Scrutiny, Social Media and Us

Dave Mckenna

Overview & Scrutiny ManagerPresentation for the

Local By Social Online Conference

November 2010

CautionSocial Media Amateurs at Work

!

Purpose of this presentation is to share:

• A little about local government scrutiny• Why we wanted to use social media• What we have done• What has been good, what could have been

better and some wishes

First, what is local government scrutiny?

A bit like parliamentary select committees but for local government

The aim of scrutiny in Swansea is…

To provide ‘critical friend’ challenge to the executive (and decision makers) by undertaking a range of overview and scrutiny activities to ensure that improvement is delivered, sustained and embedded

In a nutshell , the outcomes of effective scrutiny are:

Better Decisions

Better Policies

Better Services(this is why we do it)

Put simply…in bad Haiku..

Ask the right questionsInvestigate and proposeWays we can improve

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Washington_D.C._Cherry_Blossoms.jpg

Scrutiny…

In Swansea we have 5 boards + 2 committees

Child and Family

Services

Children, Young

People & Learning

Environment & Communities

Health, Social Care &

Wellbeing

Performance and Finance

Partnership Business

Overview & Scrutiny Boards

Overview & Scrutiny Committees

…that need effective support

Project Management – work planning and organising for the boards & committees

Research – doing research, providing the analysis, presenting the results

Communications - drafting reports and giving presentations

Relationship Management – working with councillors, departments, partners and the public

Diplomacy – working in a politically sensitive environment

Overview & ScrutinyUnit (us)

Why social media?

No one really downloaded our newsletter…

Surveys told us there was low awarenessof what we do

Staff (157 responses)

Do you agree that you have a good understanding of the work of overview and scrutiny?

2010 2009

Strongly agree 10.4%(16) 6.6%(9)

Tend to agree 42.2%(65) 39.7%(54)

Tend to disagree 32.5%(50) 40.4%(55)

Strongly disagree 14.3%(22) 12.5%(17)

We thought it would help us get evidence for our reviews…

…and we thought it would widen involvement in the work of the boards and committees

We wanted to overcome council formality…

…and engage people in issues that really matter

Recycling

Corporate Parenting

Shared Services

Literacy in Schools

Community Alarms

Adult social care

Cycling

Youth Services

Public Transport

Regeneration Projects

What We Have Done

We spent time planning and came up with some principles

• Be clear why we are using which tools• Live the values of each tool• Focus on news relevant to people • Use the ‘language of questions’ • Use ‘swansea scrutiny’ as a consistent brand• Extend our use of different media• Communicate as people - be friendly, readable

and fun

We even made ourselves a logo!

This is the plan we made…

Minutes & Agendas via council site

Scrutiny web pages on council site

Staff intranet

Wordpress Blog

Twitter

Facebook

Slideshare

Flikr

Youtube

Staff

Councillors

National /Expert Bodies

“General” Public

Back End Interactive People

Corporate We support

Conversation

Multimedia

We use our blog to talk about our reviews and some of our meetings

We can now share presentations from meetings

We have even started making films!

We use Twitter mainly to signpost and to find out what’s happening nationally

We use Facebook to (try to) reach the public

We realised we had to redesign our webpages

Each board now has their own ‘homepage’

Three things good

1. We are fairly happy with the numbers

• In the first 6 months 613 unique visitors to the blog - 10% visited 3 times or more

• 192 twitter followers• 22 people ‘like’ us on facebook

2. It’s opened many new lines of communication

3. We have benefited from great help and support

• Duncan our Web Manager• Lee our Head of Service• Twitter & CoP friends:

– @ingridk– @davebriggs– @carlhaggerty– Many others!

Two things that could have been better

1. facebook – not sure it’s right for us

2. It’s been communication but not yet conversation

Three wishes

1. Better links from our internet / intranet would increase our traffic

2. New staff social media policies would help our internal engagement

3. More councillors engaging online would be better all round!

Thank you for (virtually) listening