Page 90 - Proceeding 2015

FAMP URS Nicolae
CCASP SOCIAL NETWORK USE IN ROMANIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: BIG CITIES, SMALL STEPS

look unprofessional (if the message uses the colloquial style suited for social networks) or stiff and out of

touch (if the style used is a more official-sounding one).

If we look at the categorization proposed by Mergel and Bretschneider, public administration institutions
usually go through three stages in their implementation of social networks in their communication mix. In

the first one, public institutions or even individual public servants experiment with the new technologies
or networks, usually outside the approved communication policies. The second stage proves the need to
create and agree upon rules and regulation for the use of these new communication tools, to put order

into the often unruly experimentations. The third phase sees the creation of dedicated departments, the
implementation of rules and clear procedures, and the fading of these communication technologies into
the background noise of day-to-day operation (Mergel & Bretschneider, 2013).

According to Eurostat, 61.7% of Romanians used the internet In the last year, and 44% on Romanians
use the internet to take part in social networks (of which over 41% have a Facebook account). If we look
at the way the government takes advantage of the increasing number of people online, we see that only

11% of Romanians had any online interaction with public administration institutions (local or national) in
the last 12 months. These lack of progress can also be linked to the fact that Romania takes one of the

last places in the rankings on all 6 items quantified by the UE in e-government development (connectivity, PROCEEDINGS OF THE 11 TH ADMINISTRATION AND PUBLIC MANAGEMENT INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ”Strategic Management for Local Communities” 30 th – 31 st October 2015 Bucharest
human capital, internet use, integration of digital technology, digital public services, and R&D). Reaching
out to these frequent internet users through social media could increase the use of existing online

government services and spur the development of new ones.

5. METHODOLOGY

Despite some isolated efforts at educating public servants in this field, the general perception is that

Romanian public administration institutions are still mostly struggling when it comes to use social media
in an appropriate way. To test this perception, we have analyzed the Facebook accounts of the Romanian

county seats, plus the Bucharest City Hall and the City Halls of the capital’s 6 sectors. We also wanted to
ascertain in a way the importance that the municipalities to the employment of ITC in the back-office. As
a proxy for this, we measured the number of people employed by the ITC Department).

We chose Facebook because over 8.3 million Romanians use this social network (Facebrands.ro, 2015)
and because the others social networks are not as widely used: LinkedIn, mainly used for professional
networking is less suited to the bidirectional communication needed by public institutions; Twitter has no

big following in Romania – around 370,000 open accounts, but only about a tenth are maintained.

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