It was only a matter of time before Twitter was subverted to serve the needs of Government and so it has come to pass. Sir Humphrey however has put his own unique stamp on the social networking site and in doing so has rather missed the point.
Neil Williams, head of corporate digital channels in Lord Mandelson’s business department, has produced a 20 page, 5,382-word Twitter strategy document which advises departments to spend an hour a day posting between two and ten tweets, each of 140 characters or less.
His advice is that messages should be limited to issues of relevance or upcoming events rather than just campaign messages, that ministers should be encouraged to add their own personal insights or updates about their daily activities and that tweets should be ‘human’ because ‘Twitter users can be hostile to the overuse of automation’.
Messages should also be ‘timely’ to keep in with the ‘zeitgeist feel of Twitter’. he adds that: ‘While tweets may occasionally be “fun”, their relationship to departmental objectives must be defensible.’ Well that has taken all the fun out of it.
As I revealed on my own blog, the Assembly Commission also has a Twitter policy but it is considerably shorter and has less jargon than that produced in Whitehall. What is more I got them to rewrite it in 140 characters:
Using twitter to publish news atm, in future will use it to channel info,answer questions,inform public & engage them in democratic process
Perhaps Peter Mandelson’s department should try the same exercise. It would be good practise for them.
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