Social Media – Innovations in the United Kingdom Parliament26 October 2012 – Quebec City, Canada

John PullingerLibrarian and Director General, Information ServicesHouse of Commons, UK

E-consultations level 1

• Started hosting online forums in 2007• Targeted forums have helped committees engage with diverse

groups including armed forces personnel, university students, engineers, post office users, prison officers and also hard to reach groups such as victims of domestic violence.

• Recent forum helped the Health Committee gather the experiences of women affected by PIP breast implants http://forums.parliament.uk/pip-implants

• Most popular has been the Business & Enterprise Committee’s forum on securing the future of the post office - 324 posts.

• Least popular has been the Procedure Committee’s forum on e-Petitions that got 29 posts.

E-consultations level 2

• Increasingly engaging with online conversations on pre-existing forums eg – Education Committee recently sought posts on StudentRoom

for its inquiry into Services for Young People – Science and Technology Committee linked up with

StudentRoom for its inquiry into science practicals in schools– Moneysavingexpert.com for personal debt

YouTube

• 180 films on the channel. • The films on the channel have been watched 1.9 million times. 1

million views have come in the past 18 months.• In October 2011 we started putting up a YouTube version of

Prime Minister’s Questions – this receives around 6000+ views per week

• 95% of visitors do not navigate to the site from the Parliament website the majority of users found the films by searching YouTube.

• http://www.youtube.com/UKParliament

Flickr

• Images on our flickr site have been viewed a total of 1.5 million times – 1 million of these views have come in the past 2 years.

• Exclusive sets for the Obama visit and the Diamond Jubilee Address have generated significant additional traffic

• 99% of visitors do not navigate to the site from the Parliament website

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/25334641@N08

Facebook

• The Parliament facebook page has over 11,000+ likes. The number of likes has more than doubled over the past 18 months.

• http://en-gb.facebook.com/pages/UK-Parliament/16553417732

Twitter 1

• @UKParliament has 72,000+ followers. The number of followers has doubled over the past year. Around 3000 additional followers per month.

• In January 2012 we crowdsourced twitter questions (using the hashtag #AskGove) for a committee evidence session with Education Secretary Michael Gove. We received over 7000 tweets (the majority questions – over 5000 before the deadline) making this one of the most successful initiatives of this kind ever carried out in the UK.

• http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/education-committee/news/secretary-of-state-ev-session/

Twitter 2

• We followed this up with a Transport Committee evidence session with the ministers responsible for cycling policy. The #AskCycleMinisters hashtag generated around 700 tweeted questions for ministers.

• http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/transport-committee/news/cycle-ministers-twitter-answers/

MP for a week 1

MP for a week 2

My UK 1

My UK 2

My UK 3

Use the web creatively

Engage through people’s own interests

Prioritise young people

Learn from each other