Social media for government services: A case study of human services

Abstract

The Australian Government Department of Human Services has been using social media since 2009 to support its customers and improve service delivery. It has done so in a number of ways: by monitoring social media to listen to citizens, establishing Facebook and Twitter accounts to engage with the public, and creating online communities. In this chapter, we present how we have been using social media, some success stories together with the challenges we had to face. We also briefly describe our governance framework and how we might measure success.