Social Media Workshop for Emergency Management
Sponsored by IBRD
Seattle Washington
Glen Woodbury, Director, Center for Homeland Defense and Security Naval Postgraduate School: Implementing social media is all about trust. Can you have trust established between people and organizations that have never met in person?
Police have a different "feeling" about who or what to trust. Certainly there are different opinions based on where you are coming from.
The issue with social media is that it is going to happen. You can't control it. The expectation from the public is that we will be there. If we (government) don't participate the messages will be disseminated with or without us being part of the conversation.
What are we trying to accomplish with social media:
⢠Build trust
⢠Communicate
⢠Save lives
⢠Promote participation in government
⢠Share information
⢠Transparency
There are two key words in play. Trust and fear. Fear drives people to do nothing.
Is it better to go where the people are versus building your own system? If you build a "government" system will people have the same trust dynamic by participating in a government sponsored social media?
Quote: "You must treat information as a commodity as important as the more traditional and tangible commodities as food, water and shelter." Jane Hull Lute
Bill Schrier, Chief Technology Officer, City of Seattle. With a champion like him in the city they will be doing great things with technology and social media.
Great progress has been made in the 20 years since the invention of the Internet. Audience here at the workshop is heavily into social media. Is this session preaching to the choir?
Sean Whitcomb, Seattle Police: Seattle Police Department is a heavy user of social media. Previously they were very reactive to the media. That media landscape is changing rapidly. Not just the newspapers, but now also television.
They found that people want speed over accuracy. People are more forgiving if you can get information out quickly. They will let you correct it and update it. They are using Word Press for their blogging, and they are on Twitter at SeattlePD
They started putting the blotter on line. They also have Seattle 911 on line. Longer drawn out events draw a lot of interest. It gives them a direct connection to the people without filtering it through the media. It started with the blotter and then moved to Twitter. It is not "in real time" so that bad guys can't know specific tactics being used at an incident site.
For now they are not allowing a two way communications with the public. Right now they don't have the staff to moderate heavy comments brought on by police work. Perhaps they will move to a "Ask the Chief" feature. They want to add video to their blog. The sky is the limit. It has been significant in building trust with the general public and the media. They have integrated social media into their regular work. It does save time because it provides a forum for the posting of information.
There is no internal review for the posting of information. They just follow the normal procedures for talking to the media.
Branding your social media is important for governments. Establishing the brand when things are slow will help you when things turn hectic.
Brian Kemper, Seattle DOT: Smart Transportation systems are no longer the wave of the future. It is being used extensively. It started with the installation of traffic cameras. They put snap shot images and put them on the web. Now with streaming video. www.seattle.gov/travelers/
They have information on arterials and also the state highways. They have a number of remote ways to detect and count traffic to provide traffic projections on real-time conditions. They have integrated both the Washington State DOT cameras and their own for sharing video with the public. They had 20M visits to their cameras last year. Incidents and construction are also depicted on their maps.
They track how people find their pages of info and 83% of it came from neighborhood blogs (Seattle has a strong neighborhood basis).
They will have a new improved version coming soon (couple of months) that will include travel times. They are also looking to install license plate readers. Also coming soon will include an "iPhone friendly" capability. In the future parking availability will be provided via signage to indicate what the capacity is for individual lots.
The above illustrates how once you are on the technology train you can't get off. It just keeps moving and improving and adding features in the future.
There are about eight or more other jurisdictions in this Puget Sound Region and there is a discussion ongoing about consolidating these systems to provide a regional map.
Mobile access is becoming much more important. Seattle is looking to have a third party take their web products and make them fully mobile capable for all types of mobile devices.
www.Seeclickfix.com/seattle not a government site, but available nationally. Seattle watches this site.
Panel with Public and Private Sector representatives. Puget Sound Energy is a player in social media. They loaded their own page on Wikipedia to get their information out there. Started their first blog in 2009. Andy Whappler (sp?) is their blogger on energy conservation and efficiency. Flickr for posting photos is being used. They want provide photos that the outside sources can follow. They would like to include in the gallery section photos on the emergency response phase. They would like people to upload their pictures to Flickr to get situational awareness.
Twitter has shown how they can leverage their communications. They have about 700 followers. When an incident happens they see a spike. The local media is following them. They monitored during a heat wave that started outages being reported/talked about on Twitter. They knew about the event almost an hour ahead of the normal media inquiry.
What are they doing now and into the future:
- Listening and listen some more
- Learn from peers
- Play, test and review
- Create process and expectations
- Active engagement
Learned lots from talking to others in industry who have a reputation for using social media. They do have some people designated to use social media. Employees are expected to use the "first person" when talking about the company on their own.
They need to have active engagementâ"regular posts on Twitter and other social media. Maintaining an ongoing presence. They are not trying to respond to every inquiry when there is an emergency. They will respond generically.
