This is timely news on Social Media Day where the Senior Director for Digital Media for the government, Mr Dennis Itumbi elaborated the government’s plan to use social media aggressively from a video uploaded on the government’s Nexus News YouTube channel.
He said that they have done research on social media use for the last 2 years and came to a conclusion they they don’t have a very good social media presence. The government has realized that its social media use is mostly talking to people and not people talking to them. Out of the 294 government departments, 29% of the departments have forayed into social media.
Mr Itumbi went ahead and broke down the statistics: 67% of government departments have websites, 54% are on Facebook, 28% are on Twitter, 12% are on YouTube, 1% are on Instagram and a measly 0.004% are on Whatsapp.
He admitted there is a long way for the government to fully use social media and announced several initiatives that are on the way. First, he said in order to open the social media space, the government is in the process of signing contracts with 4 counties ( Machakos, Meru, Elgeyo Marakwet and Embu) so as to provide residents of these counties with free Wi-Fi. The contracts will be signed by mid July and by August, the residents will be enjoying these services. He pointed out that as a success story, for the past 4 months, the free Wi-Fi project in Nakuru is working properly. The government will communicate further about the free Wi-Fi project to the named 4 counties.
He also said that due to a recent shift, the government will instead use portals instead of websites. The government will also establish the first “newsroom within the government” in East Africa that will be called the Nexus. The last initiative he mentioned was the GOK Interacts where top government officials will answer questions on social media and he promised that the president & the first lady will be one of the featured government officials to engage in that.
You can watch the video here:
