Social Media for Cities, Counties and Communities

Social media (i.e., Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube) and other tools and services with user- generated content have made a staggering amount of information (and misinformation) available. Some government officials seek to leverage these resources to improve services and communication with citizens, especially during crises and emergencies. Yet, the sheer volume of social data streams generates substantial noise that must be filtered. Potential exists to rapidly identify issues of concern for emergency management by detecting meaningful patterns or trends in the stream of messages and information flow. Similarly, monitoring these patterns and themes over time could provide officials with insights into the perceptions and mood of the community that cannot be collected through traditional methods (e.g., phone or mail surveys) due to their substantive costs, especially in light of reduced and shrinking budgets of governments at all levels. We conducted a pilot study in 2010 with government officials in Arlington, Virginia (and to a lesser extent representatives of groups from Alexandria and Fairfax, Virginia) with a view to contributing to a general understanding of the use of social media by government officials as well as community organizations, businesses and the public. We were especially interested in gaining greater insight into social media use in crisis situations (whether severe or fairly routine crises, such as traffic or weather disruptions)

National evaluation of Partnerships for Older People Projects

Executive Summary The Partnership for Older People Projects (POPP) were funded by the Department of Health to develop services for older people, aimed at promoting their health, well-being and independence and preventing or delaying their need for higher intensity or institutional care. The evaluation found that a wide range of projects resulted in improved quality of life for participants and considerable savings, as well as better local working relationships. • Twenty-nine local authorities were involved as pilot sites, working with health and voluntary sector partners to develop services, with funding of £60m • Those projects developed ranged from low level services, such as lunch-clubs, to more formal preventive initiatives, such as hospital discharge and rapid response services • Over a quarter of a million people (264,637) used one or more of these services • The reduction in hospital emergency bed days resulted in considerable savings, to the extent that for every extra £1 spent on the POPP services, there has been approximately a £1.20 additional benefit in savings on emergency bed days. This is the headline estimate drawn from a statistically valid range of £0.80 to £1.60 saving on emergency bed days for every extra £1 spent on the projects. • Overnight hospital stays were seemingly reduced by 47% and use of Accident & Emergency departments by 29%. Reductions were also seen in physiotherapy/occupational therapy and clinic or outpatient appointments with a total cost reduction of £2,166 per person • A practical example of what works is pro-active case coordination services, where visits to A&E departments fell by 60%, hospital overnight stays were reduced by 48%, phone calls to GPs fell by 28%, visits to practice nurses reduced by 25% and GP appointments reduced by 10% • Efficiency gains in health service use appear to have been achieved without any adverse impact on the use of social care resources • The overwhelming majority of the POPP projects have been sustained, with only 3% being closed – either because they did not deliver the intended outcomes or because local strategic priorities had changed • PCTs have contributed to the sustainability of the POPP projects within all 29 pilot sites. Moreover, within almost half of the sites, one or more of the projects are being entirely sustained through PCT funding – a total of 20% of POPP projects. There are a further 14% of projects for which PCTs are providing at least half of the necessary ongoing funding • POPP services appear to have improved users’ quality of life, varying with the nature of individual projects; those providing services to individuals with complex needs were particularly successful, but low-level preventive projects also had an impact • All local projects involved older people in their design and management, although to varying degrees, including as members of steering or programme boards, in staff recruitment panels, as volunteers or in the evaluation • Improved relationships with health agencies and the voluntary sector in the locality were generally reported as a result of partnership working, although there were some difficulties securing the involvement of GP

State of the art 2015: a literature review of social media intelligence capabilities for counter-terrorism

Overview This paper is a review of how information and insight can be drawn from open social media sources. It focuses on the specific research techniques that have emerged, the capabilities they provide, the possible insights they offer, and the ethical and legal questions they raise. These techniques are considered relevant and valuable in so far as they can help to maintain public safety by preventing terrorism, preparing for it, protecting the public from it and pursuing its perpetrators. The report also considers how far this can be achieved against the backdrop of radically changing technology and public attitudes towards surveillance. This is an updated version of a 2013 report paper on the same subject, State of the Art. Since 2013, there have been significant changes in social media, how it is used by terrorist groups, and the methods being developed to make sense of it.  The paper is structured as follows: Part 1 is an overview of social media use, focused on how it is used by groups of interest to those involved in counter-terrorism. This includes new sections on trends of social media platforms; and a new section on Islamic State (IS). Part 2 provides an introduction to the key approaches of social media intelligence (henceforth ‘SOCMINT’) for counter-terrorism. Part 3 sets out a series of SOCMINT techniques. For each technique a series of capabilities and insights are considered, the validity and reliability of the method is considered, and how they might be applied to counter-terrorism work explored. Part 4 outlines a number of important legal, ethical and practical considerations when undertaking SOCMINT work

An overview study of twitter in the UK local government

Copyright @ 2012 Brunel UniversityMicroblogging applications are becoming a momentous element of the public sector social media agenda. The potential of Twitter to update the public with frequent, concise and real-time content has motivated many pubic authorities to create their accounts, thus generating an interesting topic for research. This paper seeks to make an empirical and methodological contribution to this new body of knowledge by presenting an overview study of general Twitter accounts maintained by UK local government authorities. Over 296,000 tweets were collected from the 187officially listed local government accounts. The analysis was conducted in two stages: an examination of the Twitter networks developed by the accounts was followed by a structural analysis of the tweets. The combination of online research and social media analytics techniques enabled us to reach important conclusions about the use of Twitter by those authorities. The findings indicate high level of maturity of Twitter in the UK local government and point to several directions for further increasing the impact and visibility of those accounts within a social media strategy