Plans are underway for Glasgow’s second year of participation in the Social Media Week (24-28 September). Last year we ran a series of breakfast workshops on tools for keeping up to date (RSS/newsfeeds), managing and sharing interesting websites (social bookmarking) and collaborating (Google Docs). While we can encourage individuals to work collaboratively and share information using social media, they face many obstacles when trying to use these tools and techniques back in the workplace.
The obstacles are technical and cultural. Many organisations technically block access to sites, albeit allowing access on request. Culturally, however, they tend not to be very well disposed towards encouraging innovative use of web-based tools and services.
So this year we’d like to focus attention on unblocking access. We ran a survey earlier this year which showed that streaming video services such as Vimeo are routinely blocked. While we know that these sites can be unblocked, for most busy practitioners it’s just too much hassle. The problem could be seen as an ‘unholy trinity’:
1. A degree of technophobia at senior management level.
2. Heads of IT who don’t feel they should lead change.
3. Users (practitioners) who don’t have the technical vocabulary, time, patience or energy to maintain a sustained effort to bring about change.
The user must feel a bit like a child being bounced from parent (senior management) to parent (IT) for a decision neither parent wants to make.
Our question is Who’s Leading? That is, who within organisations can lead cultural change, from which technical change should follow? We would argue that we need leadership from all three groups. Plus encouragement from the Government: digital participation or inclusion strategies are doomed, worthless even, if people are denied access and encouragement.
Who’s leading? has another meaning though. Some organisations, (such as Monmouthshire) seem to be ahead of the game and could set good examples to others. So we need more examples to show the way.
Along with the Improvement Service we are are planning a BBC Question Time style event with a panel made up of ‘influencers’ and an audience of people who would like to know why they are entrusted with all kinds of responsibility, but not trusted to use a modern browser or the tools and services that make communication and collaboration easy and more effective.
We’d love to hear what you think and if you have any thoughts on ‘influencers’ who might join this panel.
Cracking idea, Leah. I’d love to come along if I could.
I think the mix of buy-in from the top and identifying the keen people at the grass roots and giving them the space to flourish is key to this.
Your support would be invaluable, Dan. Ian Watson, Michelle Drumm and I will be blogging inside and outside the Knowledge Hub in the coming weeks to gather momentum. I also hope to provide ways for people in local government/public services to share their stories, frustrations, ideas for us to package up and present to relevant leadership individuals and bodies. Awareness raising at a higher level and brokering conversation between the bottom and the top and IT security colleagues are key points for me. Let’s make it happen!
Yes, your support is really welcome Dan. So far the response to the idea has be quite positive so I think we’ll go ahead and submit it to the Social Media Week programme. Meanwhile, as Leah says, we’ll keep their discussion going.
I’m a social work student so, from that point of view, it’s incredibly frustrating that every time I wish to access my Google Documents or sites likes Final Fling (older people and death, NOT dating), I have to ask an admin person to email her authorisation to IT, who then, eventually, unblocks it, that or the next day. Why such corporate paranoia that I might do something unrelated to work, during work hours? Also, very poor corporate awareness of (or unwillingness to acknowledge) just how much info is, actually, available out there, on www, and how its use can make our life easier. But no, let’s just stick to the good old “this is how we always done things for years” attitude. All this in the age when we could be conducting our business (assessments, inter-agency working, etc) on iPads, instead.
Couldn’t agree more Senka! We’re lobbying as hard as we can. Make sure you come to the event on 25 Sep. Details will follow soon on this blog.
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