This document is an abridged version of our full report Using Social Media to Enhance Civic Engagement in U.S. Federal Agencies, and includes our executive summary of findings and recommendations as well as a set of tools that agencies can use to help with implementation.

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USING SOCIAL MEDIA TO INCREASE
CIVIC ENGAGEMENT IN U.S. FEDERAL
AGENCIES
ABRIDGED VERSION
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EXECUTIVE LEVEL OFFICIALS: How is your system structured to support enhanced civic participation?
What executive level directives exist that support engaging citizens
online?
Are there any legal and access barriers hindering this work?
What procurement guidelines exist around using social media tools
for engagement?
What government-wide coordinators and organizations exist that
can support agencies in this work?
What security guidelines exist to help deal with vulnerabilities in
using tools?
AGENCY LEADERS: How is engagement integrated into your organizations structure and culture?
To what extent is this a priority in your organization?
Who are the most committed individuals towards civic engagement
through social media in your agency?
How have they expressed their commitment?
To what extent do people throughout the organization have personal
experience with using social media?
PROJECT LEADERS: How is your online strategy driven by your engagement goals?
What are your engagement objectives?
How will you know if you are successful, and what metrics will you
use to measure your objectives?
How do they further your organizations mission?
How do your available tools follow and support your engagement
objectives?
How will you develop lessons learned from this project, and apply
them to other projects?
How will you integrate the results of this engagement into your
organization?
How will you respond to and incorporate citizen feedback?
How will this project be staffed? Do you have the right skills and
capacities at the table to meet your objectives? Do you have
existing staff working on this, or will you have new resources to put
towards it?
CITIZENS: How ready, willing, and able are your constituents to engage with your agency?
What data and records do your constituents have available to them
to prepare for this work? - OPEN GOV
What evidence to you have as to the capacity of your constituents to
engage in this work?
What are the rules of engagement?
What is your targeted groups interest in/investment in this issue?
What are their priorities in general?
Does your agency have a pre-existing relationship with this group?
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STEP I: ISOLATE A PROBLEM OR QUESTION
What problem are you trying to solve through digital engagement?
STEP II: SET YOUR ENGAGEMENT GOALS
Some examples include:
1. All/most/many of my constituents will have the information
they need
2. We will get useful feedback on our policy that will lead to a
higher quality product and will result in support from the
community
3. Citizens will have the opportunity to interact with an inform
policy, deepening the democratic process
4. Tapping into a low-cost and high quality source of information
and creating a high quality product
5. Delegating the task of making decisions to the people that it
will impact most
6. Experimenting with a new form of policy making
STEP III: DETERMINE YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE
Do you need experts in a particular field or general citizens?
Do they have access to data and records?
Are they interested in/impacted by the issue?
Is there a pre-existing relationship between the agency and constituent
group?
STEP IV: ARTICULATE YOUR CAPACITY
What are your staffing and funding resources? (i.e. one full time
person vs a part time person)
How long are your resources available for? Does this period coincide
with the period of planned engagement?
Is this a long term engagement or a short term engagement?
STEP V: SELECT YOUR TOOL
Use a blog, twitter, or facebook to share information over a long
period of time
Create a blog and ask people to comment on your posts
Set up an ideascale project to allow citizens to deliberate over a
particular policy or course of action.
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TOOL 1.0 use of tool (Sharing 2.0 use of tool (Feedback, collaboration, deliberation, decision-
Information) making)
Blogs Using blogs to share information, Enabling comments on blogs
without any opportunities for
readers to provide comments or Discussing confusing policies, and giving constituents
feedback opportunities to provide feedback
Wikis Using wikis without the opportunity Creating structured assignments and projects for people to
for people to participate participate in. People are either invited specifically based on their
expertise, or the project is open to all, with clearly defined
timelines and deliverables, a mechanism to vote, and an outline of
how decisions will be made.
Micro- Using twitter to post press releases Keeping up with relevant keywords and individuals and
blogging or other bits of information without communicating with them via retweets or @ replies
(Twitter) retweeting or having conversations
with people Responding to @ replies
Social Using facebook to share messages Enabling comments on posts
networking and information without the
(Facebook) opportunity for people to comment Enabling wall comments
Data Releasing data in a non-machine Releasing relavent information in a machiene-readable format that
mashups readable format (i.e. as a PDF, etc) anyone can use and analyze, creating additional value from the
information
Media- Releasing rich media on social Releasing rich media while giving people the opportunity to
sharing media sites (youtube, flickr, itunes, comment.
(video, etc) without the opportunity to
photos, comment on them Allowing citizens to create content in collaboration with or for the
podcasts) agency, and publishing it on social media sites.
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11. !
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Engagement leader - Translates engagement goal into concrete strategy using digital tools and
platforms. Develops metrics to assess the impact of engagement efforts.
Community manager - Researches relevant online communities and builds bridges between
agency and constituencies by developing on-going communications
Social media developer - Turns engagement goals into a user experience by configuring and
deploying social media tools, providing usable data and (where necessary) developing new
software
Digital mentor - Helps non-technical officers understand how to use online tools and platforms
for the achievement of engagement goals
Community communicator - Provides new content for the project’s online platforms including
updates, reports, interviews and blog posts in order to create a unique ‘tone of voice’ for the
project
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