Council: http://twitter.com/cavancoco  I may add I was on to Cavan CoCo via twitter in the last couple of days looking for a copy of their adopted 2009 budget and they did respond so it would appear to be an interactive account, rather than simply a feed of events. 
• Dublin City Enterprise Board have a “How to” for businesses unsure about using Twitter or how to go about it. Ironically however, they would not appear to have a twitter account for themselves. 
• Kerry County Council: http://twitter.com/countykerry