Northern Ireland Executive engages e-democracy

While the Northern Ireland Assembly have taken a fair lead in the online government stakes with Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Youtube, the Northern Ireland Executive is catching up. 

The NI Executive is finally embracing the social media phenomenon and have created their own presence on Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr.

Northern Ireland is beginning to really take to the online world with more and more governmental institutions going online and we even have NIDirect as a kind of one stop online shop for the public facing side of government.  They are also on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.  NIDirect is also an excellent place to find the social media capabilities of the rest of government. Check out the Local Councils page to see what I mean.

A lot of local councils are also embracing social media as a conversational tool with constituents such as Belfast City Council who are also on Twitter and Facebook.

One of the best uses of social media for engagement is the PSNI Ards, PSNI Holywood, PSNI Ballymena and PSNI Bangor Facebook accounts. People really engage with what is going on and enjoy a bit of banter from the police accounts.  They especially enjoy hearing about criminals getting caught!

Even some Non Departmental Public Bodies like InvestNI and PBNI are on Twitter.

So the Executive is in good and growing company.

Perhaps we could show the World how online engagement can be done?  

Take me to your co-ordinated response manager!

Why you should not talk to aliens

The UN has decided that it needs a representative to talk to the little green men should they decide to take a real risk at slumming it and drop in on us on Earth.

Astrophysicist Mazlan Othman, head of the UN's Office for Outer Space Affairs, will be Earth's first point of contact for extraterrestrials.  Apparently she was concerned that we don't have a proper welcome mat ready to unroll when ET finally gets in touch.

Having said that Stephen Hawking has been kind of warning that it may not be a good thing to meet an alien

It put me in mind of a bit of Monty Python's 'The Galaxy Song'

Its a funny old world.