Download as PDF: Brent Council – Knowledge Hub Case Study

Focussing on specific applications Brent Council have been proactive in experimenting with the use of social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to advertise events, give short alerts and share videos more effectively. Linked to more formal communication channels such as their website and press releases, the impacts have been growing steadily but there have been challenges in developing practical social media usage policies for staff and in the resources to manage and monitor online comments. Going forward Brent are seeking to continue their learning approach and to make their web presence more interactive, to further develop their use of IDeA’s Communities of Practice, to draw together and filter the many sources of content and to make more information available through mobile phones.

Background to Knowledge Hub and use of social media in Local Government

Social media allows users to share information and opinions and to interact online in a many-to-many model of communication. Social media applications involve the building of online communities to encourage participation. A number of new social media applications have emerged in the last five years including social networking sites such Facebook and Twitter and content sharing websites such as YouTube. Usage has grown very rapidly. To exploit these new opportunities for communication and interaction Local Authorities are increasingly using social media tools with one third now using Twitter (35%) and RSS news feeds (32%) and one sixth using Facebook (17%) and YouTube (16%).

To further develop their online learning offer IDeA proposes to develop a Knowledge Hub that builds of the success of IDeA’s Communities of Practice which have 55,000 members. The Knowledge Hub will allow local government to produce and capture its own knowledge more directly and bring together more relevant content sources including blogs and Twitter feeds.

Brent Council’s use of social media

Rather than having an overall strategy most of Brent’s use of social media has come from individual initiatives, often driven by middle management who are part of a web steering group. The Council corporately recognised that social media was important and set up mechanisms to manage the use of social media including the development of a social media policy for staff. The approach has been to build social media requirements into other service strategies as they are developed and reviewed. The Council has been using social media applications in a number of different ways including:

• Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are integrated with their Council website and operate as additional channels for sharing information. For example videos about fire safety for tenants have been added to You Tube. The content is actively managed by Brent Council’s Communication Department.
• Involving their IT, policy and communications teams Brent have completed internal trials using Yammer, a social networking and micro blogging tool similar to Twitter but with access restricted to council staff only.
• Brent Council have set up a blog as part of their corporate web development process. While trialling a more minimalist home page Brent Council used the blog as a mechanism to capture the feedback from users. Brent’s CEO also has his own blog and discussion forums are operated on the community forum website.
• Brent Council hosts the e-Government Register website which is the authoritative source for usage of social media tools by UK local authorities.
• In a new project Brent Council are planning to use social media together with online energy monitoring to influence the attitudes and behaviour of groups of citizens who, in the past, have been less active in responding to the climate change message (e.g. black and minority groups, faith groups).

Access to social media tools is reasonably open at Brent. An employee can have their own blogging site if they are contributing in a personal capacity but need the approval of the Communications Department if they are writing in their capacity as an employee. Web filtering blocks the access of Brent Council employees to social media and other sites as the default position. But this can easily be lifted at a line manager’s request.

What have the impacts of social media been?

Brent’s corporate Facebook (124 fans), Twitter (629 followers) and YouTube sites (more than 9,000 views of uploaded videos) are all moderately well used as additional channels of communication. YouTube has been a particularly useful mechanism for publishing videos (e.g. the Respect festival was filmed and put online). While the number of Twitter followers has been growing steadily rather than dramatically it was particularly useful as a quick news channel for providing advice about the disruptions from heavy snow and for following up press releases more generally. Facebook is used to promote events such as the Respect Festival and for engagement with Brent’s Youth Parliament.

There has been less usage of Yammer as an internal microblogging tool. Part of the challenge has been building Communities of Practice of sufficient scale, even across a Council with a few thousand employees. Similarly the blog for the website development has only moderate use and needs to be marketed more.

What have been the barriers and challenges in using social media?

A barrier for adoption of social media has been the challenge in developing a practical usage policy. The dividing line between personal and corporate comments is reducing all the time.

