3:15 Sat | Government 2.0 Club

[Auditorium] Running a Federal Blog

Posted on 02. Apr, 2009 by lkthrock.

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[Auditorium] Running a Federal Blog with Jeffrey Levy of EPA

EPA launched a blog called Greenversations on Earthday in 2008.

Had some people from State come to consult on best practices (State’s blog is DipNote)

Focus on Mission, Mission, Mission

Why communicate?

What do they need to know?

What do you need to know?

Wanted to get people jazzed about the environment.

Why blog?

Put a human face on the agency (aka the big black box).
Share personal stories of environmental thinking (e.g. buying a car, gardening).
Share the breadth of government work (dye’s used to color your sheets to pesticides on the food we eat - all regulated by EPA).
Speak in a new way (the way that isn’t a press release or a planned speech).
Supplement, not replace , other channels .

On Comments:
Simple, clear comment policy
- Be civil (don’t attack or use vulgar language)
- Don’t spam
- Stay on topic
Comment policy is linked on the blog. Comment section says “Read the Comment Policy, Leave a Comment”
Comments are usually approved in a day

EPA’s experience: 11 months, 6000 comments, 10 nasty ones (most came in the first month)

Nervous management? Point to other agencies that are doing it.

People seem to respond to the idea that an agency is blogging - a cool lightbulb effect.

Three regular features every week:

Question of the week (Monday)
- Gets the most comments: usually 50 or more (e.g. do you bike to work? do you buy bottled water? cloth vs. disposable diapers, etc.)
- Some have received hundreds of responses
- Advertised to 55,000 news release recipients

Science Wednesday (wants to promote that EPA is, in fact, a science agency)
- Run by research/development office

Bilingual Thursday (
- English/Spanish were in the same post, now split
- Managed by our Hispanic Liason w/three writers

EPA has been astonished with the articulateness and thoughtfulness of comments.

Q: What is response policy?

A: Encourage bloggers to respond, don’t require them to. No complaints to date on what’s happening with EPA’s comments.

Original goal/intention was 3 posts a week. Since onset, it has defied expectations and posts are daily.

Q: Process of launching the blog?

A: Strong requirement that everything reside on EPA.gov, so launched an experiment on an HTML site that couldn’t accept comments. Then set up a TypePad account (flowoftheriver.gov). Made case for a real blogging platform (requirements). Started using WordPress hosted internally (LAMP server that hosts blog and wiki) and then had the conversation with State Department to understand their best practices. Within EPA, individuals interested in blogging needed to get their managers approval and they had an intro conversation with Jeffrey. Created a blogger guide: www.scribd.com/levyj413.

Q: How do you work through approvals with very scientific posts/comments?

A: Your role is whether it’s vulgar, etc. not the scientific discussion.

Q: Did launching your successful blog make people want their own?

A: Yes, but that has been balanced by commitment or quantity of content realization. We can give them their own categories pretty easily. Logistically it’s easier for them to do it through Greenversations.

Q: How do you get bloggers?

A: We have a good communicators network. Asked them to nominate people to be bloggers. They went out and found good people for us. We’re always asking people. next step is blogger outreach for guest bloggers. Jeffrey also finds people on Twitter - people passionate and consistent on Twitter.

Gratuitous plug - www.epa.gov/earthday - submit photos and videos in various categories. Starting April 1st, will feature content that catches EPA’s eye.

Q: Do you have blogs internally on your Intranet?
A: One or two.

Audience suggestion: Set up a google doc or wiki and Tweet that “we’re looking for guest bloggers.” Very fast as a way of generating a guest blogger list. Example: http://www.isteconnects.org/2009/03/13/calling-all-twitter-users-going-to-necc-2009/

With regards to records management, it’s not FOIA-able because it’s online (so already available). Storage is not an issue because it’s very small as far as data size goes.

We don’t allow people to promote products. Too hard to discern between honest third-party recommendation and company promoting.

We don’t have a blogger core yet, will be open to teleconference, live Twitter chats when that is assembled.
Use Vocus, www.vocus.com, to identify bloggers.