Discussion Group: How should councils be engaging with social networks?
Chair: Vicky Sargent, Boilerhouse
Panellist: Liz Azyan

Are services like Twitter, Facebook and the rest a massive waste of staff time or an exciting new means of communication and citizen engagement? Councils and council staff seem divided on this one, with IT worrying about security, communications concerned about reputation, HR assuming that time on Twitter can only be unproductive and web professionals - well, that's part of what we're hoping to investigate here…

The discussion will kick off with a short presentation from Liz Azyan, who as part of her PhD research has been monitoring what councils are doing in this area. After that, we are looking for delegates to come prepared to discuss their council's approach, whether it might be considered a leader, lagger or lurker when it comes to social media.