Our first “Friday Gov Cool” highlights the growing use of social media — in this case Twitter — to push online information and updates to New Yorkers. Below is our March Agency Tweet Leaderboard which ranks the 20 govt agencies we know are Tweeting. But first, other stuff, including a quick shout out to the NYS Department of Taxation and Finance, which started Tweeting “tax news and guidance” in February. Twitter and other social media allow agencies to get information out quickly, to both broad and specific constituencies.
For instance, @NYSTaxNews could have a stream that reminds small business owners about quarterly taxes. @EmpireStateDev could have a @NYStruckrules for truckers, etc. It’s good to see more agencies using Twitter and Facebook. But when it comes to adopting new Information Technology, including social media, NYS agencies have been mainly on their own. As a result, there are huge gaps between state agency technology leaders and laggards. Some agencies have thought about how they can best use their websites, email lists and social media to share and manage information – most have not.
The Governor’s Twitter account lists 19 NYS state agencies and authorities, about 15 seem to be Tweeting regularly. Here are the Top 5 by followers and Tweets Agency Leaderboard Twitter Followers(March 3, 2012)
- MTA @MTAInsider 20,690
- Governor Cuomo @NYGovCuomo 19,843
- SUNY @GenerationSUNY 4,280
- NYS Emergency Management Office @NYSEMO 3,302
- NYS Parks Department @NYStateParks 2,453
By way of comparison:
- Lady Gaga @ladygaga 19,903,094 (World #1)
- President Obama @BarackObama 12,791,993 (World #8)
- Mayor Bloomberg @MikeBloomberg 230,824