Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
0
in Local Governments of Colombia
Juan Manuel Rojas, Carolina Farfn Romero, Carlos J. Ruiz
AGEIA DENSI Colombia
+57 316754 3786,
ageiadensicolombia@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
The present paper builds on questions like: What use is
providing local governments to social media in Colombia? It
presents general information about the interaction that
Colombians keep with 6 territorial public entities through two of
the major social media available on the internet (Facebook and
Twitter).
What it was looked for with this study was to determine the use
and appropriation that of social media keep some public entities
located in various parts of the country (in intermediate cities in
this case) reviewing the guidelines that in this regard establishes
the strategy of "Government online" driven from the central level
by the Ministry of Information and Communications
Technologies. At the end certain recommendations are made to
encourage citizens participation through these tools.
General Terms
Management, Measurement, Documentation, Performance,
Experimentation, Human Factors, Standardization, Legal Aspects,
Verification..
Keywords
Social Media, Local Governments, e-Participation, e-Governance.
1. INTRODUCTION
Social networks are being adopted more and more forcefully by
Governments around the world in order to get closer and offer
more comprehensive services to citizens, obtaining at the same
time due feedback from them to adjust Policies, Plans, Programs
and/or Projects due to particular requirements of the community.
However, lot of times these new spaces are offered without any
structure or institutional communication plan so its purpose of
benefit on the final State client (the citizen) ends blurring because
it is not clear that the "citizenship through electronic media" is
much more than enable infrastructure tools within a website and
whose reason for existence is precisely do transcend from virtual
to reality, the needs and views of all those that behind a nickname
or an avatar, try to be heard by those who have been elected to
represent them.
2. BACKGROUND
According to statistics of the "Internet World Stats", the
penetration of internet in Colombia during the year 2009 reached
48.7% of the population meaning this that the country occupies a
significant third place (after Brazil and Argentina) in number of
users connected to the network of networks.
According to StatCounter Facebook, has the greatest number of
users of social media in Colombia, followed by YouTube and
third Twitter.
Colombia has (at December 2010) more than 300 thousand
registered users in Twitter, ranks as the fifth country in Latin
America with the largest number of hours online per user per
month with 20.6%. It also has the higher rate of population
growth on the Internet with 33%. According to ComScore Social
Media Metrix women spend more time online than men. 71% of
Twitter users are under the age of 34.
Users of Facebook in Colombia have tripled in the last 2 years, in
2008 it had 3,227,260 users, for 2009 the number increased to
6,488,200 and in 2010 already had 10,725,740, the number of
users of Facebook in Colombia is currently around 12,675,160 2, it
ranks as the third country in Latin America by the number of users
in this social media.
Additional figures indicate that 64% of users are under the age of
34 years, of which 37% are 18-24 users. The greater use of
Facebook remains in women 51% though we could say that it is
used equally by both sexes (compared to 49% of men).
At the same time, there is no a clear policy of use for social media
in Colombia, being the existent policy limited through a
"Handbook of Implementation"[11] to indicate that State entities
must maintain some kind of interaction with the community
1
2
http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-
3. METHODOLOGY
The methodology used in this paper consisted of the systematic
observation of the growth of social media Facebook and Twitter
in the six selected experiences. In the analysis it was observed
number of followers, number of posts, date of updating of content
and type of posts. Later became an analysis for every city and a
comparison between them and by type of media used.
At the start of the research it was reviewed the text published by
CTG on policies for social media [3] and verified the existence or
not, of a framework defined for them. Once done this, an analysis
was elaborated, by separate, of each one of the institutional
websites in selected cities without including, for the purpose of
the study, the YouTube network because it was confirmed there
that only in one of them exist an associated account which of
course, it does not occur with Facebook and in most of the cases
with Twitter.
It was also found that sometimes accounts are created to make
visible the Mayor in turn, there is no interest (perhaps influenced
by political issues) about the importance of institutionalizing them
suggesting a "personalization" of public management in head of
the local authority who consequently rejects the continuing efforts
the central level seek to achieve a more entrepreneurial or
management consciousness and less administrative, media or
"Parish" to the public sector in Colombia. This is especially
evident in networks such as Twitter.
4. LOCAL EXPERIENCES
4.1 Villavicencio Experience
The city of Villavicencio has 384,131 inhabitants according to the
latest census. It is located in the Department of Meta at the East of
the country; it is the largest commercial center in the West Plains,
90 km south of the capital of Colombia, Bogot.
Villavicencio has in its local Development Plan [8] a goal that
says: "Communications Stimulation: strengthening the work of
dissemination of the programs and activities of the central
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Neiva has two accounts in operation. At the start of this study, the
Twitter account @alcaldianeiva had 92 fans; it was created on
July 12, 2010. The account of Facebook, City Hall of Neiva, had
795 friends.
The City Hall of Neiva accounts are linked, so that most of the
messages sent to users of Facebook also reach Twitters.
Typically, the information more published is the one contained in
the bulletins of the Mayor's Office press.
5. RESULTS
5.1 Twitter Usage
The first thing that stands out in this analysis is that most part of
the sample -5 of 6 cities- created it Twitter account last year. This
may be because at the beginning of 2010 was reformulated the
Handbook for the Implementation of the Strategy of eGovernment in the republic of Colombia " (fixed parameters that
must comply the State institutions regarding to the fulfillment of
the Decree Law 1151 of 2008 that governs the development of eGovernment in the country) setting in one of its multiple criteria called "mechanisms of participation" - for State web sites, that
institutions: may implement additional spaces related to social
media as participatory mechanisms." Said standard however and
according to the document, included tacit retroactivity to be
totally fulfilled by the end of the year 2009, reason why many
institutions were forced to rush the steps to avoid the legal
problem that leads to neglecting the stipulated regulations but
without real interest go beyond.
