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& its Agencies Start Using Today’s Communication Media?">When will Government & its Agencies Start Using Today’s Communication Media?

Gov­ern­ment min­istries and agen­cies are not known for their respon­sive­ness and com­mu­ni­ca­tion effi­ciency.  Hide­bound bureau­cra­cies, par­tic­u­larly those run by politi­cians at the top, are loathe to say the wrong thing.  “Bet­ter to say noth­ing than to say the wrong thing!” is the de facto policy.

That will prob­a­bly never change as long as we the vot­ing pub­lic con­tinue to vocif­er­ously pun­ish elected offi­cials and their staff even when the mis­takes they make are hon­est, well-intentioned ones that any of us might make.

Still, there is room for improve­ment even within that con­straint.  No mat­ter how long it has taken you to craft your mes­sage, how do you get it out quickly?  That is of pri­mary impor­tance when it comes to emer­gency management.

Maybe that’s why it has been the police, fire, and other emergency-related ser­vices that have been first to use Twit­ter to com­mu­ni­cate with the gen­eral pub­lic.  Now, in Canada, the Pub­lic Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) is get­ting with it.

PHAC has its own Twit­ter feed in order to get the word out as fast as pos­si­ble.  But what about those peo­ple who don’t use Twit­ter?  How else can they use the Inter­net to broad­cast their infor­ma­tion?  They’ve now got a wid­get devel­oped for peo­ple to put on their web­sites – it will dis­play the Agency’s updates and announce­ments auto­mat­i­cally, just like the Twit­ter feed on the right side of my own web­site here.  That’s a big step.

PHAC also has a mobile ver­sion of their web­site to enable fast, easy brows­ing via mobile phones, smart­phones, and Black­ber­ries.  That’s a big step, too.  Even a lot of pri­vate enter­prises haven’t yet wis­ened up and cre­ated mobile ver­sions of their websites.

To be hon­est, Food­lan­dOn­tario from the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) also has a Twit­ter feed going.  It’s not just the emergency-related ser­vices that are get­ting the mes­sage and get­ting with the times.  But nobody’s life is at stake when it comes to what fresh pro­duce to buy.  PHAC’s man­date involves the public’s health and safety.  That makes PHAC’s use of today’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools much more important.

PHAC gets it.  Police and fire ser­vices get it.  Heck, even Food­lan­dOn­tario gets it.  When will the other gov­ern­ment agen­cies, min­istries, and ser­vices get it?

The best way to make sure you get the infor­ma­tion you want, the way you want it?  Write to your MP or MPP (or Con­gress­man or Sen­a­tor).  If you con­vince them that it’s some­thing impor­tant to do, they’ll make sure it gets done.

Now, it won’t change how quickly the infor­ma­tion is cre­ated, but at least if you and I can get our gov­ern­ments to com­mu­ni­cate what they do cre­ate as effec­tively as pos­si­ble, that’ll be a big step forward.