David Miliband Ministerial Blog (Defra)

SCREENSHOT

URL

www.davidmiliband.defra.gov.uk

CASE STUDY OWNER

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)

LESSONS LEARNT

Strengths

• This was the UK’s first ministerial blog;
• Posts are written by Minister himself;
• Entries are posted regularly;
• The subject matter of entries is always topical;
• A comprehensive set of basic blog features is actively used;
• The blog has seen sustained use for over 12 months;
• Comment moderation is relaxed, in keeping with ‘commenting culture’ on blogs generally.

Potential for improvement

• The cost of the blog platform was higher than most;
• The blog’s author rarely responds to user comments;
• Some participants pursue off-topic agendas for which other, better-suited forums exist;
• The blog does not link to or comment on discussions taking place on other relevant blogs or websites;
• The blog could make greater use of rich media content to draw and retain users.

OVERVIEW

David Miliband’s first Cabinet position was as Minister of Communities and Local Government (2005 – 2006) at the former Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. He was appointed as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on May 5, 2006.

This blog was the first ministerial blog in the UK. It was started at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM), now the department for Communities and Local Government (CLG), in December 2005.

The blog was transferred to Defra in May 2006 following the appointment of David Miliband as Secretary of State.

POLICY PURPOSE

The blog focuses on David Miliband’s ministerial responsibilities, interests, research, visits, as well as reactions to developments outwith the department that nonetheless relate to its policy portfolio. The blog format allows the Minister to write on departmental and ministerial matters without the conventional intermediation that is associated with government communications. Blogging also enables readers to comment on the author’s posts, thus allowing for the potential of regular dialogue between a Minister and the public.

Although the blog is authored by David Miliband in his capacity as a government minister, it was also set up to provide the department with a channel to communicate and interact with the public and its stakeholders. Therefore, the blog combines communications and consultation purposes.

The blog entries are categorised into the following themes:

• Animal welfare;
• Climate change;
• Food and farming;
• Natural resources;
• Rural communities.

Policy discussions relate to the UK. However, access and commenting is not restricted to the UK.

A specific disclaimer has been posted on the website to make it clear that it is not a party-political site. The Minister says that he will not publish party-political web content, and asks that those posting on the blog avoid making purely party political comments.

MODEL

Weblog (third-party build, design and hosting).

The blog is public and anyone can comment; though name, email and acknowledgement of the terms and conditions are required.

Moderation of comments is carried out prior to publication and is the responsibility of the departmental communications division.

The Minister aims to post an entry at least once a week. Entries are short and text-based – rarely exceeding a few hundred words.

DURATION

The blog has no defined duration.

The blog was publicly launched on March 16, 2006. The blog was run internally, between December 2005 – March 2006, to allow a practice period for the Minister and the support departmental team.

PUBLICITY

The ODPM undertook a ‘soft launch’ in March 2006, relying on word-of-mouth and interest among bloggers to generate traffic. The department linked to the blog from their corporate and satellite sites.

A similar strategy has been pursued by Defra, with the preference being to allow interest to build organically over time. One significant move under Defra has been to develop the site’s permanent static links to other blogs and websites. These are divided into the following categories:

• Defra delivery partner websites;
• Key Defra website links;
• Other organisation websites;
• Climate Change and Green blogs and sites;
• Food and Farming blogs and sites;
• Politics and business blogs;
• New Media, Social Computing and eGovernment blogs;
• Local and personal blogs and sites.

The blog has been covered by mainstream, national and international media. It has also been carried by trade media, and linked to by other bloggers. There are close to 900 inbound links to the site (Source: Technorati.com, April 29, 2007).

Syndication feeds are available for the blog in its entirety or for particular individual content themes.

There has not been any paid-for marketing.

OTHER METHODS

Users of the blog are reminded that they can contact Defra using conventional methods such as email, letter and phone. Links are also provided to other departmental websites.

