Government-to-Citizen

Communications: Utilising multiple

digital channels effectively Liz Azyan is an independent
researcher and blogger
specialising in government
Liz Azyan investigates how government can better communicate communication and
engagement online. For more
and engage with citizens online with limited resources information, go to
www.lgeoresearch.com

There has been a huge shift in how individuals get More and more government agencies are taking to
their information. The evolution of the Internet and social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook,
the advent of new communication channels such as YouTube, Blogs and Flickr to communicate with
text messaging and social media are playing a big citizens.
role in the daily lives of citizens everywhere.
Later we will explore how the Driving Standards
Agency (DSA) uses automated email alerts to advise
thousands of subscribers to changing content
Government Communication Today published on its website, DirectGov, Twitter and
YouTube. This has enabled DSA to reach and engage
In order to engage with citizens today, it is
many more citizens and provide better service as a
important for government to communicate in new
direct result of better promotion and greater
ways, keep the message clear, and make
awareness of DSA information sources.
information easy to get. However, technology is
only an enabler and not the solution. Integration of
While there is an increase in use of social media
the various online tools for access to services and
channels, the most common and visited
information is needed to make the most out of the
communication and engagement method is still the
web. Online tools are an essential precondition for
government website itself. The challenge remains:
engagement, but quantity does not mean quality.
how can government use all the various channels
Active promotion and an integrated approach to
effectively?
managing digital channels is key to effective
communication and engagement.

The rise of the new social web has somewhat

overwhelmed web users with information and is
changing the way they consume it. Today, citizen
engagement calls for a more strategic, simpler and
more manageable approach, so that citizens are
able to consume and benefit from it. The new
socially informed generation also calls for two-way
dialogs as governments are shifting their view of
citizens as consumers, and allowing citizens to
become contributors in the development of
government.

Why online communication is important in local

government. 1 Video
How is government currently engaging with
citizens online?
Governments are increasingly using multiple digital
channels to communicate with citizens. Most of
them are either using newsletters via email or RSS
feeds. Some might also use tools such as web-based
surveys, text messaging and online polls to engage
with citizens.
What are the challenges that government
faces when communicating with the public?
Managing Message Through Multiple Channels.
With greater public sector adoption of the various
new and emerging digital channels, government
and citizens now face the daunting task of finding
and cross-referencing relevant information that is
dispersed across the web. This can quickly become
an impractical task considering communication
now takes place through various methods or
channels. Government agencies need to ensure
each communication can be translated into
improved services, completion of transactions and
increased satisfaction.
Effective communication will lead to better
engagement with citizens and eventually increase
website usage and demand for other lower cost
digital channels.
Citizen Expectations are Increasing While
Budgets are Decreasing. Tough budgetary
conditions during an economic downturn are
having a knock on effect on demand for services.
Citizens are demanding more services to help them
in these tough times, leading to an increase in
demand for information. Today’s government
should be looking ever more closely at new
technologies to reduce costly traditional means of
communication such as mail newsletters and face-
to-face services as a result of this increased budget
pressure. As budget cuts bite, more human
resources will need to be pulled out of the equation.
Governments will have to do more with less and
with fewer people. 2 More citizens now are
accepting and in many cases prefer email and other
electronic means as a form of communication. As a
result, government agencies can be more
forthcoming with their information.
The Social Media Challenge. Ever since Obama
won the US election with the help of social media,
governments everywhere have enthusiastically
jumped onto the social media bandwagon without
realising that running a campaign is different to
running government, where the vision for
technology must be filtered through legislation,
regulations and commonplace bureaucracy. 3
The same rule applies for governments
everywhere, which means, in order for
governments to effectively use social media, they
must be more transparent and able to manage
multiple channels of communication effectively.
The challenge is gathering those channels into one
meaningful platform or form of delivery that
government will be able to manage easily and
citizens will see as seamless, proactive
communication.
Social media and local governments Video
The rise of social media also poses another huge
challenge, which is to bridge the gap
(social/technical) between ‘digital natives’ and ‘the
rest of us’. And the challenge does not stop there.
Many web managers don’t have access to social
media tools because of legal, security, privacy, and
internal policy concerns.
Reasons why public communication
must be improved
Web 2.0 has changed the government
communication landscape
Web 2.0 has revolutionised how the web works.
Whereas in the past, the web would be a portal of
information, web 2.0 has injected interactivity
online and changed the way people engage with
information. Web 2.0 sees web users demanding
relevant and specific information to come to them
regularly. It also gives web users the option of
receiving that information through multiple
channels such as the website, email, text messaging,
RSS and social media. Some users prefer one
channel over another and others might use multiple
channels in multiple locations based on where they
are and what technology is available to them.
Over the years, eGovernment has shifted from only
publishing information to a more transactional
platform. But web 2.0 has shifted eGovernment
further by allowing citizens to consume official
government information where, when and how
they want it. 4
Government is now a 2-way Street: The “Net
Geners” /Gen Y
Don Tapscott, author of Grown Up Digital goes into
great detail in his book on how “net geners” or “Gen
Y” citizens are transforming democracy. The $4
million private research study showed that “net
geners” have developed new ways of thinking,
interacting, working and socialising. All of this
entails a whole different way of life, which includes
a whole new perspective on how government
should work and interact with citizens.
“Net geners” are now entering the government
workforce and becoming tax-paying citizens. Their
expectations are pushing government towards
some radical changes in the way they work and
deliver services. They expect the government-
citizen relationship to be a two-way street and
expect to get information on demand. Therefore
government best practices must be transparent and
up-to-date to ensure the “net geners” citizen
satisfaction is achieved.
2
Don’t make me think! Government
Information at My Fingertips
Steve Krug, a web usability guru and author of
“Don’t make me think!” 5 makes some interesting
points about how we should approach users when
it comes to the web. Government websites are
notoriously known to be one of the most
complicated and confusing websites to use or
understand. 6
In Canada, New Zealand, and the United States,
government web professionals think that their
websites are organization-centric, confusing, and
complicated.
UK government websites are "complex to
understand and navigate and information useful to
citizens is often hard to find amongst large amounts
of policy material not relevant to them," according
to a report published by the UK National Audit
Office in July 2007.
So Krug’s principle of “Don’t make me think” speaks
volumes when it comes to how government should
be communicating with citizens.
Governments work on the basis of keeping citizens
satisfied by delivering the services and information
they need. Failure to understand their needs can
lead to dissatisfaction and inability to trust
government.
So the key to citizen satisfaction through
communication should lie in the fact that
government communication is delivered through a
simple approach that “doesn’t require them to
think”. And this can only be achieved through
methods of communication and engagement that
the majority of average citizens have access to
which are, email and text messaging.
Benefits for governments and citizens
However, looking beyond the challenges,
government and citizens stand to reap huge
opportunities and benefits from effective utilisation
of digital channels. Citizens will be more informed
about public services and lead to the betterment of
their own life and their community.
Governments on the other hand, will be able to
target citizens’ specific needs using multiple
channels of communication and lowering
communication costs significantly.
Avoidable Contact
Local Authorities are expected to deliver better
services online. If a local authority website fails to
provide the service or information, citizens will
naturally migrate towards higher cost information
channels for essential information.
Local authorities must ensure that they
communicate and engage with citizens effectively
through their websites, just as they would do if a
citizen were to call or be face-to-face with
government officials.
SOCITM estimates the transaction costs per channel
as follows:
o Face-to-face £8.23
o Telephone £3.21
o Website £0.39
How to reduce avoidable contact Video
Go “Green”
With the rise in cost of materials and increased
budget cuts, government need to find a way to
make some big savings. By using more and more
digital communication, government will be saving
on traditional communication costs such as paper
and postage costs. This also benefits governments
in their efforts to help support climate change and
the green agenda.
Encouraging social media uptake Video
How will effective communication have an impact
on government? Video
Finding a simple, low cost solution
Many argue that email is old-fashioned, others
claim it is already dead and it is not the modern
solution to the issues government faces with
communicating and engaging with citizens.
