DIGICOM WP1.2: Requirements for Social Network Platform

DIGICOM – WP1.2: Requirements for Social Network platform

Introduction The purpose of this document is to provide recommendations for action 1.2 of Work Package 1 (WP1.2). This looks at current practices across the ESS to understand how we could best achieve the high-level aims set out in the business case:

1. Efficiently identify the ever-changing needs of users

2. Allow targeted communications to users

The focus of these aims is split between discovering what users of statistics want/need and providing a platform for ESS members to communicate with users.

The categorisation for the users of European statistics has not yet been agreed, and the definition of user categories/profiles/personas will be determined during WP1.1.

This paper refers to statistics users and statistics producers, as both groups are the users of the social media platform. Therefore the term ‘user’, in regards to the social media platform, can refer to both statistics producers and/or users.

Background information

The UK An example of how statistics producers can engage with users is StatsUserNet. This is a website hosted and operated by the Royal Statistics Society (RSS) and the United Kingdom Statistics Authority (UKSA) with an aim to stimulate discussion and develop engagement between statistics users and producers, providing news and information about events, discussion forums, etc. It is open to everyone and provides an online community space for users and producers of statistics to make contact, learn about each other’s work and share information, documents and views.

The groups on StatsUserNet reflect real user-groups from the Statistics User Forum (SUF), a committee that represents groups in the statistical community. StatsUserNet was created to enable this communication to take place online. Although it’s possible for anyone to join this community, it mainly consists of expert users and not citizen users.

Extensive research was conducted with key stakeholders and potential users of StatsUserNet before it was developed, to ensure it would meet the needs of users.

In addition to StatsUserNet, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has a social media team, who operate Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. The ONS Facebook account has 10,345 followers and the Twitter account has 233,382 followers.

In addition to the main ONS Twitter account, 17 statistician accounts have also been set up for various outputs and releases, providing updates, information, links to releases and a route for engagement (a face and a name). The statistician accounts have been a success, with some statisticians having over 1000 followers, and most achieving around 500 followers. Engagement on these accounts is much higher than the main ONS account because they provide topic specific information.

The ONS social media team have noted that different types of content work better on Facebook than Twitter, with more emotive, personal and relatable content published on Facebook and mainly headline statistics published on Twitter.

Europe Across Europe most countries have their own social media programs. From the 22 responses in the Inventory document, the social media platforms currently used for engaging users are:

 Twitter - 21

 Facebook - 13

 YouTube – 6

 LinkedIn – 5

 Slideshare – 4

 Instagram – 2

 Flickr, Pintrest and Storify – 1

Although statistics producers throughout Europe mainly use Twitter as an engagement tool, other evidence (see figures 1.1 and 1.2 overleaf) shows that Facebook is the most popular social media channel across Europe, in terms of user number. Therefore Facebook provides the best opportunity to reach the largest number of users across Europe, some of which will be existing users of statistics.

As well as individual country programs, there is also the LinkedIn group called Modernising Official Statistics with almost 2000 members. This was established by the Conference of European Statisticians to provide an engagement platform for anybody working in official statistics or related disciplines. This approach could be adopted for users of statistics, providing the ability to engage with users on an existing platform and achieve the high level aims of; identifying user needs and allowing targeted communications to users.

It is also worth noting that Twitter is not very popular in Hungary, as Hungarian is not ideally suited to posting less than 140 characters. This could also be the case with other language. Figure 1.1 Figure 1.2

