The Regione Emilia-Romagna has, since 2014, developed a pilot strategy to promote and coordinate the use of social media by local police departments.
Keeping in touch with citizens is the core business of every local police, but today, traditional communication tools and skills are not enough to respond to citizens' needs and demands.
As such, we established a network of people inside local police departments to share expertise in the area of social media.
Innovation Summary
Innovation Overview
The core business of the local police in Italy is to be a sort of first "front office" of the municipality, directed to listen, understand and try to solve the needs of the community.
Social media today has created new opportunities for government-citizen interactions.
In Italy local police is the police force vocationally closer to people, the first that citizens turn to, in case of any need or doubt. It is in this context that Regione Emilia-Romagna piloted a model of use of social media for local police in 2014.
The main idea was very simple: encourage and back local police to open and manage an official profile/page on Twitter or Facebook, just as other police forces are doing in other countries.
The objectives were two:
- establish a new communication channel to give trusted and verified information to people
- experiment a new way of interacting with communities, to share information, promote engagement and cooperation, and to strengthen mutual trust.
-From the regional perspective, there was also a more general goal: to experiment a model of use of social media specifically for local police departments, to disseminate it across the region and to establish a network of police officers with shared vision and adequate skills. Indeed, there were some sporadic experiences of use of social media by local police departments across Italy, but these were isolated and have diverse goals, targets and methods.
Two "field tests" were first launched with the local police of Cesenatico (a small touristic city on the seaside) and Frignano (a municipalities Union in the mountains) who started with Facebook and Twitter. In the preparatory phase, Regione Emilia-Romagna and their partners worked together to define the key steps of the project:
- identifying the internal formal documents needed
- developing policies for the internal and external use of the page/profile
- selecting the team in charge
- education and training
- communication strategies, tools and style
- communication pillars (what, how, to who communicate)
- information to all police department's staff
- public launch of the project
These key points, informed by the findings of the first 2 years of experimentation, became the framework of the regional model of use of social media for local police departments: today they're included in a regional guideline directed to all local police departments interested in developing this new plan of action.
The Region also started a dissemination initiative which is currently ongoing, aimed to promote this experience in other local police departments, supported by training sessions, dissemination events, and conferences. In five years, there are now 25 local police departments in Emilia-Romagna who are managing their official profile on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
The innovation is still being implemented, but we are already able to indicate some results as well as next steps.
Main results:
- the establishment of a framework of social media use for local police departments
- the inclusion of this social media model in official regional documents and in the new regional law
- the creation of a network of local police departments who are offering this service to their community
- setting the standards for goals, strategies, education and training on this topic at a regional level
- at a local level, improving the quality of the service offered by local police departments to their community, with a new channel of information, communication, participation and engagement
- at an internal local level, improving the professional identity of officers and their organizational climate
Next steps:
- enlarging the network to involve other local police departments
- continue to support the active local police departments
- promoting the use of other social media (especially Instagram which is only used by 5 local police departments)
- continue to update and explore new tools and strategies (following international trends)
- promoting a regional approach such as launching common campaigns and sharing messages/communication strategies
- continue to analyse results in term of impact (internally and externally)
Innovation Description
What Makes Your Project Innovative?
This is the first experience in Italy for a regional approach targeting the local police and aimed at strengthening communication. It is also innovative given that the initiative is continuously striving to improve and update the related strategies, tools and tips.
What is the current status of your innovation?
After the first pilot, we are in the disseminating and evaluating phase, both directed to enlarge the network of actors (local polices) involved and to constantly innovate and update the action's contents and strategies.
With regards to the dissemination: the Region is contacting and promoting the model, with focused meetings with local police chiefs and mayors, official documents, and public events.
With regards to the evaluation: we are carrying out research on the internal effects of this innovation and its impact on communities (in terms of relationship with local police, engagement level and citizens' feedback).
With regards to the continuous update: we are constantly working (both physically and virtually) with the local officers' to seize new ideas and insights and to understand failures.
