Social media tools could transform public sector

Declan Kavanagh, CEO, Sogeti

Social media techniques should be used to help transform the public sector and deliver the promised savings of the Croke Park agreement, suggests Declan Kavanagh, CEO of IT services company, Sogeti Ireland.
He was commenting on the findings of a study written by the research department of Sogeti – ‘From Crowd to Community’, which can be downloaded at sogeti.ie.
The basic suggestion by the study is that social media and collaboration technologies can harness the ideas and recommendations of public sector employees who are on the front line, with minimum costs.
“We need to harness the ideas of those on the front line right across the public sector as these are the best people to identify how savings can be made and waste eliminated. We now have the social media tools to capture thoughts, suggestions and changes from a large group,” says Kavanagh. “Crowd sourcing is an ideal way to harness the talents and experience of public sector workers and help to deliver change from the bottom up rather than top down.”
The study explains that with a proper aggregation or ranking mechanism, the most useful results and ideas come to the surface.
“We are fast becoming a new society with a revolutionary character, where power shifts from institutions towards connected individuals. The public sector needs to adapt to this evolving new business environment,” argues Kavanagh.