Public Sector Urged To Utilise Social Media To Communicate With People

By Jason Tan PUTRAJAYA (Malaysia), Oct 20 (Bernama) -- Governments must ride on the emergence of the social media as a new avenue to communicate with the people, instead of worrying about being dominated by the citizens' voices over cyberspace, say experts. "Governments nowadays, are not immune to the rise of the social media, which has arguably, created the citizens-to-government channel, just like business-to-business or business-to-consumers channels," said Cassandra Crowley, former chief executive officer of New Zealand's Local Government Online Ltd. "Social media is no different from us, having a conversation or writing in a piece of paper. It is just done electronically," she told a session titled, 'The Digital Era -- The Impact on Public Service', held in conjunction with the Commonwealth Association for Public Administration & Management (CAPAM) 2014 Biennial Conference here Monday. She said the public sector should think of utilising technology and social media channels to engage conversations with a broader audience, and not an avenue for one-way message broadcast. Australia's Centre for Digital Business Pty Ltd's managing director and chief digital officer, Marie Johnson, concurred that under the digital era, the governments would receive input even if they did not ask for it. "This underscores the importance of the central governments to become a 'digital organisation'. "These days, the best service organisations deliver online everything that can be delivered online," said Johnson. This enabled the organisations to cut costs dramatically and allowed access to information and services at times and in ways convenient to the users, rather than the providers, she explained. About 1,500 delegates from 53 countries are attending the three-day conference beginning Sunday, at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre here. The conference, organised in collaboration with the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (Mampu) and the Commonwealth Secretariat is themed, 'Public Service Transformation: A New Conversation'. In conjunction with the conference, an inaugural Commonwealth Media Forum co-hosted by the Chief Secretary to the Government's Office and the Malaysian National News Agency, Bernama, will be held on Tuesday. --BERNAMA