USER PROFILES

The Digital Dialogues research team distributed a survey to a randomly selected sample of blog participants. Some of these individuals published the request online; because the survey did not require registration it has potentially been completed by people who had not submitted a comment or visited the ministerial blog.

Surveys were completed by 202 respondents. No demographic data was collected (for example, age, ethnicity or gender).

Respondents were asked about their frequency of internet use. Most said that they were regularly online, gaining access from a range of places:

No answer 2%
Home 70%
Internet Café 1%
Work 26.5%
Mobile Phone 0.5%

Respondents were also asked about their interest in blogs: 35% said that they authored their own blogs; 77% said that they visit policy blogs.

USAGE TRENDS

The Minister writes an entry at least once a week – sometimes posting several times a week. Almost every entry generates comments from users. Like the frequency of posts, the comment rate varies:

The rate of comments to entries provides one measure of interest in the blog. Another is to be found by looking at the number of visits made to the site by those who read but did not necessarily post a comment:

USER FEEDBACK

As can be seen from their survey responses, the majority of users were regular visitors to other political and policy-orientated blogs. We asked respondents to rate the blog in comparison to those other blogs that they read (with 1 being a low rating and 5 being a high rating):

In terms of positive feedback (all respondents were asked to identify at least one positive element), the blog was welcomed because it promoted greater openness and transparency; even where users disagreed with the Minister, this blog allowed them a right-to-reply.

While some criticised the lack of interaction between the blogger and his audience, some users accepted that the Minister would have limited opportunities to respond to comments. For such individuals, the blog was less about a dialogue and more about an additional and unique channel to obtain information about a Minister, a department and their policies.

Almost half of the respondents said that they had not learnt anything about Defra policy, while nearly 50% said that they had not learnt anything about the Minister through their use of the blog. The majority of users regarded blogs as a credible method for enabling dialogue between government ministers and the public. They anticipated more blogging by government in the future, despite having misgivings about this particular example. The figures – as percentages of the responses – are displayed below:

DETAILED FEEDBACK

This blog was the first of its kind to be authored by a government minister. To date it has performed well. It has the necessary technical features of a blog; its content is authored by the Minister, is updated regularly, and members of the public are encouraged to comment on the Minister’s posts whether they agree or disagree with the content.

The blog has had a rocky reception, however. When blogging first emerged as a communications tool in British politics in 2003, politicians were urged to use this medium to increase the frequency and depth of contact with the public. Yet, as particular notions of blogging have become more ubiquitous – it is often positioned as ‘alternative’ and critical of mainstream institutions and media – the blogosphere has become more sceptical of senior political figures who blog.

The Minister’s blog has also been criticised for being too ‘on-message’, suggesting that he should divulge more about himself and his department. For some, Miliband should perhaps be using his blog as a ‘confessional’ to expose ‘big government’ and his fellow members of Cabinet. Of course, this was never the intention.

The blog does provide an insight about a Minister and his department that might not otherwise have been available in the mainstream media. Without it there would not have been a public space where members of the public could gather to criticise, debate and support the Minister’s ideas, opinions and activities in such a frequent and open manner.

The cost of the blog technology has generated most of the negativity directed at it. At just over £6,000, this was (comparatively) an expensive blog – given that there is a range of free and open source alternatives on the market that are popular and widely used. Compared to government’s wider spending on communications (in totality), however, it is a small sum.

The decision to spend this amount on a blog was driven by the departmental web team’s desire to ensure that the application they bought enabled maximum flexibility, manageability and security. As well as hosting a blog, the website has the means to display an impressive catalogue of audio and video clips, as well as photographs.

There are aspects of David Miliband’s blogging that have justified negative criticism. The most important is that, for reasons of inexperience and lack of time, the Minister rarely interacts with the comments made in response to his posts, and does not visit other blogs to comment. Perhaps one way to deal with this is to dedicate a regular entry to addressing comments posted on the site, or a section where the agenda has clearly been set by the users of the site, not the author.

FOLLOW UP

David Miliband has expressed an intention to continue blogging on a long term basis.