Data about the use of social media on local authority websites is now being added to the eGov Register to provide a comprehensive overview of progress towards the adoption of social media and Web 2.0 in local government. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube sites are included if they represent the council corporately - campaign, departmental or tourism sites are not included. If there are multiple sites then only a primary one is listed. Although not really social media as such, RSS feeds for council news/events and the availability of Open Data and Apps for public re-use are also shown. Open Data needs to be in a machine readable format and accompanied by licence terms for re-use. Apps need to be available for common smartphones such as iPhone or Android. Blogs about Web development are also noted (but we are not including other blogs at present). Each LA page (e.g Brent) contains an entry for Social Media sites with links to that authority's use of these facilities and a link to its Web Development blog/feed and Open Data & Apps pages if these exist. There are views of all LAs by Name and by Region showing their use of social media and overall totals:
For a chart of LA social media usage over time see www.brent.gov.uk/egr.nsf/documents/LA+SocMed+chart For SocMed totals on iPhone/Android see www.brent.gov.uk/egr.nsf/News/eGRN-148 Please let us know of any corrections or additions - email egr@brent.gov.uk Liz Azyan's blog at LGEOResearch.com was invaluable in initially setting up this data and Ben Proctor's blog contributed several additional Facebook entries in December 09. The current data is available in XML format from the following URLs: