@Multizone

Public Accountabitlity is becoming an ever growing issue in political and public services as the developments in social media impact upon public interest in public events, as they are being covered on a 24/7 basis. When the public become informed of decisions or events the instinctive reaction is to want to know who is responsible. They want to know whether Authority is commensurate with the responsibility, or vice versa.

In Principle this is nothing new; there is, and has been, an accepted relationship between Authority and Responsibility, in general terms. However current social changes are raising new issues, for example the demand for more local influence at a time when there has been a constant trend towards centralisation and globalisation are raising new causes of tension which need to be managed. It is being recognised increasingly that it is desirable to increase delegation to 'sharp end' providers of goods and services without weakening lines of authority and therefore assigned responsibility. A good illustration of many of these tensions may be seen in the emergency services in general, and in Policing in particular. How can one find the right balance between giving more discretion down through the levels in the police force, right down to the neighbourhood policing teams (NPT's) whilst enabling the Chief Constable to maintain an effective chain of command to meet their responsibilities, both real and perceived by the public.

There are two differing categories of issue to be considered in this context

A) Routine activities - for which protocols, training and guidance can be given in a structured way to deal with most day-to-day activities.

These can be more easily managed within a defined scheduled range of activities - with the use of data/info capture and harvesting techniques using 'smart' phones, internet, and electronic diaries. However most of the existing use of social media by police forces to date, are unidirectional and primarily for PR purposes.

B) Emergencies/Incidents

These happen on a random or unforeseeable basis e.g. flooding or recent shootings, and existing arrangements are not fully adequate.

Key questions now relate to the 'ability' of police forces to use existing capabilities of social media management and interaction mainly in use by organisations in the private sector, to deal with emergency or unpredictable events within their jurisdiction in conjunction with those of their parters which of course includes the public.

The 'ability' of a force (individually or collectively) to use social media in emergency situations will increasingly be seen in terms of the degree to which police forces, at all levels are perceived to meet their responsibilities.

The idea of Directly elected Commissioners has been on the Prime Minister's agenda ever since he observed them functioning whilst visiting New York a few years ago. The specifics have yet to be developed in the light of limited guidance from the speeches by the Home Secretary and the policing minister at the ACPO conference last week.

Having lived for over six years in the USA and had the honour to chair The Surrey Police Authority here in the UK in recent years, I am convinced that several inherent structural problems will need to be addressed if the introduction of Directly elected Commissioners is to be successful.

As the recent Cumbria shootings unfolded, people in the area began to warn others using Twitter from about 10:30 to stay indoors to hide from the killer by using two hashtags: #whitehaven and #cumbria. Not until 13:00 did the Cumbria Police tweet the following: “Urgent public message - Shots fired in Whitehaven” with a link to a web page. This was an opportunity lost. The message did not use the hashtag #whitehaven so it would have easily been missed by a Twitter user following the events using this Twitter convention. The two and a half hour delay in posting online starkly illustrated the gap in comprehension of the opportunity afforded by the real time nature of these networks for their use for both information dissemination and active intelligence and participatory policing by consent.

Patchy and uneven adoption

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the attitudes in different constabularies (and other public services) to the use of real time social network tools has varied from outright opposition from some senior officers to positive engagement by others.

There is a growing body of evidence to provide greater clarity on this matter. The most recent list of current policing ‘Twitterers’ can be found via the Twitter page of Nick Keane from the NPIA’. There are two lists, one which lists ‘Police Forces who tweet’ and the other listing individual, or small groups of police staff. The former shows that only 18 Police Forces have informed the NPIA Twitterers of their Twittering presence – this does suggest that about half of the forces are at best ‘disinterested’ in Twittering and its implications.

The other list presents 93 Twitterers actively interested from this policing community – of which 84 can be identified in terms of the force of which they are part. Multizone have analysed this list to see if there are any discernible patterns – in terms of geography or rank. 28.5% of all Twitterers are from the West Midlands Force – which is perhaps not surprising as their ACC is the ACPO lead on this matter. Two other forces who also appear active are Sussex (13%) and Leicestershire (12%), the remaining 43% are divided between the other 15 Police Forces on the list. Clearly this does indicate a very patchy and uneven use of Real Time Social Network tools in England.

Analysis

Our analysis of ‘Twitterers’ by rank or role, is very interesting. It is not possible to identify by rank 10 out of the 93 Twitterers who have informed NPIA of their interest. The breakdown of the remaining 83 is shown in the following chart.