The use of interactive ‘web 2.0’ social media tools inside an organisation, to boost staff efficiency, is being tested extensively by one UK council, E-Government Bulletin has learned.
Twitter, Yammer, YouTube and wikis are among tools being used by staff to improve internal communication, efficiency and productivity within Brighton and Hove City Council (
http://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/ ).
Applications available on the council’s intranet include Yammer.com (a business-oriented version of Twitter) and Microsoft SharePoint; a web-based collection of software that can host shared applications such as wikis (pages edited collaboratively) and blogs.
The council also plans to introduce a number of collaborative measures, such as an ‘ask a question’ and ‘jargon-buster’ wikis on the intranet, allowing workers to share answers to common internal queries.
“What we’re doing is looking at what’s available in SharePoint or looking at the concepts that are developing in social media and how we can apply them to improve the way we’re working within the council”, says Yvette Bordley, senior marketing officer for Brighton and Hove.
NOTE: For a full report on Brighton’s experiments see Section Two, this issue.
