Government Online Engagement

Greetings from the Department of Finance in Canberra, where I am taking part in an "Online engagement course for the APS". The idea is to give public servants the skills and guidance to engage on-line, with a strategic approach by agencies. Having run several such workshops for government and as a formal university course, I was invited along. At the moment I am looking at how to teach professional skills online and some of these may be of use for the public service.

In my ICT Sustainability course I have students discuss the topic on-line each week. It takes several weeks for the students to establish a balance between the informality of an on-line forum and the need for academic rigor. Public servants will similarly need to balance the norms of the social media forums they are using and the legal and other requirements of government.