Will Facebook profiles replace govt web sites?
Social learning theory, the most influential theory of learning and development, assumes that social learning is derived from close observation and often emulating the behavior of others within a social learning environment.
By Robin Hicks | 19 March 2010
It’s all the rage for ministries and agencies to have a Facebook or even MySpace page these days. Governments are going where their citizens are. So why bother having a web site at all? The idea may seem farfetched. But as officials from Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia and the Netherlands reveal in interviews with FutureGov, government web sites could disappear into the ‘social cloud’ sooner than we think.
“We can’t do community outreach programmes sitting inside Parliament House. The same applies online,” Craig Thomler (pictured), the Online Communications Director for the Australian Department of Health & Ageing, said at the FutureGov Forum Hong Kong this month. “If Facebook is where the audience is, we need to be there too. It’s about engaging sensitively in the right avenues.”
Government operates too many web sites, and most are difficult and expensive to maintain. Consolidating them makes sense, Thomler said. “You need to think carefully about what you’re trying to achieve with a web site, and how you’re trying to engage. There are lots of incidences where you need to engage community with community, and it is difficult for a web site to do this.” (more…)
April 13, 2010
