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open government
How Federal Agencies Can Effectively Manage Records Created Using New Social Media Tools
Thursday, October 28th, 2010 - 11:29
To date, federal agencies have largely been on their own in terms of how to manage records created via social media tools. This historically decentralized approach has resulted in some agencies banning the use of social media while other agencies have rapidly adopted their use but ignored the potential records management implications. The National Archives and Records Administration released a bulletin on managing social media records at the same time this report was released. It offered some “guidance to Federal agencies, who must then determine the most appropriate ways
1223 recommendations
Finally, a Name!
Tuesday, September 14th, 2010 - 13:59
Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - 14:52
The six initiatives were announced back in July with little fanfare, but today’s memo provides high level visibility and press that “review our approach to performance management, detail our strategies and key initiatives, and describe the early progress we have achieved.”
2 comments
John—
Thanks, as always, for your informative and timely summary of the Administration’s plans and progress. The Accountable Government Initiative is another step in what seems to be an important and well thought out management improvement program. In that spirit, a couple of questions on which I would be interested in your take:
Does the Initiative underplay the importance of collaboration and governance strategies? I do not want to go too far here since collaboration will clearly be critical to achieving many of the initiatives, but I was struck by the lack of a direct and explicit attention to what many consider to be the overwhelming public management issue—how to get organizations (federal agencies, levels of government, sectors) to work better across organizational boundaries. Much of the collaboration language in the memo seems to focus on sharing best practices, which is all very good, but seems to miss the essential point that to achieve any meaningful national outcome, organizations must form networks with other organizations and not just coordinate actions.
Is “accountability” the right brand? I am not convinced that at root the problems we face are the result of the failure to hold agencies and individuals accountable for what they do. Rather, the problem is a lack of tools, processes, resources and authorities. It seems that the accountability brand picks up only half of the mantra from the 1990s (make managers manage) and neglects the crucial other half (let managers manage). I recall Steve Kelman had an article a year couple of years back on the pitfalls of working management improvements from an accountability angle.
JKamensky
Thanks for your questions. Here's my take:
In your comment about the lack of any emphasis on interagency collaboration -- I agree. The memo is largely silent on this crucial point. Charitably, you could read "collaboration" into the sections about setting high priority goals, and appointing the goal leaders, but the Administration has not put down an ambitious marker on the importance of cross-agency collaboration as a strategy for achieving outcomes the American people care about.
And as to your question about branding the initiative as "accountability," every presidential memo, especially one like this, has two audiences -- the general public and government employees. That's why the Clinton Administration's reinventing government mantra was "works better" (something government employees cared about) and "costs less" (something the public cared about). President Obama's message touches on these: "open and responsive," "efficient and effective," and "cut waste and modernize" . . . but the overall heading does stress "accountability," which is something the public cares about but is not a rallying point for government employees. Public servants don't get out of bed and go to work so they can be "accountable" (well, other than the folks at the Government Accountability Office).
The Obama Administration has yet to find a way to broadly and personally connect with federal employees in a way that inspires them to make a difference in their own work place, for the people they serve. For example, the SAVE Award generates thousands of ideas, but is a top-down program that only recognizes and acts on a tiny fraction of these ideas. There needs to be a way to broadly engage -- even empower -- the workforce to innovate, cut red tape, and serve the public. Being more accountable or increasing productivity are not the kind of clarion calls to service to deliver results Americans care about.
1073 recommendations
Strategies Promoting Collaboration on the Front Line
Monday, August 30th, 2010 - 12:29
Monday, August 30, 2010 - 13:22
A new IBM Center report, Strategies for Supporting Front Line Collaboration: Lessons from Stewardship Contracting, by the University of Oregon’s Cassandra Moseley, describes how the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S.
0 comments
1373 recommendations
Re-Thinking Performance Metrics in Federal Agencies
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010 - 10:07
Tuesday, August 10, 2010 - 11:02
In a Federal News Radio conversation with reporter Francis Rose and two other guests – Robert Shea, a former OMB executive, and Jon Desenberg, with the Performance Institute – we talked about the Obama Administration’s performance initiatives to date, and the potential implications for agency efforts to measure performance.