On the other hand, it was noted that the oldest account is the one
of the City Hall of San Juan de Pasto and the more recent, the one
of Neiva but if the purpose was that networks such as these will
serve the objective of improving communication with citizens or
motivate their participation in public affairs, sadly the number of
messages does not exceed in any case the 1,000 (case of Twitter
which allows for a faster response) meaning in addition that the
interaction of people with accounts they follow is practically null.
Just 3.73% of the users have commented or interacted with any of
the entities. For entities studied the tweets average per day is 2.55
and monthly, 28. (Table 1)
Table 1. Statistics about Replies and Tweets day/month
City
Replies
%
Tweets per
month
(average)
Villavicencio
2,86%
4.5
59
Pasto
0,00%
1.3
Monteria
8,50%
2,6
49
Valledupar
0,00%
4,1
25
Neiva
11,04%
3,5
32
N.A.
N.A
N.A
3,73%
2,55
28
Manizales
Total
7. RECOMMENDATIONS
generation for the community and for what could be developed
. this regard, as for example: 1.
further supplementary concerns in
What preparation have local governments to take the
responsibility to use a social network on electronic media beyond
publish one or another news as it does today?; 2. What is the fear
of local governments if they allow citizens to freely express their
feelings?; or, 3. Why is generated so little advertising to
promote this type of networks from the local governments?
6. DISCUSSION
How much contribute social media to e-governance? We know
that they allow administrations to open spaces for the
participation of stakeholders in the creation of policies, but at
least in Colombia those spaces in the local governments have
barely been contemplated and possibly has this to do with
traditional culture in which the decisions of general interest
continuing be taken behind closed doors without consultation
with the interested parties.
In addition to this, it should be noted that social networks are used
mostly by young people under the age of 34 years who despite
having structured views in front of multiple issues of the public
events, they have lost the interest in participating due to worn
customs and/or political traditions of their preceding generations
that still today in 21st century annihilated all effort of citizen
participation when constitutionally it has full guarantees to be
exercised.
Then, serving to motivate participation and interest of the target
audience, special care in the language used for the web has to be
taken, that obviously should not be the same used in other
communication media having to be further clarified differences
and the treatment required by each network not being the same to
use indiscriminately Facebook or Twitter for the same purposes.
In the words of Laura Gomez (Manager of internationalization of
the Twitter network) in a recent interview [4] "Twitter is not a
Following we offer some simple recommendations to improve eparticipation on Social Media. Local governments should:
Advance from web 2.0 to Internet 2.0. Understand the concept of
web 2.0 to transform it into a practical model of internet 2.0 to
provide the "conversation" between state institutions and the
citizens.
Understand the purpose of social media. Differentiate punctual
and objectively uses, features, applications and scopes of each
network separately to seize them, segmenting audiences and
implementing stringent controls both the language and the type of
information posted.
Establish policies exclusive to the use of social networks. Design
and implement from central levels of Government, standardized
but at the same time "flexible" directives for the responsible
handling of information via these tools of communication,
allowing its adoption in local with some degree of
accommodation (respecting multiculturalism in the country) to
continue favoring the "unified view of the State" among citizens.
Accelerate the adoption and implementation of standards to
ensure the security of the information. Evaluate the quality,
amount and conditions of use for open data and implementing
policies or standards - example the series ISO/IEC 27000 to
reduce the associated risks to the integrity or confidentiality of the
information.
Practice humility from the State. Training public officials on how
to be "followers of their followers" within the social media not
only for feedback the information published by the entity, but
above all to "hear" what the citizen has to say avoiding so the bad
image of the State with regard to the services provide, grow or
spread uncontrollably through the web.
Do not be afraid to change. Leave the customary "unilateralism"
they handle with respect to the information supposedly is the one
8. REFERENCES
[1] Akdogan, I.Online interaction between citizens and
municipalities in Istanbul. ACM Press, International
Conference Proceedings Series Proceedings of the 4th
International Conference on Theory and Practice of
Electronic Governance, October 25-28, Beijing, China, pp
232-237, 2010.
[2] Farfn C. and Rojas J.E-government models in Latin
America : Comparative Research . ACM Press, International
Conference Proceedings Series Proceedings of the 4th
International Conference on Theory and Practice of
Electronic Governance, October 25-28, Beijing, China, pp
395-396, 2010.
[3] Hrdinova J., Helbig, N., and Peters, C. Designing social
media policy for government: Eight essential elements.
Center for Technology in Government, Univertiy at Albany,
NY, 2010.
[4] Martnez Siomara Twitter no es una red social, es una red
de informacin abierta. Entrevista: Laura Gomez [online].
El mundo digital. 26 feb 2011.
<http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2011/02/26/navegante/12
98718512.html>
[5] Plan de Desarrollo Pasto, accessed at:
http://www.pasto.gov.co/index.php?option=com_content&vi
ew=article&id=98&Itemid=90
[6] Plan de Desarrollo Montera, accessed at:
http://www.monteriacordoba.gov.co/planeacion.shtml?apc=plPlan%20de%20Des
arrollo%20Municipal-1-&x=1727887
[7] Plan de Desarrollo Valledupar, accessed at:
http://www.valleduparcesar.gov.co/planeacion.shtml?apc=plPlan%20de%20Desarr
ollo%20Municipal-1-&x=1366149