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"A former local newspaper reporter, Tanveer is a student at the Medill School of Journalism learning all things digital and entrepreneurial. He also writes about political figures for WhoRunsGov.com and hopes to own the high score on multiple Ms. Pac-Man machines one day.\nWhile many government agencies still tend to employ the \"broadcast\" model when using social media, some are engaging through hashtags, community building initiatives, and geo-location analysis.  These efforts are helping to better inform the public and alert them to public safety emergencies in real-time.\nA good recent example of this is how the team of energy companies and government agencies responding to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are putting these strategies to use.\nHere are ways other government agencies, from local law enforcement to the National Weather Service, are seizing on these tools to improve their services.\nBuilding a Transparent Community\nAt the most basic level, social media is about community building.  Government agencies have adopted this mindset to varying degrees as a way to foster trust and dialogue with people. \"It is truly a national town hall that has never been attempted during a disaster,\" said Commander James Hoeft of the U.S. Navy, who oversees the cleanup effort's social media team. \nThe idea has been implemented in parts of the U.S. government to varying degrees. In 2008, Admiral Thad Allen of the U.S. Coast Guard sent out a service-wide message saying, \u201C[To] modernize the Coast Guard we must learn how to effectively use social media tools to enhance our ability to perform as a more transparent, change-centric organization.\"\nThe Coast Guard has since deployed a series of Flickr, YouTube and Twitter accounts, both at the headquarters and regional levels, as a part of The Coast Guard Compass. Some are better than others, with many serving simply as multimedia RSS feeds.  But there are stars, like the Twitter feed for the Portsmouth, VA-based District Five, which discusses their latest coastal rescue operations.\n\n\n\n\nMuch like the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency also has a multichannel scheme in social media. Its FEMA in Focus Twitter feed serves as a way to disseminate information in a timely way.  The agency has a series of regional accounts, as well.\nAt the local law enforcement level, Web 2.0 technology has been implemented in some departments to give people details about what officers have been up to. At the Bellevue Police Department in Nebraska, Twitter is used to solicit help from the public and Facebook is used as a comment and complaint board for residents. In Great Britain, the Merseyside Police website personalizes information according to neighborhood, also appealing to the public for help as needed.\nSocial Media as a Real-Time Investigation and Response Tool\nWhile the more traditional means of sharing information with people, such as press conferences or releases, will always be necessary to brief the public in detail about events, agencies are turning to social media to keep the public informed in real-time. \nOn April 3rd, Detective Chief Inspector Mark Payne of the West Midlands Police in the United Kingdom used Tweetdeck to keep an eye on demonstrations involving two controversial and politically opposed groups; the English Defence League and Unite Against Fascism.  He checked out Facebook rumors of stabbings and vandalism, and posted on Twitter when the information was found to be false \u2014 potentially quelling violent backlash. \"This is groundbreaking stuff for policing in the UK. We have used social media as a broadcast platform during protests in the past, but we have not had immediate updates from officers on the ground, enabling two-way conversations,\" Payne wrote after the event.\nLauri Stevens, a Massachusetts-based social media consultant for law enforcement, said that such tools have been key in enhancing the reputation of agencies. \"Cops are just getting the interactive engagement thing,\" Stevens said. \"I think the law enforcement's policy should state you have to be competent with this stuff.\"\nTracking and Creating Hashtags\nLaw enforcement and emergency response agencies alike are also becoming more sophisticated in how they use Twitter. While monitoring hashtags is commonplace, some agencies are creating them to denote specific social media priorities \u2014 particularly, getting users to document certain events.\nDuring the 2009 PRIDE Parade, the Toronto police encouraged the use of the #PrideTO hashtag to keep an eye on any suspected crimes related to the LGBT community\u2019s event.\nThe National Weather Service is enlisting the help of Twitter users, asking them to use the hashtag #wxreport to share significant weather reports. The website gives precise instructions for how to report damaging winds, snow, hail, tornadoes and other potentially serious weather events. As the website notes, the project is \"experimental.\"\nSpot Trends Before Science Can\n\n\n\n\nResearchers at government agencies are experimenting with social media to try and spot possible issues and trends before more scientific measurements can be taken.\nDuring last year\u2019s H1N1 outbreak, the Internet famously took a starring role in illustrating how the swine flu epidemic was spreading across the globe. Now, a group including researchers from City University London, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and Britain's National Health Service are teaming up ahead of the 2012 London Olympics to develop ways to detect and respond to epidemics via Twitter.\nFunded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the U.S. Geological Survey's Twitter Earthquake Detector (@USGSTed) is a prototype that gathers real-time Twitter updates during seismic activities faster than scientific equipment can be tapped for more precise measurements and alerts.  It examines earthquakes at an anecdotal level, and complements scientific analysis, according to the project\u2019s overseer, Paul Earle.\n\u201CThe skepticism comes when they think we are trying to provide public alerts that an earthquake has happened based on Twitter information,\u201D Earle said. \u201CWe're not doing that, we are augmenting our current tools.\u201D\nConclusion\nFor government agencies, social media not only sends and gathers information instantaneously \u2014 it fosters relationships and trust, while encouraging users to share important information. While not all social media use needs to be creative, agency engagement with these platforms can help show people that government organizations are listening.\n\nFor more social media coverage, follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook\n\n\nMore social media resources from Mashable:\n- 5 Ways Government Works Better With Social Media- How the U.S. Engages the World with Social Media- How Social Media Can Effect Real Social and Governmental Change- 6 Ways Law Enforcement Uses Social Media to Fight Crime- Why Open Source is the New Software Policy in San Francisco\nImage courtesy of iStockphoto, Veni"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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