Municipalist

Local agencies to citizens: Text us when there is trouble

So Web 3.0 is here, and the platform of record is now the cellphone. And public sector examples of smart uses are accumulating. The Washington Post reports that D.C.'s transit police are considering setting up an easy way for transit riders to silently alert authorities to trouble. The trend is nationwide:

Several dozen police departments, and some school systems, have been using text-messaging to build on the success of telephone tip lines and connect to young cellphone users. In New York, residents may use their cellphones to snap photos of crimes in progress and e-mail them to police. In Chicago, the police department and several public high schools launched a program last week for students who see a gun or overhear plans for after-school fights to alert authorities by text-messaging.

More about the City of Chicago's texting efforts here and also here. Notify Chicago is the name of the city's program for which anybody anywhere can sign up, to receive text messages on a variety of "emergency and non-emergency services."

Just don't text while walking.

Update: Here is Washington Post's I.T. Blog on one Senator asking questions about why it is that prices to send text messages have doubled in the last three years. With fascinating comments.

Q & A: Web 2.0 works wonders for Missouri Department of Transportation

When "MoDOT," Missouri Department of Transportation, hosted public forums on a plan to create dedicated truck lanes, a total of about 150 people showed up. When the department created a video on the issue and posted it recently to YouTube, it was viewed more than 8,000 times. This spring, MoDOT added a blog. [Press release here.] Matt Hiebert, MoDOT Web manager, answered some of our questions by email about MoDOT's Web 2.0 ventures:

On MoDOT's online history: MoDOT has been online since 1996. As use of the Internet grew so did MoDOT's web presence. Today the site has around 7,000 pages and receives hundreds of thousands of unique visitors every month. Travelers can check out road conditions, work zones, incidents, even flood conditions at the Traveler Information Map. The business community can place bids online, download manuals and forms, and even contribute to our Engineering Policy Guide, a wiki that is always a work in progress. It was launched two years ago and replaced a monstrous collection of PDF's and Web pages that were being updated constantly.

What drew MoDOT to Web 2.0: One of the important features of Web 2.0 is that visitors can contribute to content (with comments, posts etc.). The EPG was a great place to allow the experts to contribute.

MoDOT's first entrance into social media was the Engineering Policy Guide wiki, but the department launched a blog and a YouTube site in April. Both have been widely viewed but the YouTube spot in particular has experienced a lot of success. We've had nearly 8,000 views on our Dedicated Truck Lanes video. Considering only 150 people showed up previously for three different public meetings our message reached a  much wider audience by posting a simple video. We're expanding our blog presence and have just added another blog on our "A Conversation for Moving Missouri Forward" communications effort.  We recently launched a series of widgets so people can actually put our content on their sites, blogs or iGoogle pages, expanding our presence and possibly reaching people who normally wouldn't come to our site.

Our goal was to reach out to people with as many communication tools as we could find. Web 2.0 is revolutionary because it's a dialogue, a conversation that our Web visitors take part in.

The result: Public and media reaction has been positive. On the blog, people get a chance to give us their two cents but also discuss topics with each other. YouTube has been a big hit because we're reaching so many people ... and on their [own] schedules. Our widgets currently are showing up on about 70 different blogs and personalized iGoogle pages.

The future: We'll be expanding our social media efforts. We're already looking into launching new wikis. Requests for blogs are growing now that people see how well they work.   

Local government agencies make the call: Join the discussion, or try to co-opt it?

Here is one probably typical method by which local government agencies are trying to gain credibility in the social media world: by buying it.

A communications firm contracted by the city of Baltimore's transportation department is trying to buy positive coverage from small newspapers and bloggers for its initiatives. Columnist Laura Vozzella of the Baltimore Sun has the goods:

The city of Baltimore has offered free trips to Portland, Ore., Los Angeles, Phoenix and Seattle to reporters willing to write positive stories about public transit projects there.

"The city wants a total of 4 freelance journalists and/or bloggers (one person per trip) to accompany them on an expense-paid trip (air fare, hotel and meals) in exchange for positive stories in local newspapers or blogs about the transit tours before, during and after," wrote Sandra L. Harley, president of Sahara Communications, a city subcontractor.

For journalists, this is an ethics breach. So the loss of credibility here is immediate. But governmental agencies of all sizes try to influence coverage every day. With likely more than a few resorting to such old-school tactics. They do this instead of finding ways to join the discussion directly. So right away we know this communications contractor is poorly serving its client. The constituency online in support of public transportation is vast. To what extent is the Baltimore Department of Transportation making an attempt to reach it? Do it this way: Participate directly. And stop trying to co-opt it.