The death of Sir Humphrey

Having decided, despite previous misgivings, to give Twitter a go, I must say that I really am finding it a tremendously useful tool for political communication.

I’m not the only one to do so, either.  HM Government has, it appears, now embraced Twitter in a big way, so much so that the Cabinet Office has just issued a “Template Twitter strategy for Government Departments”.

The strategy is a full 20 pages long and includes among its principles:

Timely: in keeping with the ‘zeitgeist’ feel of Twitter, our tweets will be about issues of relevance today or events/opportunities coming soon.  For example it will not be appropriate to cycle campaign messages without a current ‘hook’.

That admonition would seem to have been infringed by a tweet I received only yesterday from DowningStreet (which I have decided to follow, on the “know your enemy” principle) which referred me to a letter to the public from the Prime Minister on the Number 10 website. 

This  turned out to be a pure propaganda piece entitled I’m fighting hard for you – PM, the only apparent “hook” being that it was written by Gordon “before taking his summer break”.  Presumably, he will write a similar one when he gets back at the weekend, exhausted after all that enforced relaxation.

The strategy has been published by one Neil Williams, head of corporate digital channels at (surprise, surprise) Peter Mandelson’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.  Mr Williams introduces the document in a post on the Cabinet Office blog, in which he concedes that:

You might think a 20-page strategy a bit over the top for a tool like Twitter.

Well, yes, now you mention it, I think I do, actually.

But Mr Williams is clearly an enthusiast.  If one is to tweet, one must tweet properly:

Having held back my JFDI inclinations long enough to sit down and write a proper plan for BIS’s corporate Twitter account, I was surprised by just how much there is to say – and quite how worth saying it is, especially now the platform is more mature and less forgiving of mistakes.

JFDI?    Yes, I was stumped by that one, too.  So I Googled it and was told by the Urban Dictionary that it stands for: “Just F***ing Do It!”

I confess I was a bit surprised, not to say shocked, to learn that that is the way they communicate these days in the upper-middle ranks of the civil service; they’ve clearly moved on a bit since the age of Sir Humphrey. 

Mr Williams, in his spare time, also authors a blog called Mission Creep.  A brief visit to it confirmed the demise of the era of “your obedient servant”.  The blog’s most recent post, for example, is entitled: Seriously dude, WTF is social media? The NSFW presentation one year on. 

I suggest you visit the Urban Dictionary to learn what WTF stands for, although the worldly-wise among you may know, or have guessed, already.  I blush to admit that I did.

But NSFW?  After much fevered speculation, I was relieved to discover that it stands for Not Safe for Work.

It could have been a lot worse.