But, we cannot argue with the facts:
• There are 1.4 billion email users. The figure is
predicted to reach 1.9 billion by 2013. 7
• The three largest webmail services attract 190
million unique visitors per month in the US
alone. Between them, they have over 600
million global users. 8
• 57% of adult US Internet users check or send
email on a daily basis. 9
• In the US over 18.4 million users are
subscribed to receive Government email alerts
via the GovDelivery service.
3
Email is not dead. Email is changing.
Many might also argue that email is dying due to
the rise of social networking sites. A study by
Nielsen revealed that social media use makes
people consume email more, not less – particularly
for the highest social media users. 10
Another study by The Participatory Marketing
Network (PMN) and the Lubin School of Business’
Interactive and Direct Marketing (IDM) Lab at Pace
University found that Gen Y would be more
reluctant to give up email and text messaging than
social networks. 11
Why government should use email as their
main communication strategy
Based on this recent study by Marketing Sherpa, it
seems email is not going anywhere. People still
prefer to share information using email rather than
sharing it through social media sites.
In the chart above, we take one view of how email
is used to share information, because this activity is
so central to social media sites. Email is dominant,
even in this regard.
While governments are discovering the benefits of
social media and other engagement tools to
communicate with citizens, email remains
dominant and to be the most accessible and widely
used way to communicate with citizens.
Integrating social media and email
into governments’ web
communications strategy
Another challenge governments face with social
media is deciding where the responsibility lies.
Often enough, the web team will be initially
responsible for creating and dispersing social
media content.
However this common mistake has lead social
media to become a tool instead of a method of
communication. Social media best practices will
show, in order to effectively communicate and
engage with social media, the responsibility must
lie within ‘web’ and communications’. This new
hybrid is essential because social media is no
different to other communication channels like
magazines and newsletters, therefore should be
regarded as an additional channel for
communication and integrated into existing web
and communications strategies. However those
strategies must adhere to the rules and principles
of the web.
4
Examples of social media as a web
communication tool
Coventry City Council
Coventry City Council has nearly 12,000 fans on its
Facebook fan page. It started to collect a huge
number of fans due to the recent snow
emergencies, where people needed information
quickly about schools closing and opening, grit bins
and other weather safety information. Since then,
the conversation has continued to develop to other
areas of Coventry amongst residents as well as its
visitors. This is a great example of how a local
authority is successfully using social media to
connect with a wide spectrum of users and creating
a community of interest around Coventry.
Camden Council
Marketing
Camden Council has done a great job using its
twitter channel to crowd source ideas for its
outdoor campaign, which was featured in
MarketingWeek. 12
The Website Redesign Project Blog
Camden Council has also recently launched a blog
detailing the progress of their website redesign
project. This blog allows readers to ‘retweet’, share
and ‘like’ any blog posts on Facebook. It also
features pictures from Flickr, videos from YouTube
and Vimeo, as well as PDF documents from
DocStoc. The use of a blog to provide up-to-date
progress for the project has proven to be an
effective method of communicating Camden’s
project. It is also a great resource for other local
authorities to learn from when it comes to website
development, with public sector readers coming
from all over the world.
Example of Email as an effective web
communications tool
Driving Standards Agency
Driving Standards Agency (DSA) utilises multiple
communication channels, including social media to
connect with the public. The most effective channel
for communication to-date has been email. DSA has
almost 13,000 subscribers to their email alerts on
topics ranging from driving training to the Highway
Code.
5

DSA email alerts serve as a cross-promotion vehicle
for connecting readers to DSA content on other
websites like DirectGov and DSA’s social media
pages.
Almost 6,000 subscribers signed up to receive
alerts when DSA publishes new content on
YouTube. As a result, new DSA videos regularly
becomes the most viewed in the YouTube Motoring
channel – receiving more hits than the BBC’s
popular “Top Gear” programme.
Emailed daily digests of DSA twitter updates have
50% more subscribers than DSA have followers
directly on Twitter.
A recent survey emailed to DSA subscribers
received a 27% completion rate. This would have
been impossible through any other channel.
