Branding police work via social media

Wikis can be used for public or internal messaging

From the Hawaiian word for “fast,” the wiki is perhaps best exemplified in Wikipedia… but is not limited to the long, sprawling, and not always accurate encyclopedic entries found there.

At least one law enforcement agency is using it as a way of both public and internal messaging, in the kind of model that might just make a team approach to social media easier for administrators to consider.

Public outreach

Readers who have visited “About You” will recognize John Fulton’s name from the comments. Administrative sergeant with the St. Clair County (Illinois) Sheriff’s Office, Fulton has been handling social media efforts including the agency blog.

The department website’s wiki takes Frequently Asked Questions a step further, not in terms of content, but in terms of platform. Found at http://sheriff.pbworks.com/, the wiki is maintained by both Fulton and one of the patrol sergeants, his predecessor at the administrative desk.

A mix of conventional FAQ-type information and longer articles from the news or the blog, the wiki took about a month to build “on and off,” says Fulton. Now running, it takes very little time to maintain.

Internal messaging

What has been more useful, Fulton says, is the agency’s internal wiki, which he uses to post general orders. “We decided to use a wiki because the first time general orders come out, someone always complains about something that’s wrong,” he explains. “Then emails and paper have to be passed around for approvals.”

The wiki, however, gives all the supervisors and commanders the chance to make changes as they see fit. “There’s a revision history, so if they come back and say ‘I didn’t mean to post that,’ it’s clear that they did,” Fulton says.

Officers do not have access, but can see all orders via PDF and then ask their supervisors questions if need be. It’s possible to track that they reviewed the PDF—and recently, they’ve even been able to incorporate quizzes so that officers can show they are paying attention.

These measures are important because of the reliance on a technology which has been criticized for its “too many cooks” collaborative ideal.  Still, as Wikipedia itself notes:

The Wikipedia model allows anyone to edit, and relies on a large number of well-intentioned editors to overcome issues raised by a smaller number of problematic editors. It is inherent in Wikipedia’s editing model that poor information can be added, but over time quality is anticipated to improve in a form of group learning as editors reach consensus, so that substandard edits will very rapidly be removed. This assumption is still being tested, and its limitations and reliability are not yet a settled matter.

St. Clair’s model, then, makes sense because it preserves and supports the chain of command. Patrol officers are notorious for complaining about policy that doesn’t fit their reality on the streets, but staying on top of their edits could end up taking more time. They should, however, be able to approach their supervisors to make changes.

The technical stuff

“For a small department with no IT department, we have to be able to do what we can with off-the-shelf and free stuff,” Fulton says. “If we had to buy a system, we wouldn’t have it.”

One thing that has been useful, however, is Fulton’s relationship with the county IT administrator, who not only built the internal wiki but also created the quizzes and a couple of other department tools. “He liked the challenge of meeting our needs,” says Fulton.

Although he can’t estimate how much time the wiki saves, Fulton says he definitely spends less time working on general orders. That frees him to work on other administrative tasks, including other elements of the St. Clair SO’s social strategy.

In what ways could your agency benefit from wikis?

Image: blogefl vi Flickr

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