I came across this post at Laurel Tarulli blog - http://laureltarulli.wordpress.com/ - and get excited by some of the issues she brought about:
1. My absolute agreement with her feelings on the position of innovative practitioners in fields so much influenced by new technological solutions, such as access to information as a general concept... We'd want to do everything in the minimum time, with the greatest involvement of citizens....... We really "fluctuate between extreme excitement" ..., and "frustration at the slow progression"
2. I like also her emotional expression of happiness and responsibility ..."overwhelming thankfulness" for being part of all this... We, public employees, practitioners everywhere, feel responsible for actually acting, helping to build something new and better
3. Finally, her statement on the changing users’ behaviour when accessing information: if just some years ago, we were marked in the navigator “favourites” and searched when needed, now people come across interesting information and use it or store it when it happens. Users find out their interesting “pills” when playing their role in the social media (Twitting, Facebook blogging, etc.), as actually happen to me at http://twitter.com/susgeek. ..."our catalogue isn’t a “destination spot”, rather it is found through a gateway"... "there is an increasing amount of users who find us through RSS feeds, iPhone apps, friend recommendations or a social networking presence (such as Facebook)"
4. I should say that I was actually looking for posts on the role of public bodies (especially local administration) in helping citizens to access information to fulfil their needs. The question I’m putting myself every so on in the last 6 months is “Should we (city governments) be the leaders of social media tools use in our cities for making people aware and helping them to know about available new information and services, as we’ve been in the last 20 years? Then I found this…
“But, should "we" even be there (here)?
Recently blogTO had a post about City funded media including use of social media (Is City Funded Media Redundant?). I added a comment to the post:
... I can't believe Toronto residents generally would feel that City of Toronto representatives shouldn't be using as many tools to communicate as are available. The fact readers can contribute to discussions when social media is used is a help isn't it? You can slap or kiss directly there. Bring on the voices, the variety and let readers decide who and what they want to read.
You decide
I guess it's a bit up in the air how all of this will play out. We're seeing city after city getting on board with SM and, certainly, our own presence has increased over this time last year.
Maybe it's too early to judge the relative success or failure of government SM use. What do you think?”

http://webrebrand.blogspot.com/2010/02/extrapolating-from-neil-young-ear...
Something to build from...

M Mercè Rovira
City &V University of Girona
Feb, 4th, 2010