Walter Neary, Public Relations Director, Comcast â"He has worked in an EOC and worn "the vest" in a hospital environment.
They are very agile in responding to customers because people have choices. They found by accident that they can use Twitter to respond to customer complaints. They are using blogs and still use forums. He personally has found crowd sourcing to work in getting questions answered.
He believes that there is no substitute for a robust web site. You also need a way to quickly get information out. Sometimes the web page is not the fastest. Green River flooding was prepared for but not experienced. They acknowledged that their local office in the area would be flooded. They are going to link to sites that are updated frequently and relevant.
Being on Twitter now during a non-disaster lets you get ready and capable before there is a disaster. Get to know the format.
EHA: Social media is a fulcrum that gives you much more authority beyond the size and scope of one person or jurisdiction.
Lind Simonsen, Pierce Transit, Community Relations: They paid attention to comments about "lack of communications" during a big ice storm that gave other organizations a black eye. They listened to that and took action. Their decision was to jump into social media. The initial reaction from the leadership team was laughter. The thought was that it was frivolous to delve into social media.
All their buses have GPS locators and two way communications. They are flowing information out of the web site to Face Book and Twitter. They are at PierceTransit on Twitter.
There are standard detours for their routes that can be easily updated based on the circumstances.
James Graybeal, Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications and Director of Public Affairs NORAD and US Northern Command. Working to protect the United States from attacks. Formerly looked only outward, now looking inward too since 9/11.
He has been charged with using the new social media tools. Previously the PAO was focused on the national media. People are consuming their information differently. Not going to the NY Times for their news or CNN. Social media is directing people on what to read.
People are consuming information via social media versus other traditional means. NORAD has 1,200 people (workforce) selling their brand. He is trying to get the NORAD Commander to focus on inside communications so that the workforce takes care of the external audience.
They have hired a social media specialist and there is a Commander's Blog. They are on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Youtube. They've been doing this hard for the last 10 months. The commanding general has given them free reign to make a difference and assuming the risks that might come from providing the freedom.
The 21st Century "Information Chain" has totally reversed the "Chain of Command." You have to trust your people that they will represent you well. They want to keep people informedâ"that is the mission.
Now they immediately update their Facebook and Twitter pages before doing a news release. They are building a network of communications that will serve as the foundation for when "bad things happen."
Now that the tools are in place they will be doing an internal push.
Social media is a grass root effort. When you make connections it can bring about a dialog with people who don't like you as an organization. They wrestled with how to handle the negative comments and opinions. They stopped trying to counter all the arguments against them. Now they just "let it go" because only the most relevant show up. If you take them onâ"you lose.
Things that are more successful include:
- Information about their people
- Missions and events they are doing (Haiti earthquake for example)
- 9/11 Events--still
- Super Bowl
- Vancouver 2010 Olympics
The Commander's Blog is trusted because the commander is trusted. They tied President Obama on re-tweets on Christmas Eve.
NORAD future goals:
- Increase fans & followers
- Increase awareness of missions
- Increase agency partners cross communication
- Be the site for military emergency information
- Keep up with the main-stream Social Networking
Laurie Van Leuven, Seattle Public Utilities:
Social networking, Mashups, Wikis, Blogs, Twitter are all tools
She likes the value of Wiki and what it can do.
She did her master's thesis [I hope to get a copy and share with you separately] on the 2007 California Wildfires. Huge impacts during that event. Government was using the traditional means of news releases, talking points, information hotlines, etc.
Web 2.0 technologies filled in the gaps.
KPBS, PBS: News releases of PDFs by email is old tech. Just give me your RSS feeds. PDFs can clog their system. They experienced the 2007 wildfires. Huge increase in social media since that time.
Sabra Schneider, King County, Washington Web Master: Establish a voice before the crisis. Her observations on what happened during Hurricane Ike was all the mainline media, with little information coming from government. The Houston Chronicle was exemplary in the way they shared information.
They have found other people to supplement the media team to do the social media side of things in the Joint Information Center (JIC).
The preparation for Green River Flood helped and provide an opportunity to become better prepared for coordinating their messaging.
The public expectations:
- Public expects up to the minute current information
- They will turn elsewhere if they don't get it
- 10 levels of approval won't work
- It's not always a press release
- One update can and sometimes should feed all social networks
EHA: Is the press release dying? Seems to be so during emergencies.
If you are not fast at releasing information others will fill the gap.
Edward Vassallo, Ready Coordinator, City of Philadelphia participated by Skype. They have had an active social media program since January 2009.
What has been learned from a two way dialog? Situational awareness was improved by people sharing pictures of what was going on at train stations during their snow emergency.
They are using their social media sites for disaster preparedness information.
