Georgian Public Bodies and Social Networks
Georgian public bodies and political parties use the social networks ineffectively, research conducted by the Institute of Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI), which was published 11 December. IDFI monitored official Facebook pages of 19 public bodies, 11 political parties and 6 TV-Companies during 4 months.
Monitors stress that major part of public bodies and political parties does not use social network for communicating and interacting with consumers. The given conclusion is confirmed by the fact that they have blocked private messaging and posting on timeline/wall and they do not respond to comments by viewers. Quite often critical comments by citizens are erased.
IDFI asked the Facebook pages’ administrators of parties and ministries some questions to check how frequently they responded to citizens and it appeared that part of them did not respond at all. This list included President Mikheil Saakashvili and Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili’s Facebook pages. Administrators of these two pages do not respond to comments and questions by citizens.
According to the researchers, the situation has changed lately. As an example they mentioned the Ministry of Environmental Protection, which answered questions asked lately and responded to previous comments that were sent by monitors several months ago.
Monitoring group believes that official websites of governmental bodies should not be linked to the Facebook pages of their heads.
“Page of the former Chairman of Parliament David Bakradze included an application which was created by budgetary funds; while the application did not work at all. Now Bidzina Ivanishvili’s page is linked to government website. “Websites of state bodies should not be personified,” Project Analyst stressed.
IDFI requested from governmental bodies information about spending for creation of social networks’ applications and advertisements. Information was not received fully from all bodies. Defense Ministry informed that GEL 38,350 has been allocated for Facebook application creation, although the given functions were not found by the group of monitors.
“All public bodies should be oriented at citizen participation, interaction and not at increasing visitors to their websites,” Marika Kechakmadze, Project Analyst stressed.
IDFI prepared recommendations and sent them to all subjects of monitoring. The organization advises the state bodies to have at least one active administrator of Facebook pages, one of the main functions of whom will be permanent and systematic updating and insuring direct communication with citizens. As for photo albums, the monitors recommend to have descriptions of events shown in the photos. Pages must be maximally open to citizens and they must have possibility to communicate with administrators.