Requirements and functional specification

Req ID Requirement Description R1 Statistics users shall be able to create a Provides the ability for Statistics Users to join profile the network/community R2 Statistics producers shall be able to create a Provides the ability for Statistics Producers to profile join the network/community R3 All users shall be able to post and share Provides the ability for users to communicate comments and communication with each other R4 All users shall be able to create topic Allows users to create a community engaged groups around certain topics R5 All users shall be able to join topic groups Allows users to be a part engaged communities R6 Statistics producers shall be able to post Allows stats producers to share documents consultations, presentations, reports, pilots, beta products, etc R7 All users shall be able to comment on and Allows Stats Users to provide feedback on share documents any documentation R8 Statistics producers shall be able to create Allows Stats Producers to identify the needs and post surveys/polls of Statistics Users via targeted questioning R9 All users shall be able to complete and Allowing Statistics Users to provide their share surveys/polls feedback to Statistics Producers R10 All users shall be able to sign up to alerts Allowing all users to be informed when comments or documents have been posted in any of the groups they are a member of R11 The system shall export user profiles/user Provides Stats Users with information about email addresses Stats Users, to generate personas, and to allow targeted communications R12 The system shall discriminate 2 types of In order to have different permissions for user: Stats User and Stats Producer Statistics Producers and Statistics Users

Use cases

 In WP4 we plan to develop a literacy product in relation with Geography teachers, the social network could support this

 In WP4 we plan a study on branding (how users perceive our brand), the social network could help getting feedback from users

 In WP2 we will develop a flagship product on women and men in the EU, could the social network help in the promotion of this product?

Conclusion – things to consider Some countries engaging with their users via social media have more than one account: one in their native language and another in English. How could this be managed on a new, central social media platform across Europe? In addition to using more than one account, countries have different preferences for certain social media platforms, some preferring Facebook, Twitter or more country specific social media platforms such as Hyves (the Netherlands) or Nasza-klasa (Poland). This must be considered when deciding whether to use an existing social media platform and what platform is best suited for the purpose. As well as preferring different social media platforms, statistics users in different countries have varying levels of engagement with producers. With this in mind, a centralised social media platform may not provide a European-wide view, but only the opinion/feedback of the most engaged countries.

In the UK there are a number of ways for users to engage with statistics producers: Stats User Net, a number of high-profile Twitter feeds from departments and statisticians, Facebook and LinkedIn.

 StatsUserNet is a web-based forum that allows dialogue between different user groups. As StatsUserNet is a web forum and not strictly a social media platform, the majority of members are ‘expert’ statistical users and not citizen users. It’s believed that citizen users won’t spend the time registering for a new website only to engage with statisticians/statistics. It has also been noted that not all groups on StatsUserNet are equally engaged. Many of the highly engaged groups are engaged due to the members and not necessarily due to the platform itself. Alternatively other groups are not very well engaged even with access to the Stats User Net platform.

 A suggestion for effectively engaging with citizen users is to utilise an existing platform, as users will already be registered

 Twitter accounts from departments and statisticians promoting their releases/figures have been successful in improving engagement between producers and users of statistics. As Twitter is a popular social network in the UK, this approach meant that for very little effort, statisticians are able to reach a pre-existing community of users and build a base of followers interested in a specific topic.

 Facebook is a social media platform also used by ONS but the type of content published here differs to Twitter, with Facebook being used to tell stories and provide emotive, relatable content – as there is no character limit.

 LinkedIn is used to publish links to some of our popular releases, such as Labour Market and immigration. It’s also used to target professionals, researchers and other existing statistics users, inviting them to join topic-specific working groups, or to take part in user testing.

Based on the DIGICOM Inventory, the most popular social media platform being used by NSIs to engage with their users is Twitter (95%), followed by Facebook (59%). Based on the number of accounts/users, Facebook is the most popular network, followed by Twitter. This implies that using Facebook would allow NSIs to reach the largest number of potential statistics users.

At this early stage one of the first decisions we must make is whether we should utilise an already existing platform to achieve our goals, or create our own?

Advantages and Disadvantages Create a social network platform

 Why would people join a new network? How do they find out about it? How do you get them to join?

 Requirement for marketing/advertising

 Cost

 Time taken to develop and launch

 Created for the exact purpose, so suited to the task

Use an existing platform

 Already has members

 Lower cost

 Already in place, just need to create groups, etc – easier  May not be exactly suited to purpose (if it’s identify needs and communicate to users, they should all be suitable though)