---
title: "Roles for Twitter in public sector communications"
url: https://www.simonwakeman.com/blog/2009/03/25/roles-for-twitter-in-public-sector-communications/
description: "Consultant and fractional COO for scale-up businesses. I help founders, leaders and investors in scaling businesses create sustainably high performing organisations."
published: 2009-03-25T21:45:04+00:00
modified: 2026-04-11T16:25:04+00:00
author: Simon Wakeman
---
# Roles for Twitter in public sector communications

## Roles for Twitter in public sector communications

A useful summary of potential uses for [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com) in public sector communications, thanks to [Dave Fleet](http://davefleet.com/2009/03/governments-experimenting-twitter/):

-   **Early-warning issues management** – identify emerging issues early before they bubble up to the media;
-   **Monitoring reaction** – through persistent Twitter searches, departments can track sentiment, content and other trends in reaction to announcements;
-   **Direct-to-citizen communication** – Twitter, and other social media tools, can help organizations communicate directly with their target audiences rather than going through the filter of the media;
-   **Put a face on the organization** – government often suffer from being faceless organizations, while politicians seem aloof. Social media tools in general can help to counteract this;
-   **Emergency management** – emergency coordinators need to get information out quickly to people in an emergency; Twitter could even work at a hyper-local level;
-   **Raise awareness of resources** – government websites can be impenetrable mazes, designed by committee to placate competing silos with information buried deep inside the site. Twitter can help to point people to the right place;
-   **Identifying resources and information** – a more individual use, which worked for me – Twitter can be invaluable for finding answers and identifying resources for those last-minute requests (contrary to popular opinion, government communications can move very quickly at times) – just throw the request or question out there for a rapid response

I’d add to Dave’s list:

-   **Customer service** – providing another alternative point of access for customers to public sector services
-   **Community building** – reaching out to people in the community with shared interests to help build a group or coalition about a particular issue or topic – often people that wouldn’t ordinarily come into contact with the public sector

What other uses can you think of?