24 July 2009
Blogs Help Put a Human Face on Government Bureaucracy
People-to-people discussions explain government policy
Washington — U.S. government agencies are finding that blogging can put a “human face” on what can sometimes seem like a sterile bureaucracy.
For example, when the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA), the agency responsible for airport security in the United States, launched its blog in January 2008, it recruited employees with on-the-ground experience working in various TSA jobs around the United States to author blog posts.
“We didn’t want people to think they were talking to a nameless TSA bureaucrat, so we got ‘real’ people,” Lynn Dean, one of the founders of the blog, called Evolution of Security, explained to America.gov. And that continues today, she said, with TSA employees both writing and commenting on blog posts.
Dean said the TSA decided to try blogging to combat misinformation spread throughout the Internet about security requirements at the nations’ airports.
The results were surprising, Dean said. “In the first three days, we had more than 2,000 comments,” she said.
Public interest remains high. “We get about 3,000 views per blog post,” she said. And in the 18 months the blog has been in operation, the TSA has had 642,845 unique visitors and 16,468 comments, Dean said.
The comments aren’t always flattering to TSA’s security operations, Dean conceded. “We expect venting,” she said. Many people don’t like having to take their shoes and coats off for screening or pulling out their computers for inspection, she said. They can’t understand why they might be “patted down” or why a person in a wheelchair should be subject to rigorous security measures.
“For our officers,” Dean explained, the September 11 terrorist attacks are “in the forefront of their minds, and not letting it happen again.” But for many passengers, September 11 is history, she said, “and it is often a bad clash of perceptions.” But TSA officers’ blog posts, which include their actual on-the-job experiences, explain their caution. For example, one wheelchair passenger, TSA officers found, had bags of cocaine strapped to his stomach; the metal bone pin one passenger claimed to have in his leg was actually a knife.
The goal of TSA’s blog, she said, is to explain to readers what they need to understand about the screening process so they can get through security as quickly as possible. But occasionally their comments lead to changes in TSA practices. One commenter complained of being made to take every cord and electronic item out of his bags. TSA officials contacted the airport, where security officers were trying a pilot program, and that test was ended, Dean said.
“Sometimes the blog helps operationally, identify a problem somewhere,” said Dean, who is now the deputy director for TSA’s Information Center.
GREENVERSATIONS DEMONSTRATES EPA’S MANY ROLES
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) oversees the nation’s environmental science, research, education and regulatory efforts. “We wanted to show [the public] the breadth of what we do,” Jeffrey Levy, director of Web communication at EPA’s Office of Public Affairs, told America.gov.
EPA’s blog, Greenversations, helps do just that.
“We’re doing it as a group blog; having people from all over the agency sharing their different experiences,” Levy said. Those experiences can be job related or not and range from “green” gardening to renovating a home. “The idea is to connect in a more human way to our readers than the standard, bureaucratic news release or fact sheet,” he said.
Launched on Earth Day, April 22, 2008, now is read between 600 and 1,000 times per day and has accumulated approximately 7,000 reader comments. And EPA’s Twitter account now has more than 4,000 followers.
Greenversations received a big boost when the White House joined Twitter and started to follow Greenversations. White House followers began to follow Greenversations’ Twitter feed as well — doubling the number of subscribers, Levy said.
Levy said their most popular blog material is the weekly “Question of the Week,” which invites discussions around questions such as: Why or why not do you bike to work? The questions, presented each Monday, generate between 50 to 100 comments each and sometimes as many as 200 to 300, he said.
EPA also produces a blog entry every Wednesday called “Science Wednesday,” which is managed by the Office of Research and Development. And each Thursday, EPA’s Hispanic liaison, Lina Younes, writes in Spanish on topics she feels are relevant to her audience.
EPA’s blogs, Levy acknowledged, get their share of negative comments, but such comments get posted as well.
“I think it’s a bigger problem when agencies try to run a blog and will never post anything that’s negative,” Levy said. “People will sense that you’re only looking to promote yourself, and you’re not looking for an honest engagement with the public. I think you gain credibility by showing you’re willing to take some criticism. And, ideally, you would respond to the criticism.”
“We welcome everybody’s comments,” Levy said.
