# 2946
A couple of years ago, the HHS undertook what was then a bold experiment. They created a Pandemic Leadership Blog – invited a dozen or so people to contribute articles – and allowed the public to comment freely.
What followed was a sometimes rambunctious, but nonetheless enlightening discourse between the bloggers, Federal Officials, and the public.
The contributors were not told what they could or could not say in their blogs, nor were the blogs edited or `pre-screened’ by the HHS. I know, because I was one of the contributors.
That took a good deal of courage on the part of the HHS.
But in the end, despite some bumps along the way, the project turned out to be a very positive one. It even helped inspire former Secretary of the HHS, Michael Leavitt, to blog regularly on the Internet.
He became the first Cabinet Level Agency head to do so.
From that humble beginning, the HHS and other Federal Agencies have begun to move more towards using the Internet to get their message out to the public – and just as importantly – to listen to the public’s concerns and suggestions.
Over the past few months I’ve blogged about Twitter, and I have a list of government twitter feeds in my sidebar. I use Twitter every day, although I don’t tend to `tweet’ much myself. It is another source of information, streaming to my desktop as I work.
Here are just a few of the more than 40 Twitter feeds I follow:
Twitter Feeds
In fact, the next article from MSNBC came to me via a tweeted link this morning.
Federal government: Star of YouTube, Flickr?
Agencies will step up use of videos and photos on social networking sites
The Centers for Disease Control and other federal agencies are already using Twitter to relay information, and will soon be on YouTube and Flickr.
By Suzanne Choney
msnbc.com
updated 9:09 a.m. ET, Thurs., March. 26, 2009
The federal government, keeping in line with President Barack Obama’s directive for a more “transparent" and open government, will soon be a staple on YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo and blip.tv, with similar plans in the works for social networking sites Facebook, MySpace and Ning.com, officials said Wednesday.
“We know that about every minute, 15 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube, and there’s about 50 million people that use Facebook,” said Martha Dorris, associate administrator of the General Services Administration's Office of Citizen Services and Communications. “That’s where the public is going to get their information, and they don’t necessarily always go to government Web sites.”
The timing of the announcement coincides with Thursday's first White House online town hall about the economy, where the president will answer some questions from the public, and the event will be streamed live on WhiteHouse.gov.
The HHS is currently building their New Media site, and they are looking for your input on how it should look, and what information it should contain. The conversation is ongoing, and you are invited to join in.
Help us build our Web site!
This site will be the public face and primary teaching and communications tool for the HHS Center for New Media.
We want to use the tools of social and new media to shape both the Center and its Web site. Everything you see here is draft, in development, presented for you to react to, discuss, pick-apart or build on.
We have some high-level navigation (horizontal tabs). We’ve hinted at what some pages might contain. We are compiling information on new media tools onto our tool page. We have a wire frame presenting possible content topics.
And we have several discussion threads underway (right sidebar). Jump in. What do you like? Dislike? How do we grow this? What’s totally missing? How can we connect people (and projects)? How can we involve the larger community (across and outside government)? How can we push the envelope?
If you have other suggestions for discussion topics, let us know. It’s your site to build!
Thanks for being here. Bookmark us. We hope you check in often.
FEMA has a Youtube Channel with (as of today) 70 videos available. That number will continue to expand over time.
Other agencies are making plans to establish a presence on sites like Youtube, Blip.tv, and Vimeo.
A little more than 85 years ago commercial radio changed the way the world received information. For the first time, information could be transmitted instantaneously across vast distances.
Less than thirty years later Television revolutionized communications again.
Today, a third – and, perhaps even more powerful wave of technology is catching hold.
Some call it Social Media, others call it New Media.
But by any name, it is the wave of the future.