“The use of email to steer individuals to updated
content across our many channels has dramatically
increased awareness and usage of important DSA
information. This clearly helps us achieve our mission
“Safe driving for life.” – John Ploughman Web Manager at
DSA
An integrated platform for reaching
the public more effectively
We know email is not dead. We know social media
channels such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube
are used widely and are growing in popularity. We
know governments face challenges to tie these
channels together to ensure a uniform message,
and they need to look for ways to reduce costs.
They need to do more with less.
What sort of platform will be able to address these
issues, reaching the public more effectively than
current methods?
There are a few criteria’s that need to be fulfilled in
order for a digital communications platform to be
effective. Proactive public communication systems
that provide automated alerts are expected to offer
the following functionality:
1. It must allow website visitors to subscribe to
information of specific interest to them,
creating a personalised portfolio of a
government agency’s information.
2. The subscribers information can be anywhere
on the web for example, the government
website, YouTube, DirectGov, Twitter,
Facebook, Flickr, Blogs etc.
3. Whenever content changes on any of these
digital channels, it automatically sends multi-
channel messages alerting them of new or
updated information, encouraging
subscribers back to the updated content.
4. Users should be given options for subscribing
to other related government information.
Like one-stop shopping, a citizen should be
able to easily sign up for additional
government information (for example: the
Met Office offers topics from the Department
of Energy & Climate Change, Highways
Agency, and the Driving Standards Agency
upon signup).
One solution that is gaining considerable
momentum in both the UK and USA is GovDelivery.
GovDelivery allows government to efficiently
manage multiple communication channels in order
to proactively communicate with the public. This is
a visualization of how the platform works:
What is GovDelivery? Video
Where has GovDelivery been successful? Video
6
Example of how it should work
Highways Agency uses email and widgets to
connect with users
In a recent interview with Helen Rix (Deputy
Website Manager of Highways Agency (HA) she
explains how utilizing an integrated
communication platform has allowed them to take
public communications to the next level. In
addition to offering highly personalised email
alerts, HA uses widgets to go one step further by
removing the requirement for people to come to
the HA website to get the information they need.
HA acknowledges the problem that most
government websites are rarely a destination site
for people in the same way that, say, the BBC
website. So with widgets, people never need to
visit the HA website at all. They might have just
seen the HA widget on a friend’s Facebook profile
or on a local newspaper site and “grab and get” the
information they need. All the information
contained in the widget links back to the HA site
generating significantly more website traffic which
otherwise would not have been possible.
The benefits of using widgets are easy to quantify
as they offer targeted communication and creates
proactive access for customer to HA’s content.
Customers have the ability to “seed” HA’s content
across the web, proliferating links back to HA, by
using widgets. This particular offering by the HA
has become immensely popular and its interest
continues to grow daily.
Examples of effective communications via
email with measurable cost savings and
avoidable contact results
1. Oakland County 13 has achieved an
estimated ROI of more than £172,000 on
printing and postage alone. 14
2. The Driving Standards Agency (DSA) in the
UK has seen an 83% increase in visitors and
163% increase in video views as a direct
result of email alerts informing subscribers
when new video content is published.
3. Highways Agency leverages social media
through dynamic widgets and uses “Share
This” functionality to allow viewers to post
and share content to more than 35 social
media channels. The agency has delivered
nearly 16 million email notifications to
almost 60,000 UK residents.
4. Minnesota Department of Health has sent
more than 4.4 million email updates to
nearly 20,000 residents. The Facilities
Compliance Section alone has seen annual
savings of £9,740.
5. Sonoma County has experienced an
estimated annual decrease of nearly
£26,000 in printing and postage costs alone.
6. The City of Sugar Land, Texas Police
Department saves over £15,600 annually on
their Crime Prevention print publication
since publishing it as an e-newsletter.
The benefits measured within 9 – 12 months
• Channel costs - cost per transaction
According to the “Better Connected 2010
Report” survey by SOCITM ; 4.4 million, or
42% of those surveyed, reported that they
are not finding, or partly finding the
information they are looking for on a
council website. This can result in
“avoidable contact” as users try other
channels to find the information they are
seeking. A shift from face-to-face to website
transactions can create cost savings of up to
95%.
