Blogs and the flu: eGovernment in action

Last week, Mike Leavitt, Secretary of Health and Human Services, penned the final post on the Pandemic Flu Leadership Blog (PFL blog)--a blog sponsored by HHS. The blog consisted of over 100 posts from contributors in the healthcare, faith-based, business and community sectors. The blog is a great resource for current thinking on how the US can respond to the threat of pandemic flu.

The blog is not ongoing, but rather was active for five weeks (May 22 - June 27, 2007). Each week featured a theme and half way through there was a leadership forum with people live blogging the event.

The problem with any high profile government blog is that the media isn't about to let high-level government officials speak transparently without trying to nail them to the wall for any perceived negative nuance they can pluck from the prose. Consequently most government sponsored blogs don't really read like blogs.

The PFL blog is an exception to that rule. Sure, it's probably more polished than most, but the writing feels conversational and while I'm sure much of it was edited, it doesn't sound at all like a press release. This is a real blog with multiple authors making substantial contributions.

Another problem with high-profile government blogs is that they're magnets for comment spam and off topic rants. The PFL blog allowed comments for the five weeks the blogs was active. Comments were moderated according to a published moderation policy. The moderator even posted an entry on the blog about how moderation was going and pleading for patience. That's real blogging, not fake PR stuff.

I think the blog is a noteworthy example of how blogs can be used as a tool in eGovernment to raise awareness, start conversations, and encourage public participation. The blog is well done and deftly avoids the pitfalls of official government blogs. Hats off to HHS.