1. Introduction
Social Networking seems to have been a phenomenon that has swept the consumer and professional space rapidly over the past year or so, with millions of people blogging, setting up wikis, participating in social web sites and deep immersion environments, such as Second Life. Some of the sites involved have become famous (or infamous in some cases), with much money exchanging hands with more established brands wanting to gain control of the massive user bases sometimes involved. As an example, Google paid $1.65b (£800m, €1.24b) to acquire YouTube in 2006, with NewsCorp paying $580m (£290m, €436m) for MySpace. Social networking builds on existing communication and collaboration technologies, but brings in an aspect of serendipity. Whereas archetypal collaboration and communication systems are directed solutions, aimed at connecting with people who are already known to the information sender, much of social networking is aimed at bringing in new resources unknown to the initiator at the beginning of the process. The basic process behind social networking is to publish content to a large group for possible comment, building on the promise that within that group will be skills and knowledge beyond that which is directly available to the publisher through their normal contacts. The interest in social networking continues to grow, and new tools are appearing on a daily basis. Many of these will not survive in the notoriously fickle consumer market, but some have already taken deep root. For many commercial organisations, this explosion in usage of social networking technologies has led to a degree of introversion, looking to how such tools can be proscribed within the organisation. Proscription has been shown not to work time and time again, with the consumer mentality of employees being at least one step ahead of the capabilities of corporate policies to stop the usage of new technologies. Others have tried to embrace the technologies, attempting to use them to create better decision making environments. Embracing the new can have its downsides – will the new technology create security headaches for the organisation, will legal compliance standards be broken, how will the profile of the organisation be impacted through usage or misuse of such technologies? This paper looks at the promise and the pitfalls in the deployment of social networking tools within the public sector, and how the technologies involved can be utilised to positively impact Transformational Government through usage in the areas of Citizen Centric Services and Shared Services.
2. What is Social Networking?
Social networking is the use of technology to allow disparate individuals to interact directly with other individuals or groups. Often, these individuals and groups are unknown to each other at the outset of the process, with the item under discussion being the catalyst for bringing the people together. Outputs from this kind of interaction may include a greater circle of physical contacts, a faster and/or better informed decision based upon multiple inputs to a problem, or more rapid resolution of an issue. Social networking is an extension of existing communication and collaboration technologies that have been around for some time, and which are unlikely to go away. Examples here are: face to face meetings, telephone calls, email, paper mail and instant messaging; that is, tools that we are all used to and are utilising on a constant basis. The interaction between existing communication and collaboration tools and new social networking tools provides opportunities within the public sector that far outstrip those from using any single approach. Specific communication and collaboration technologies are covered in more depth in Appendix A. There are many different forms of emerging social networking, the main ones of which are detailed within.
