LONDON — The British government has told civil servants: Go forth and tweet.
The government published guidelines today for its departments on using the microblogging service Twitter.
Yet in contrast to Twitter’s limit of 140 characters per message, the document runs 20 pages, or more than 5,000 words.
Neil Williams of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, who produced the guidelines, acknowledged that 20 pages was “a bit over the top,” but said he had been surprised by “just how much there is to say.”
The document tells civil servants their tweets should be “human and credible” and written in “informal spoken English.”
It advises government departments to produce between two and 10 tweets a day, with a gap of at least 30 minutes between each “to avoid flooding our followers’ Twitter streams.”
The advice says Twitter can be used for everything from announcements to insights from ministers, and in a crisis could be a “primary channel” for communicating with the electorate.
The document warns against using Twitter simply to convey campaign messages, but notes that “while tweets may occasionally be ‘fun,’” they should be in line with government objectives.
It also says departments should not follow any Twitter users who are not following them, as this could be interpreted as “Big Brother” behavior.
The prime minister’s office, the Foreign Office and some individual lawmakers already use Twitter to broadcast their activities online. Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s 10 Downing St. office has more than 1 million Twitter followers.
The guidelines are the government’s latest attempt to embrace the Internet and social media — efforts that have been both praised and mocked.
The stolid, unglamorous Brown has been memorably called “an analog politician in a digital age” by the leader of the opposition. And his YouTube appearance in April amid a scandal over lawmakers’ expenses backfired when Brown seemed to be stiff, insincere and smiling inappropriately.
The Twitter document said the government must “accept that there will be some criticism” of its efforts.
Twitter, launched in 2006, has already proved a powerful tool for mobilizing causes and protest movements, in post-election demonstrations from Iran to Moldova, where activists used Twitter to rally support after cell phone networks went down.
Governments around the world are also starting to use it to keep voters and constituents informed, with Britain and the United States among the most active. President Barack Obama’s Twitter stream — with more than 1.8 million followers — has recently encouraged people to tweet their members of Congress about health care reform, and provides links to the president’s news conferences.
In Britain, the prime minister’s office, the Foreign Office and some individual lawmakers already use Twitter to broadcast their activities online. Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s 10 Downing St. office has more than 1 million Twitter followers, who receive tidbits — written by a Downing Street staffer — such as “PM has just traveled from London to Cardiff by train.”
Other governments have more modest Twitter presences. In Denmark, where there are no government Twitter guidelines, Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen has just under 3,500 followers for his sporadically updated Twitter feed. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has 16,700, a similar number to Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.
Several Swedish opposition politicians have caught the Twitter bug, though the government is so far immune.
Neither French president Nicolas Sarkozy nor Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi appears to have a Twitter presence. German Chancellor Angela Merkel does not tweet, either.
Spain’s government launched a Twitter account last week; it has just over 2,000 followers.
Tom Watson, a Labour party lawmaker who is one of the House of Commons’ most active bloggers, said Twitter could be a valuable tool for Britain’s Labour government.
But he said the guidelines showed how levels of familiarity with the Internet varied widely in the government’s Whitehall offices.
“There are some very bright, digitally enabled civil servants who unfortunately have to write these documents for their bosses, the mandarins, who still get their secretaries to print off their e-mails so they can read them,” Watson told the BBC.
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