As the level of spamming increased and with it the potential for libel and defamation as well as abusive and crass comments, Brent’s public forums have had to be moderated more actively. Though moderation takes place after publishing this does require additional staff time.

There have been few hardware impacts from the use of social media. In fact videos streamed to employees’ desks are more bandwidth friendly than sending large media files by email as was the case before the use of the YouTube. However, there is a challenge in planning for hardware and software in what is a fast moving area of technology. For example Brent offers the ability to video weddings and stream the audio and video so overseas families can watch the proceedings online. On one occasion when the streaming stopped working Brent staff provided an iPhone which allowed the event to be videoed and uploaded in real time to the Internet via the 3G network.

Assessing the benefits of social media in terms of efficiency and customer satisfaction is challenging. Brent Council’s Communication Department are still to be fully convinced about the benefits of social media. There is a risk that social media becomes just an additional channel rather improving and/or replacing other channels. However the Council have seen an increase in website usage when Twitter is used in conjunction with a press release (e.g. promoting St Patrick’s Day events).

How is learning and sharing of good practice undertaken?

To support internal communication Brent operate an extensive intranet with various tools such as discussion forums and a write back to the CEO function. While, unlike a wiki or a blog, the content is managed, the intranet has been becoming more open over time.

Brent also use e-learning systems such as the IDeA Learning Pool and Course-Source which are more formal and include a Learning Management System (LMS). An employee needs their manger’s authorisation before enrolling on an online course. This is supplemented by standard training courses delivered in classrooms (e.g. use of the email system, use of Word and Excel, Health and Safety training and performance management).

Appropriate staff have been to conferences or workshops about the use of social media but there as yet has been no specific requirement for the general training of staff in social media applications and usage.

In terms of websites as sources of solutions Brent Council make the most consistent use of IDeA’s Communities of Practice. Other important sources of information include info4local and various Communities and Local Government subscriptions.

The Future: How the Knowledge Hub could help Brent Council

As the social media world is fickle and new services can emerge very rapidly planning for the future is tricky. For example following initial very high growth in users MySpace was overtaken by Facebook in early 2009. However Brent expect the short text functions of Twitter to stay for good as a corporate tool and plan to make their websites more interactive through the use of feedback facilities and features such as Google Sidewiki which will allow users to add comments to any webpage though these will require ongoing monitoring. Improving access to content and tools through mobile phones is also an important aim for Brent for the future.

Brent Council are looking at developing ways of integrating other social media streams to link more widely to other parts of the “blogosphere” and to build on the benefits of Communities of Practice. For example the ability to deploy Communities of Practice tools very rapidly allowed Brent Council, and UK local government more generally, to be ready for the EU Services Directive by December 2009. The EU Services Directive aims to make it easier for service businesses to set up or sell their services anywhere in Europe through online registrations for various licences and taxes with common form formats.

Brent Council see social networking to share information increasingly as an alternative way to achieve some of the benefits of attending a conference. Increased sharing of PowerPoint slides at a central source will help with the dissemination of information, perhaps through the proposed Knowledge Hub. As a result the emphasis on conferences may need to change to focus more on social interaction which is then supported by online applications. Social media can also feel much less formal and more interactive than a traditional conference structure.

Brent sees potential for the Knowledge Hub to draw together structured information from various Communities of Practice and social media across those local authorities who use it as well as data from ONS, Total Place and the various emerging open data applications. The challenge will be maintenance of the content and a degree of inaccuracy may have to be accepted.

While IDeA’s Communities of Practice have been successful, Brent would like to see the Knowledge Hub further improve the communication between Local Authorities and provide more help with decision making. Certainly Brent expect their future communications strategies to include social media more explicitly.

Further Information

Dane Wright,
IT Strategy Manager, Brent Council
Telephone: 020 8937 1404

Email: dane.wright@brent.gov.uk

Facebook - Brent Council
Twitter  - Brent Council
YouTube – Brent Council London
E-Government Register – Brent Council Social Media data
Brent Council website
IDeA’s Communities of Practice
Yammer
Knowledge Hub
Info4local