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5.
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| INTERNAL OPERATIONS COMMITTEE |
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| Information |
| Referral History: |
| On June 17, 2014, the Board of Supervisors approved a social media policy (attached) governing the use of various online engagement tools by County employees for business communication purposes. The County Administrator requested the Office of Communications and Media, with assistance from Risk Management and County Counsel, develop guidelines for use and training. Input and direction from the Internal Operations Committee in 2013 and 2014 shaped the contents of the umbrella policy. Due to staffing and resource limitations, the implementation of the policy was deferred to 2016. |
| Referral Update: |
Risk Management is working with the Office of Communications and Media (OCM) to develop and host custom web-based training, using Target Solutions, for all account administrators. The training will include the following key areas:
- how to open and register a new social media account
- social media as a public record and records retention/archiving
- legal issues affecting government social media use
- social media monitoring and effective measurement/analytics
- social media in crisis and emergency communications
The OCM is currently piloting the use of Sprout Social, a tool designed to manage social media use and mentions across multiple platforms. It also offers a higher level of analytics than free tools such as TweetDeck and Hootsuite. At the conclusion of the pilot, a recommendation will be made on the value of having a countywide monitoring and management tool for all County social media accounts.
The OCM has extensively researched best practices in implementing government social media policies. Staff is developing content for an intranet-based website that will provide County social media administrators with the guidelines for use of the primary social media tools currently being utilized. Those include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Vimeo, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Periscope, Snapchat, Flickr and Google+. As more tools emerge, they will be added to the guidelines section.
The County’s current intranet requires IT staff to add and update content, creating extra work for a very small web team. It uses outdated technology, and is used sparingly as a countywide resource. The County Administrator has authorized the OCM to work with CivicPlus, the web content management system vendor for the County website, to develop a new intranet framework in 2016. Departments that currently maintain their own intranet sites may keep them or develop a new ones in CivicPlus. All employees, even those whose departments have created standalone websites outside of the County site, will be able to access the new intranet. Department heads and elected officials will designate which staff members should have access rights to update their content, much as it works now with their public-facing web pages.
The benefit to a new, user-friendly intranet as it pertains to social media is that County account holders will have a one-stop shop for “how to” guidelines for each of the tools used, access to the online form for requesting a new account, links to help sites and phone numbers for social media tools, and many other useful resources.
Several County offices have initiated discussions with social media archiving companies, recognizing that managing social media records is much more complex than originally thought. The OCM is working with county departments to consolidate this into an enterprise-wide approach to be more cost-effective and efficient. |
| Recommendation(s)/Next Step(s): |
| The policy is going to be put into an Administrative Bulletin format, and made available to all employees. The Target Solutions training modules and intranet site with guidelines for use and other resources is expected to be ready for use by September 1, 2016, allowing the policy to go into full effect before the end of the year. |
| Fiscal Impact (if any): |
| Utilizing a social media archive service and analytics tool would have annual costs typically less than $25,000 for both if managed at an enterprise level. |
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