Kenya’s public sector is not making adequate use of social media for information gathering, communication or collation of data compared to their counterparts in the private sector, according to panelists at the “Social Media Analytics and Cloud” session at the ongoing Connected Kenya summit held in Mombasa.
The overall objective of the session was to evaluate how social media analytics can be helpful in improving the level of service delivery in the public sector, with the panel made up of Sponge chief executive officer (CEO) Frank Maina, Oracle sales director Sherif Hamza, James Wainaina, a business analytics expert at SAP, and Martin Tumbo, CEO of Social Light Media.
Tumbo said there was a need for a policy paper specifically for digital media, saying a social media policy would define personnel required, content, budget, target audience and key networks, all of which are critical for a successful strategy.
“Digital training capability to define how people engage the public to ensure there are control measures is important. Integration of social management tools is important to handle different aspects of communication and manage any crisis when it happens,” he said.
Wainaina said counties should focus on creating social media strategies and incorporating analytical tools to collect feedback and measure success, while Hamza said there was a need for the government to make the citizen experience a priority.
He urged county governments to focus on social media networks as a means of gathering feedback from citizens through interaction in real time.
“People now want self service. Services that they can do themselves through different online platforms since they are fast,” he said.
He said this will in turn greatly improve the citizen experience when dealing with the government and boost the image of the public sector since such experiences will always include interaction and feedback.
Maina stressed the need to “collect the right data” and collate it with the right tools to ensure social media “noise” can be translated into signals the public sector can use to improve service delivery, make service delivery decisions and measure success.
