UK encouraging civil servants to tweet ‘issues of relevance’

Years ago, London ruled one-fourth of the world’s population. Now? Training its civil servants how to tweet “issues of relevance or upcoming events.”

The UK’s Cabinet Office original story titlehas published a 20-page “how-to” of sorts, the goal of which is to encourage civil servants to learn and use the micro-blogging service that, one day, will bring clean drinking water to the more than 1 billion people in the world who lack it. (Am I mistaken? Why else is Twitter so popular then?)

Twitter maintenance—tweeting, replying to tweets, etc—would take less than one hour per day. So it’s not like the civil servants’ junior staffs would be preoccupied with constantly checking the Web site.

Says a Cabinet Office spokesman:

With more and more citizens using the internet it’s important that, as part of its communications approach, the government develops its capability to use digital channels effectively and that includes social media tools such as Twitter.

It’s sort of funny. Just last week, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that Twitter was essentially banned in the White House. (A claim that was later pared down some.) The Administration doesn’t want people tweeting and re-tweeting on the job.

(The White House’s Twitter account is maintained by New Media, which is located in the Eisenhower Executive Building. You know, in case you didn’t reach your “useless information” quota for the day.)

This post is tagged: governmet, Headline, twitter, UK