10:30am | The City of Long Beach has been recognized as one of the Top 10 “Best Social Media Cities” in America, according to a study by the University of Illinois at Chicago ranking city governments’ use of social media.
“Having a strong social media presence helps the City of Long Beach engage residents with genuine dialogue, and that clearly benefits the community as a whole,” Mayor Bob Foster said. “I’m very pleased that our efforts are paying off with this national recognition.”
As a part of our Government Reform efforts a year and a half ago, the City realigned our communications efforts to be more proactive, innovative, and connect with as many residents as possible. The result is robust, growing Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts, developed under the philosophy of “doing more with less.”
Using technology to be more efficient enhances public service and helps make Long Beach City Hall more accessible and responsive to the community. This underscores how important communication, transparency and civic engagement are for the City Council and the entire community. Not only are we succeeding in Long Beach, we are a national leader.
The study, titled “Civic Engagement and Local e-Government: Social Networking Comes of Age,” ranked and analyzed the United States’ 75 largest cities from March through May 2011 for their online interactivity, transparency and accessibility. The researchers used the data to compile the Civic Engagement Index and compared the metrics with findings from a similar study they conducted in 2009.
According to researchers, the top-ranked cities have made technology more of a priority within their city, and they noted that “e-government has a variety of purposes, including service delivery. But, it also has the capacity to make government information more easily accessible to citizens, as well as to provide opportunities to communicate with or interact with government. Information is critical for transparent and accountable government, as well as for providing the knowledge necessary for civic engagement. Communication with citizens, through a variety of online tools, can potentially foster more responsive government.”
For more information about City Long Beach social media, visit www.longbeach.gov/socialmedia. For the complete rankings and the full study, click here.