Innovation Development
Collaborations & Partnerships
The key partners are the local police departments of the region: those that chose to be involved in opening official social media accounts, as well as those participating in the dissemination or meetings.
At local level, the following stakeholders were also key partners and collaborators:
- municipal administrators
- local police chiefs and officers
- other public officers (i.e. press agents, communication bureau representatives)
- experts
- local influencers
- traditional and online press representatives
Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries
Based on the first results of the innovation, we can identify 2 main categories of beneficiaries:
- social media users (and their networks), meant as people who receive the messages and are involved in participation actions through social media
- local police officers themselves, who are pushed to review their role, their professional identity, their (engagement) skills and the meaning of being in touch and being at the service of their communities
Innovation Reflections
Results, Outcomes & Impacts
A main (and unforeseen) internal result was the improvement of the organizational climate in the local police departments who engaged in this initiative. The work process required a correct, transparent and empathetic use of social profiles/pages, which stimulated te cohesion among colleagues and improved their sense of pride in their role and their organization. To sustain this finding, a questionnaire and interviews have been conducted during the first 2 pilots (Cesenatico and Frignano).
The external results, ie the impact on the community is still to be analyzed: the perceptions of the actors involved are extremely positive in terms of people's appreciation and improvement of the relationships, but this requires more in depth analysis. As such, we are conducting a qualitative evaluation research on the Riccione local police's efforts.
Challenges and Failures
In Italy there was strong skepticism toward the presence of local police on social media: doubts on the effectiveness of this initiative, fear to become a target of hate speech, suspicion that this could be a diversion from police officers' duties, prejudice about the superficiality of the tools, etc. The first pilot showed that social media could effectively be a new way to provide a service and to improve the relations with citizens. That approach is breaking through also outside the region.
Other challenges include:
- lack of resources for focused training
- organizational problems in identifying the "right" people to be part of the team and in gaining trust and cooperation from other people working in the local police departments
To address these challenges, a greater emphasis was put on internal communication and on skills, in addition to offering more opportunities for training. In addition, the Region is continuously updating the social media model to provide interested local police departments with a framework to encourage them to take part in this project and help them start on the right foot.
Conditions for Success
To achieve the best results, our findings show that there are some key point to achieve:
- focus on information sharing and awareness raising about the initiative and its basic pillars within the public administration (local police's staff, but also other sectors and politicians)
- constantly work on the team's motivation, communication skills and relationships within the team
- adopt an open minded approach namely to accept different points of views (namely those of citizens)
- don't underestimate the importance of basic and continuous training, especially given the continuously evolving scope of social media.
Replication
The core of this innovation is replication. Since 2013/2014, when the Region started the project with 2 local police departments, the idea was to pilot the action (in order to adopt the adjustments needed) and to spread its philosophy all over the region. In 4 years we passed from 2 local police departments involved to 25, reaching 20% of all regional departments.
We're also getting in touch with other local police departments and other innovative PA networks in Italy to share our experience, our principles and our findings, in order to spread our innovation past the regional boundaries.
Lessons Learned
There are many details we considered and fine-tuned during the implementation, but the main lesson learned is about the importance to ensure the starting point is solid, especially for what concerns the organizational framework:
- how to organise teamwork, taking in account personal inclinations and motivations, while also respecting hierarchy
- how to organize tasks inside a team (ie who's in charge of "posting", who are the real editors, what's the role of the operations centre, what's the role of the patrols, and so on).
Another key point is the creation of a network between the active local police departments, to share good practices.
Anything Else?
During last two years we had the chance to participate in a european project (Medi@4sec) on the topic of the use of new media for security and safety. This opportunity gave us a lot of new ideas to explore how to better innovate and revise our strategies.
Therefore a wider key for the success could be to enlarge our networks and connections in Italy and abroad.
Status:
- Implementation - making the innovation happen
- Evaluation - understanding whether the innovative initiative has delivered what was needed
- Diffusing Lessons - using what was learnt to inform other projects and understanding how the innovation can be applied in other ways
Open Government Tags
communication implementation media OGP open government open local government open state participationInnovation provided by:
Date Published:
9 April 2014