By
Joseph Marks
There’s no surefire measure for social media influence in government.
I do a lot of eavesdropping on Twitter. That’s basically in a reporter’s job description these days.
This morning I came across an interesting exchange between Mobilegov President Tom Suder and Federal News Radio Executive Editor Jason Miller about a MeriTalk study of social media influence by agency chief information officers. The story's down below and here.
I share Jason’s dubiousness about the ability of set methodologies to determine how useful someone is on social media, especially when so many people use social media for a mix of personal and professional networking, feds included. I do think you can get some useful information from these scores, though, even if it’s not definitive.
I was also intrigued by Suder's mention of Klout scores. Klout is an automated measure of social media influence that, among other things, can get you into the VIP lounge at San Francisco International Airport. Buy-in from the airline industry is no sure sign of validity or success, of course. But Klout scores do have the advantage of being the most widely used metric of social media influence.
With that proviso in mind, here’s a fast and dirty look at the Klout scores of feds with some technology or new media portfolio who, in my unscientific survey, are heavy Twitter users.
Leading the pack:
Alec Ross, State Department senior adviser for innovation -- Klout score: 80
Second tier:
Todd Park, U.S. chief technology officer -- Klout score: 63
Justin Herman, new media manager at the General Services Administration’s Center for Excellence in Digital Government -- Klout score: 63
Maura O’Neill, U.S. Agency for International Development Chief Innovation Officer -- Klout score: 63
Macon Phillips, White House digital strategy director -- Klout score: 61
Third tier:
Casey Coleman, GSA CIO -- Klout score: 59
Gwynne Kostin, director of GSA’s Digital Services Innovation Center -- Klout score: 58
Bryan Sivak, Health and Human Services CTO -- Klout score: 57
Katie Dowd, State Department innovation adviser -- Klout score: 57
Steven VanRoekel, U.S. CIO -- Klout score: 55
By the way, topping the list in MeriTalk’s study, along with VanRoekel and Coleman, were Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives CIO Rick Holgate and NASA CIO Linda Cureton. They have Klout scores of 53 and 49 respectively.