The federal government response to Hurricane Sandy demonstrates the power of social media to bring life-saving information to the public. But what about people with disabilities who can’t see a basic tweet or hear a standard video because of accessibility issues?
Accessibility continues to present challenges and opportunities to government social media. This is why we plan to spark an objective-driven dialogue on it and other issues at our next Federal #SocialGov Summit.
DOT uses social media and citizen engagement to enhance programs, like their Open Government initiative. Graphic courtesy of DOT.
Register today to join a hundred of your fellow federal social media managers and directors at the Federal #SocialGov Summit, Tuesday, November 27 from 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. EST.
The Department of Transportation is hosting us this month, and their team is eager to share case studies from many of their innovative programs that use citizen engagement and enhanced web services to improve outcomes.
DOT is joined by our co-hosts from the Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy, whose ePolicyWorks program is at the cutting edge of accessibility services in government. They will host an interactive panel workshop on accessibility and, with your help, will identify what we can do to meet emerging challenges head-on.
This month’s summit is the next in a series of events for the new objective-focused solver community, dedicated to identifying and developing solutions to shared needs among agencies. Participants are from mission areas across government, including healthcare, intelligence, defense, science and research, and from all-star teams within agencies to one-deep shops driving innovation.
The first event in June, Federal Social Media Camp, attracted more than 100 government social media practitioners from more than 20 agencies, including staff appearances from Twitter, Facebook and Google — capped by announcement of Google+’s new fed-friendly terms-of-service agreement.
DOL Office of Disability Employment Policy uses cutting edge technology and social media to promote more accessible collaboration. Image courtesy of DOL.
Soon after, we were invited to introduce the Social Media Community of Practice to the Department of Defense All-Services Social Media Conference. Here, dozens of specialists from the defense community came together to find ways in which their community can benefit from and contribute to all agencies’ efforts to improve citizen engagement.
Our last #SocialGov Summit in September, hosted at NASA with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, focused on performance metrics and how our community would tackle better analysis and reporting in support of the Digital Government Strategy.
We look forward to advancing federal-wide social media initiatives, and hope to see you at The Department of Transportation, November 27. For more information on the Federal Social Media Community of Practice and how your agency can get involved, contact Justin Herman at GSA’s Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies.
The first #SocialGov Summit in June united agencies from across the government in finding shared solutions to challenges in federal social media. Photo courtesy of GSA.
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4 comments
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calderas ferroli says:
November 5, 2012 at 3:38 pm (UTC -5 )
Thanks to social networks can save you from major disasters supernatural
Justin Herman says:
November 5, 2012 at 5:03 pm (UTC -5 )
I couldn’t agree with you more, Calderas.
Philadelphia Real Estate says:
November 3, 2012 at 2:16 pm (UTC -5 )
Social media has definitely revolutionized government response to acts of nature like Sandy.
Webermax says:
November 3, 2012 at 1:28 pm (UTC -5 )
That’s good news – thank you for sharing.
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November 30, 2012 at 3:02 pm (UTC -5 )
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November 6, 2012 at 10:44 am (UTC -5 )
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