A third recommendation

An important value of public sector information is the increased transparency in government decision making. A European Union directive only affects member states and not EU institutions. We are therefore at risk of missing out on increased transparency in EU institutions that the PSI directive may bring to governments in the member states. Also, government transparency is often considered to be a contributing factor in reducing corruption.

Therefore, it would be great if there was a plan, similar to the PSI directive, that made sure that EU institutions also started providing machine readable data in order to increase transparency and reduce the risk of corruption.

Currently, it seems to be up to each institution to do what they want. Maybe that is why the Publications Office of the European Union decided to charge  10,000 EUR for access to electronic versions of the EUR-Lex database (that contains the directives and other legal acts). This move makes it difficult for new actors in the legal information industry to include EU data in their products which leads to reduced competition.

Use of social media tools in the public sector is in its infancy in Sweden. In a study conducted by the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce in 2009 (PDF) , around 12% of agencies reported that they were using social media channels in their communication. In another study by the Swedish Public Relations Association 75% of PR managers were evaluating the use of social media but only 5% had involved social media in the communication strategy. Many agencies are trying out new tools to see how they fit in their communication strategy. Most are using them as a news feed (one-way communication) and do not reply to questions. The number of followers varies greatly. Some examples:

Some agencies have also started using Facebook. The National Heritage Board (Riksantikvarieämbetet) on Facebook has close to 1200 fans. They have also used Flickr to increase access to parts of their archives. Currently the images are low-res only but that may change in the future.

Municipalities on Twitter

Many municipalities have started using Twitter to push information to citizens. Most are using it as a one-way communication channel, but some are engaging in dialogue. The number of municipalities on twitter is increasing almost on a daily basis. In my list of swedish municipalities on twitter there are currently 71 (out of 290). Many of them are not publishing any tweets and may only have registered the account to get a proper twitter handle.

In he following visualization you get an overview of how the municipalities compare with regards to number of tweets, followers and “early adopter”-status (“Age” as in number of days on twitter). Uppsala (north of Stockholm) has over 500 followers and published 941 tweets in their 367 days on Twitter. See here for a larger chart.

Observations

Some organizations are following citizens on Twitter and may not have realized that people may feel uncomfortable having an agency following them.

There are also some fake agencies on twitter. Swedish national authority for signals intelligence, FRA, has a twitter feed (with the correct logo), but looking at the tweets it is likely a fake. How should agencies relate to this? The police has several twitter feeds it seems. But they are not managed by the agency itself. How can citizens trust the information in these channels when it is difficult to see if they are managed by the agency or some personal initiative?

Recommendations from the government

On March 23 the government published a proposal saying (my translation):

Social media tools create new possibilites for communication with citizens and businesses. The E-government delegation will create guidelines for the public sector use of social media tools.

This means that we will likely see more agencies trying out social media channels in the future.

Do you have more information? Please comment!

The Internet is the public space of the modern world, and through it governments now have the opportunity to better understand the needs of their citizens and citizens may participate more fully in their government. Information becomes more valuable as it is shared, less valuable as it is hoarded. Open data promotes increased civil discourse, improved public welfare, and a more efficient use of public resources.

…and this is why I have launched opengov.se – an initiative to bring swedish public sector data online in open formats. Initially the website contains a catalog of public data sources and information about licensing and formats used.

You can help out by suggesting datasets form the swedish public sector.