0 comments
1081 recommendations
Federal Agency Social Media Hubs
Monday, August 2nd, 2010 - 10:58
Monday, August 2, 2010 - 11:48
The one that caught my attention was the new Social Media Hub created by Defense to help provide internal-to-Defense education, policy, and the ability for groups in Defense to "register" their social media initiatives in a central location.
View all 5 comments
For State Department: domestic outreach via social media is grouped together on the home page at state.gov. Additionally, international outreach at embassies is listed at the State Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/usdos#!/usdos?v=app_6009294086.
The National Institutes of Health has a central point for our social media efforts: http://www.nih.gov/Subscriptions.htm
The Department of State has an extensive Social Media Hub that is located on our intranet. In fact a majority of the content on the Defense.gov site comes from our site.
We provide How To guides called Social Media Field Guides, Best Practices from around State Department, a Forum section and a Resource and Research section.
We have recently added two new programs to the Social Media Hub - our Ask the Experts program and our Community Managers Group.
By far, our site is one of the most extensive sites for social media in the Federal, State and local governments. We are regularly asked to consult to other agencies on the development of our Social Media Hub and to share some of our content. In the future, we would like to find better ways of sharing the information we develop.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has a comprehensive hub:
http://www.fws.gov/home/socialmedia
1247 recommendations
Crowdsourcing Government Reform
Thursday, July 15th, 2010 - 13:39
Thursday, July 15, 2010 - 14:34
Shortly after President Obama took office, he reached out to the public for ideas on issues his new administration should address. He sponsored an “Open for Questions” forum and encouraged people to submit questions, and rank and vote on which should be top priorities. More than 100,000 questions were submitted, but participants didn’t always respond to the suggested topic areas, such as home ownership, health care reform, education, veterans, etc. Instead, they added their own and
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937 recommendations
Creating a Problem-Solving Network (Part II)
Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 - 19:30
Wednesday, May 26, 2010 - 20:08
There have been a series of studies providing lessons on how to effectively create a collaborative community. For example, having a catalyst (like Lucas) and have a convening place to share (like the OpenGovPlaybook wiki), are great starting points. Russ Linden, an author who is an astute observer of collaborative approaches, recently wrote about the importance of a collaborative mindset. And being passionate and motivated matter too, as this Dan Pink video playfully demonstrates:
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1042 recommendations
Creating a Problem-Solving Network (Part I)
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 - 10:40
Tuesday, May 25, 2010 - 11:20
The Obama Administration says it wants to create “problem solving networks” across the government. Well, yesterday a group of like-minded people from across the government convened to discuss creating just such a network around the implementation of agencies’ Open Government Plans.
While there is a formal cross-agency Open Government Working Group, many people at the staff level seem to feel excluded and see a need to develop their own network.&n
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934 recommendations
GSA's FedSpace Collaboration Platform
Tuesday, May 18th, 2010 - 12:18
Tuesday, May 18, 2010 - 13:08
The President’s budget for fiscal year 2011 promises two interesting steps toward cross-government collaboration.
0 comments
1456 recommendations
Scorecarding Agency Open Gov Plans
Tuesday, April 27th, 2010 - 20:14
The Obama Administration announced today a scorecard of the quality of the plans submitted earlier this month by 29 major agencies. Using a checklist of 30 criteria, the scorecards show all agencies rating either a “yellow” or a “green” on their scorecards.
0 comments
1400 recommendations
I am interested to see how US Government agencies are dealing with social media records
I am interested in how the US Coast Guard complies with record management?
In May 2013, NARA released a white paper on best practices for the capture of social media records. You can download that from: http://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/resources/socialmediacapture.pdf
Page 5, 2nd row, lists the US Coast Guard, provides links to 2 resources, and lists the following Social Media in Use: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, blogs, and RSS feeds. The last column explains that communications and transactions conducted on the social media site on behalf of the Coast Card must be managed as a Federal Record. Recommendations are based on the type of content and include deletion, screen shots, and backupify (http://www.crunchbase.com/company/backupify) to archive content and comments.
A newer publication (2012), the Coast Guard Social Media Handbook, can be downloaded from: http://www.dvidshub.net/publication/issues/10409 See pages 3 and 7 for a reference to records management.