Content comes first when it comes to delivering sustainable digital public services at Devon County Council. Carl Haggerty, Digital Communications Manager for the Council shares his insights on the importance of a digital content strategy, where his approach to designing services, not websites or platforms, is transforming the way the organisation interacts with its citizens.

Carl also discusses the UK Digital Government Service, and asks the question of whether there needs to be a Local Government Digital Service.

Developing the digital content strategy was about asking: What is the content? What’s it saying? How is it managed? How is it being shared? How is it being governed? All those kinds of issues about the content – that’s the only thing that mattered, it didn’t  matter which technology platform it sat in.

About Carl Haggerty

Carl Haggerty is Digital Communications Manager at Devon County Council, which is essentially about championing and developing the digital agenda within the council as well as being responsible for the councils corporate web presence and intranet. Carl is fascinated and keen to explore how people interact with information and technology to enable and facilitate local and global change.

Carl is also the Citizenscape Product Owner with Public I – A leading supplier of e-participation products and services to the public sector by supporting the strategic use of technology for communication and engagement and democratic renewal. His role is to champion strategic technical enhancements and the end user experience.

Carl has worked in Local Government for 16 years, with the last 10 in and around ICT, Communications, Web and Social Media. He was the first county council employee to publicly blog about his work and has been instrumental in encouraging and exploiting the use of social technologies within the council. Carl continues to promote the benefits of the web and social technologies across the Council. Carl has had a varied background working in Local Government on issues such as Strategic ICT, Communications and Marketing, Sustainable Development, Community Engagement & Development, Tourism and Economic Development.

How you can use this episode

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Episode links and resources

• Carl Haggerty
  Blog: http://carlhaggerty.wordpress.com
  Twitter: @carlhaggerty
  LinkedIn – http://www.linkedin.com/pub/7/1b2/99b
• Devon
  Council website
  News Centre
  In Devon
  Devon Strategic Plan
  Devon SEND pathfinder
  Policy Devon
  Tough Choices campaign site
• Open Space South West
  www.openspacesouthwest.info
  http://carlhaggerty.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/announcing-open-space-south-west-openssw/
  http://carlhaggerty.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/behind-the-scenes-of-open-space-south-west-openssw/
• Blog Posts
  http://carlhaggerty.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/devons-content-strategy/
  http://carlhaggerty.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/news-centre-the-content-strategy-in-action-sort-of/
  http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2012/03/07/does-local-government-need-a-local-government-digital-service/

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You can use the social sharing links at the top of the page to easily share this story with your networks. You can also follow and join in the social conversation about this episode with:

• People and organisations:
  @carlhaggerty
  @DevonCC
• Tags: #gov20 #localgov

From deploying Yammer for policy and program support, to creative use of YouTube for recruitment, and through to using QR codes to create the world’s first Wikipedia town, the UK’s Monmouthshire County Council is a leading example of how local government can move beyond social tech to social communication for internal and external engagement.

Helen Reynolds, Communications Officer for Monmouthshire County Council discusses a selection of these innovative initiatives, and also shares her experience with introducing these ideas into local government, and how influence rather than ROI matters for public sector use of social media channels and tools.

By being in social spaces where people are, and by being relevant and providing information that’s timely and worth engaging with – that’s how we build our influence as government.

About Helen Reynolds

Helen works for Monmouthshire County Council and is responsible for the council’s social media programme.  She has also advised a number of other public sector organisations on making the most of new technologies for better engagement. As a result of the work she’s done Monmouthshire Council has taken a number of innovative approaches to engagement, won UK social media and PR awards and the authority has become a vastly more approachable organisation.

She’s particularly passionate about making government accessible and easier to understand.

How you can use this episode

Listen to the episode

Episode links and resources

• Helen Reynolds’ blog 
• ROI of social media in public service
• Social media for social care: how Monmouthshire foster carers support each other with Yammer
• Monmouthpedia including Monmouthpedia Day
• Monmouthshire County Council social media page and guidance for staff (linked at the bottom) and council blog
• Some feedback on Twitter 
• Facebook and youth services
• Opening up social media access to all staff
• Recruiting on Youtube

Videos

On Monmouthpedia

On the foster carers Yammer community

Social share with others

You can use the social sharing links at the top of the page to easily share this story with your networks. You can also follow and join in the social conversation about this episode with:

• People and organisations:
  @MonmouthshireCC
  @HelReynolds
• Tags: #Monmouthpedia #monmouthshire #localgov #innovation #socmed

We interview Chicago’s new CTO, IBM veteran John Tolva about bringing innovation and emerging technologies to his new role.  John talks about how his IBM background is shaping his thinking and approach to ‘smart city’ innovation at a city level, and shares with us some of the upcoming initiatives in Chicago.