• Cut Costs.
Sending notifications through email saves
money on paper (Average single mailing to
3,000 recipients costs £1,693. Same mailing
size sent quarterly averages £6,772) and
staff time used for traditional direct
mailings.
• Go “Green”.
Sending communications electronically
saves our forests, cuts transportation
emissions and CO2.
• Reducing the communication cost.
Website content updates trigger the
automated creation and delivery of
personalized email or wireless alerts to
interested citizens.
• Improve Service to Citizens.
Give citizens the information they want,
when they want it.
• Increase Website Usage.
More subscribers amounts to more
information “pulled” by citizens; this can
increase website usage by 20% to 50%.
7
 • Reduce Need for Direct Mail, Phone Calls,
and other Administrative Overhead.
Sending notifications through email reduces
the cost of government by offering a low-
cost and scalable means of reaching the
public directly.
Communicating with citizens during
emergencies
There is no doubt that communication becomes
vitally important during emergencies. Government
agencies must be ready to deliver real-time
information to ensure public safety. Here are some
best practices:
• During the recent spell of cold weather and
snow in the UK, Met Office experienced an
855% increase in subscribers to severe
weather warnings.
• The U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) used the H1N1 news widget,
which has reached more than 202,000
people from a total of 8,500,000+ views. It
has been installed on over 500 individual
web pages.
Conclusion
By utilising simple and cost effective Web 2.0
methods to communicate and engage with citizens,
government are able to not only save money but
cultivate better relationships with citizens as a
result of more frequent, consistent and measurable
communication.
Collaborative networks play an important role in
how government agencies can work together to
deliver better public service and offer greater value
to citizens.
Overcoming the challenges: proactively
engage & re-engage with citizens
There are a variety of challenges when it comes to
communicating with citizens. Some of these
challenges have been illustrated in this paper, these
include:
• Multiple digital channels overwhelm or
underwhelm citizens with bits or chunks of
information dispersed across multiple
channels.
• No meaningful or accessible platform to
integrate that information in an up-to-date
and timely manner.
• Economic downturn causing increased
demand of government services and
information.
• Reducing budgets mean government must
do more with less.
• The changing landscape of government
communication due to the emergence of
Web 2.0 (keep pace with citizen
expectations).
• The way ‘Gen Y’ thinks, works, interacts and
socialise is having an impact on democratic
participation online, effectively putting
more pressure onto government to
communicate more effectively online.
• The problem with government websites’
usability making it hard and confusing for
citizens to access services and information.
• The social media hype has caused some
government agencies to lose sight of why
and how they’re using it to communicate
and engage with citizens. Uptake is low
causing government staff to disengage with
citizens and become de-motivated.
In order to overcome these challenges, government
must have a proactive public communication, which
includes:
• Allowing citizens to customise their
information so it is easier to consume and
manage.
• Delivering that information in a timely
manner to encourage trust and confidence
in government.
• Giving citizens the opportunity to share,
discuss and collaborate where possible.
1 http://www.govdelivery.com/pdfs/gsa_citizen_engagement_oakland.pdf
2 http://www.youtube.com/user/GovDelivery#p/u/6/czdXtbOfdQs
3 http://fcw.com/Articles/2009/05/18/FEAT-Obama-100-days.aspx
http://www.govdelivery.com/portals/oakland_webinar/
4
5 http://www.sensible.com/dmmt.html
6http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2007/nt-2007-10-22-survey-
government.htm
http://www.radicati.com/?p=3237
7
8 http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/metrics/email-statistics.htm
9 http://www.pewinternet.org/Trend-Data/Online-Activities-Daily.aspx
10http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/is-social-media-
impacting-how-much-we-email/
11 http://mashable.com/2009/10/20/gen-y/
12http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/camden-council-uses-crowd-
sourcing/3007271.article
13 http://www.govdelivery.com/pdfs/OaklandCounty_MI_CaseStudy.pdf
14 http://www.govdelivery.com/pdfs/OaklandCounty_UniqueUses.pdf
***