In the thick of it: Why information professionals should be at the heart of government digital engagement activity
Jinfo Blog

By Lesley Thomson

Abstract

As government strives to create two-way communication with people, librarians are ideally placed, and equipped, to be at the heart of this digital engagement. Lesley Thomson describes the perfect skills government librarians have to facilitate this engagement and the value breaking into this new “information territory” would bring.

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A word on “the profession”

The simple and functional title of “librarian” serves the profession as a whole rather poorly in the 21^st century, and the debate rumbles on as to what actually constitutes “the profession”. In the UK, the government library profession is a sub-profession of the Knowledge and Information Management (KIM) profession. One of the objectives of the Government Knowledge and Information Management Network (GKIMN) is to get practitioners to think of themselves as part of a single profession, rather than staying within the discipline in which they joined the service. Titles shouldn’t limit us, but to keep things simple, this article makes reference specifically to UK government "librarians" (officially, those who are eligible to be members of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals). However, the arguments would equally apply to the KIM profession more generally.

In 2004, commenting that people were increasingly confident in searching out information themselves, Maewyn Cumming made a prediction about government librarians:

"We will appear in more places than we do now. At the moment, librarians are cropping up everywhere, in weird and wonderful little corners, running or helping organise websites and intranets, even document and records management systems. We will be in places that don't initially always appear to be information management places.” (State Librarian, Autumn Issue, 2004, p16)

That librarians should support information and knowledge management across government has become a key theme in the literature (Taylor and Corrall Journal of Information Science, 33(3), 2007, p301) as attempts have been made to place KIM at the heart of government. In the UK, the Knowledge Council was established as a cross-departmental body to raise the profile and give encouragement and direction to KIM initiatives, recognising that KIM professionals are “experts who have key roles to play in contributing to the success of their organisations”. (National Archives, 2008, p16)

This particular government librarian – who has worked in several “weird and wonderful little corners” – would go a step further and argue that librarians can play an even more central role at the very heart of government business.

Digital government

Digital technology has revolutionised the way in which people communicate and share information: the growth of social media over the last couple of years has been particularly spectacular. Good use of social media can help governments better attract, understand and respond to the attention of specific audiences – enabling two-way communication with people in the places where they are already engaging. Social media have the potential to enable people to participate in proposing and shaping policies and laws, to provide feedback on programmes and services, and even to influence service design.

However, the ability of civil servants to use social media and the growing demand for these channels is causing tension as government departments update pre-digital processes which do not work as effectively in the digital era. The pace of change is already rapid and is increasing. The contact many people have with government departments can be sporadic, making it difficult to know how and where best to engage with them – creating a whole new set of learning opportunities for civil servants.

Digital engagement

“Digital engagement” is a fluid term dependent on its users and context, but this definition from Steph Gray works well in the government context: “Digital engagement uses digital tools and channels to find, listen to and mobilise a community around an issue, maybe getting them to talk about it, give you their views or take action in pursuit of a cause they care about”. (2010) 

Digital engagement is only part of “government digital work” – a vast, diverse and yet professionally specialised field, which Steph Gray has made an attempt to map (2010). There are opportunities for librarians across the whole spectrum.

My focus here is on the “engagement” bit of digital is because it’s outside what might generally be viewed as “information territory”.

Who does digital engagement in government?

To date, government digital engagement in the UK has been led, in the main, by communication professionals. But there is a growing acknowledgement that digital engagement is not a communications discipline.

In its purest form digital engagement is far removed from traditional government communications and consultation. In some respects, an effective communication strategy is likely to be almost the exact opposite of an effective engagement strategy. It’s about figuring out where people are already having relevant conversations. It’s about bringing information and dialogue to places where people want that conversation to happen. The former chooses and controls channels, while the latter joins somebody else's channels. The former determines rules of engagement, the latter follows somebody else's rules. The former assumes that people reach out to your organisation, the latter is based on your organisation reaching out to communities and groups.

Digital engagement skills

The Central Office for Information (COI) recently identified core skills and attributes required for digital engagement work in government (Digital Engagement Essentials Guide, 2010). These included:

• tolerance
• integrity
• empathy
• objectivity
• creativity
• good listener
• attentive
• observant
• attention to detail
• problem solving ability
• patience
• cross-cultural awareness
• excellent researcher
• communicator.

That’d be a librarian then!

Librarians evaluate, identify, acquire, organise, package, summarise, filter and deliver information – all crucial for effective digital work. But we’re also very good at collaborative filtering and authoring, social networking, conversational structures, distributed wisdom and crowdsourcing – i.e. they “get” the engagement bit.

Not picked up in the COI list, but also key, are customer service and relationship management skills. Managing digital content means maintaining productive relationships with busy, and sometimes disinterested, people, and feeding back to help them realise the value of their content. Librarians are good at building relationships. And we are service orientated to the core.

The skills of negotiation, explanation and persuasion are also crucial. Digital engagement often needs explaining to people who don’t see why they should care. And senior people may require persuading that publishing a 150 page report on the website does not digital engagement make! Enthusiasm and advocacy are also vital. Again, this is bread and butter stuff for librarians.

The COI list, plus the additional skills mentioned above, match almost exactly those skills and attributes identified for the KIM profession in a recent TFPL report (Abell, Davies and Hordle, TFPL’s 2011 Survey of Skills and Roles).

But it’s more than just skills

Librarians have a positive attitude. We’re open to new ideas, learning new skills, and to tackling new technologies – we’re usually at the “forefront of the analogue/digital mind meld” (Szymczak, 2011). We’re committed to the profession, committed to learning and continuing professional development.

Librarians are often heard to remark that it’s more than just a vocation – it’s a state of mind: a way of looking at the world that doesn’t get turned off when we leave work at the end of the day. It’s what makes us stop to read articles about libraries or information literacy or new technologies, no matter where we are or which sector we’re currently working in. It’s what makes us interested in issues such as freedom of information and censorship and digital inclusion – information ethics in its broadest sense.  Digital engagement is about changing the mentality of government so that we are driven by people's needs – librarians know that information doesn't equal power; rather, information sharing amplifies power.

Conclusion

Librarians are continually being told to seek out “new information territory”. Government librarians, as with the profession more generally, continue to face threats from the twin problems of the disaggregation of information and budget cuts. It’s essential that we expand the roles that we play within our field. But there are opportunities in areas we might not at first consider to be “information territory” that we should also be seeking out.

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