Now trending: States and their social media steps

In the winter of 2009, amid the hustle bustle of the biennial investment extravaganza — Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit— a young IT professional Jaydip Parikh, along with his colleagues, was busy at the residence of the then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

They were preparing for Modi’s debut on Twitter.

“It was the time when Twitter was evolving and the concept of social media was limited to Facebook. Mr Modi insisted on sharing the government updates and schemes through his social media posts,” said Parikh.

Soon after Modi, states bodies joined the platform — Gujarat Tourism in late 2009, Vibrant Gujarat in 2010, and Gujarat Information Department in 2011, were some of the first to have Twitter handles.

Modi’s successor Anandiben Patel joined Twitter in September 2011. In August 2015, her administration asked all the departments to integrate social media platforms to their websites. Earlier this year, the State government had initiated a move to provide services on mobile or tablets through an app called Digital Gujarat. People can access 30 kinds of government services through the app.

Recently, the present incumbent, Vijay Rupani launched Khedut Mitra , which will allow farmers — apart from providing information on weather and government schemes — to interact with their peers through social networking.

The Telangana government set up an exclusive Social Media Department soon after the formation of the new State in June 2014. Led by Konatham Dileep, Director (digital media) of IT, Electronics and Communications Department, a six-member team has created Facebook pages and Twitter handles for the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) and the IT ministry.

Dileep, who played an active role in building social media support for the Telangana movement, said: “Learning from the movement experience, we are building a digital governance presence, allowing the social media to let people converse with the government, vice versa. We have made the CMO’s Facebook page, the gateway for the dissemination of information and grievances.”

In September, Nitin Saluja, Policy Programs Manager (India and South Asia) of Facebook had conducted a workshop for over 1,000 officials, on the effective use of the platform for governance.

Andhra Pradesh is also equipping its departments and ministries with social media windows.

“We have asked all the Ministries and departments to update their activities regularly. We want to be a listening government and would like to tap this medium to get in touch with them directly,” said Parakala Prabhakar, Communications Advisor to the Andhra Pradesh Government.

It has developed an IT solution called CM DashBoard that pieces together all the digital information generated by various departments to provide a one-stop information shop.

While the State administration is yet to take to digital governance in a big way, some of its agencies have started using social media. One of them is Kolkata Police, which uses Facebook for traffic management.

Kolkata Police has a Facebook page that has details on vehicular movement across the city. The public can also post complaints here. Most complaints on the Facebook page relate to taxi refusals.

(With inputs from Rutam Vora in Ahmedabad, KV Kurmanath in Hyderabad and Abhishek Law in Kolkata)

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