This is more writing therapy for me than a considered blog entry – but your thoughts and  suggestions would be very welcome…

I am about to start working on  an internal comms programme for a public body which is both security conscious and has offices widely dispersed across the country.  One of the things I’ve been asked to look at is developing the intranet and making it into a more vibrant form of cross-departmental communication.  I am convinced that the words “vibrant” and “intranet” don’t generally belong in the same sentence – no organisation I’ve ever worked for has had such a thing,  and some have sunk large amounts of money into failing to develop one.  I’ve used systems where the intranet is the compulsory first screen on everyone’s pc so company messages can be shoved in front of people as they log in, but that’s always seemed to be easily ignorable – for most people the log-on process is as automatic (and memorable) as brushing their teeth.   So, examples, please of intranet systems which really work and which can be set up and maintained with a minimum of woman-power in the back office. I evidently shouldn’t have opted out of the internal comms module on the course!

I’d love to find a way to make it a properly participatory network, but the spectre of the Virgin Facebook debacle keeps floating in front of my eyes.   With this in mind, I was intrigued to see reports of a Demos pamphlet about the impact of social media in improving collaboration within organisations.  The public sector seems to come out as mistrusting the use of social media networking tools by staff.  Admittedly the stuff I’ve seen about this is from New Zealand rather than the UK, but I find it hard to believe that the UK is more adventurous! So, is anyone aware of any innovative use of this stuff in the public sector – which preferably won’t land me on the front page of every newspaper in the country as a threat to the nation’s security?