City of Ottawa Case Study: Part 2 of 4
At the City of Ottawa the policy on surfing the internet is simple: only business-related access is allowed. Consequentially, many staff are insulated from what is happening outside the firewall. So when a public transit strike crippled the city last winter for over 7 weeks, through Christmas and numerous days of minus 40 degree (Celsius) weather, a small team within the City of Ottawa saw an opportunity. This team was the newly minted e-Media team, tasked with introducing social media to city staff.
The transit strike allowed the e-Media team to showcase to city staff what was going on outside its boundaries in the online world and also to help staff provide temporary solutions to residents.
- On Twitter, people were self-organizing to carpool, park, provide traffic updates and to just commiserate with each other
- Listening in on the blogoshpere helped staff track people’s needs, opinions and ways of organizing.
- Liveblogging at city council meetings really caught the attention of city managers
- Both Union and management used You Tube to communicate with their respective audiences.
- You Tube was used by residents to comment, react and share humour
- The city, guided by the e-Media team, provided a traffic map mash-up to help residents navigate congestion
The transit strike provided an eye-opener for staff at the city to become more aware of the power of social media and how it can be used. The e-Media team then looked for a way to demonstrate how this technology can help staff collaborate and get their work done more effectively.
In the next post I will describe how the e-Media team at the City of Ottawa created an opportunity to showcase the value of how web 2.0 applications can facilitate effectiveness for a cross-functional team distributed across the city.
