Social Media & the Government

Social media provide new opportunities to transform the government and create new forms of interaction with the public.

Social media facilitate interactive information sharing and collaboration among government officials and between government officials and their public.

Internet users are beginning to become more active, building a budding

blogosphere, where voices gain power in expressing different views on civic and administrative issues.

Social media and Web 2.0 applications (interactive, two-way communication) emphasize interactivity, co-creation of content, subscription-based information services, and third-party application development.

Read more: http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/publication/2012/01/20120103162432yelhsa0.4062769.html#ixzz1xU2XCHdz

Social Media & the Government

A social networking presence has become a hallmark of vibrant and transparent government communications. Social networking is acknowledged as improving interactivity between a government unit and the public, and providing new opportunities for reaching populations that generally do not consume traditional media. The main benefit of social media for governments is that well-considered and carefully implemented social media strategy can create greater transparency, an interactive relationship with the public, a stronger sense of ownership of government policy and services, and thus a greater public trust in government.

eGov Centre’s Social Media

Within the last 9 months:

6 Social Media Platforms have been opened: Facebook, Youttube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Slideshare, Flickr;

3 Social Media trainings have been organized addressing the communication staff of the Government of Moldova;

Egov Centre’s website has been

optimized to share updated and current information regarding e-Transformation Agenda.

eGov Facebook Opened in September 2012 It has been customized over time with a

dedicated Landing page, as well as different tabs for Flickr and YouTube.

No advertising budget was allocated for the promotion of the website, so that the growth rate was organic, based solely on posts activity and word of mouth.

At the beginning of communication efforts the Facebook page had 344 likes.

Now the Facebook page has 654 likes, and the average growth rate has been of 1,24 likes/day.

.....the growth rate was organic, based solely on posts activity and word of mouth.

eGov Twitter

Created in September 2011, the eGov Twitter has 133 followers and there have been 273 tweets sent since opening the account.

The account was extremely active during the Innovation Week held in Chisinau (week 14 – 20 May 2012) when the international community followed the event using two hashtags (#OpenMD and #apps4 MD).

eGov Youtube The Youtube account was created on Oct 19, 2011, with a customized channel to

showcase video productions, interviews, etc.

The channel now has 4,046 video views and 16 subscribers.

eGov Slideshare The Slideshare account was created in order to hosts the PowerPoint presentations used within E-Government Center’s activity, presented during events, etc.

The presentations uploaded on the personalized channel were viewed 14.896 times, and have been downloaded 238 times.

eGov Flickr The Flickr account was created to reflect the e-government events through images.

The account is embedded on the website and Facebook page as well. The sets of photos created over time have been viewed over 500 times.

eGov Website During September 2012 – May 2012 the

website registered over 35.000 visits, registering a 168% increase compared with a reference period considered for (December 2011 – August 31st 2011)

The page with the highest visibility was the index page of the Romanian version of the website

In terms of visitors’ origin, half of the visitor came from Moldova (almost 30.000 visits). The second referral country is Romania (2600 visits), followed by US (600 visits), Ukraine (349 visits) and Russia (300 visits).

The situation in the Government 12 ministries are currently present on Facebook

The Interior Ministry seems to have the most comprehensive social media strategy, being present on Facebook, Twitter, Odnoklassniki, Youtube, Flickr and Mail.ru

The Ministry of Economy has placed a QR cod on the website.

The Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Education have changed their websites into more functional ones

The Ministry of Labor, Social Protection and Family, is the only website of the 16 that is translated into Moldovan.

Only two ministries have an account on Youtube (the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Interior), three Ministries have Flickr account (Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Internal Affairs) and three ministries are present on twitter (the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Defense)

Our developing policy The Electronic Governance Center in

cooperation with Albany Institute is developing a policy for using social media in the Government.

The Policy for social media use in government is part of a series of documents which together comprise a framework for social media adoption and management in the Moldova government.

The guidelines incorporate concrete direction on how to choose the most appropriate social media tool for the identified task, how to design content guidelines for both employees and citizens, provide advice on incorporating citizen feedback and creating a social media strategy.

The Policy for social media use in government guides individual government ministries and departments in creating internal processes to manage social media use.