John Shewell, head of communications at Brighton & Hove City Council, has recently written a whitepaper on Social Media in the Public Sector, which was published by DWPub.

Shewell sees the public sector as facing unprecedented challenges – not least huge financial pressures. The Government has laid out plans to cut more than £80 billion from the public purse, with schools, councils, hospitals, the fire brigade and police all affected. Brighton & Hove City Council alone has to make £45 million in savings over the next three years from a budget of £750 million.

Modern pressures have forced council officers nationwide to re-evaluate the whole model of local government - there is a genuine need to redefine its role to be fit for purpose now and in the future. The entire public sector is facing similar challenges. In short, the public sector cannot continue working in the same way it has done since the 19th century, when county and district councils began.

At the heart of these challenges lies communication which is becoming ever more complicated with the changing media landscape. In the face of real change in the public sector, communication has undergone its own quiet revolution. Where local public services need to find more efficient and effective ways to engage with people, social media is proving to be an invaluable new tool.

Various public sector organisations have been experimenting with social media over the last few years. Age-old industries are turning to modern technology to reach their audience, using a medium that is mutually used by people of all backgrounds
and ages.

At the heart of this lies a desire for citizens to feel valued. This means they are being listened to and are involved in the shaping of an organisation’s brand; making them feel empowered and making brands more “social”. The #nhssm Twitter hashtag is one example of a social media being used to bring people together to talk about issues they care about. Brighton & Hove City Council has pioneered some of the most innovative ways of working in social media, which are now accepted as part of “normal business”.

In 2009 Brighton & Hove City Council conducted the UK’s first online mapping of a local community to identify who the key online influencers were, what they were saying and in which spaces and with whom they shared their conversations. This piece of detailed mapping, carried out by Brighton-based social business consultancy NixonMcInnes, was designed to shift the model of communications from the traditional top-down approach to a genuine involvement in which conversations were encouraged. The research discovered that the city’s online communities are big, active and growing.

In addition to the council’s extensive use of social media to listen communities and to and to encourage citizens to use services, the council believes that social media also has enormous potential in crisis situations. During the severe weather in winter 2010/11, Brighton & Hove City Council kept residents informed by updating details from its main website to various social media sites. Social media can be updated and provide information to people in real time. It enables organisations to join conversations where people are online and give them information on their terms, which means they don’t necessarily have to go searching for it.

The private sector understands the importance of customer engagement and realises that social media can help achieve this aim. While the public sector has always pursued the idea of empowering communities from the grassroots, it has been slower than its private counterpart to grasp how social media could play a role. The 24 hour tweetathon by the Greater Manchester Police is an example of the emerging trend of social media being used by the public sector to engage the community.

As chief executive of Brighton & Hove City Council John Barradell points out, “Councils must demonstrate their relevance by adapting to the changing environment and constantly innovate. We need to adopt a Google-like mentality in which innovation becomes ingrained in our DNA, and achieved through collaboration and co-creation. “The question is how do we connect the three interrelated parts of the council, the community and innovation? First, we’ve got to relinquish power and hand control to the community. Second, we’ve got to involve them more in the design and delivery of services. Finally, we’ve got to complete the triangulation of council-citizen-innovation in order to become truly relevant.”

You can download the whitepaper here.