How the Department is using social media channels

The Department of Health and Ageing is making official use of social media channels to inform, engage and communicate with stakeholders and the Australian community.

Departmental staff may use social media for personal and professional reasons, however are not representing the department when doing so.

Use of social media by public servants is governed by the APS Values and Code of Conduct and the Circular 2012/1: Revisions to the Commission's guidance on making public comment and participating online . Public servants are expected to maintain the same high standards of conduct and behaviour online as would be expected through other channels. Specific departmental policy and guidelines are being developed.

Alongside the channels listed, the department uses selected social media channels to communicate internally and across government.

Social media services

Badges and widgets

The Department provides material that can be embedded in other websites to provide information and news related to specific health and ageing matters.

This material is developed in the form of ‘badges’ (embeddable images) and ‘widgets’ (embeddable tools which provide updatable information and functionality).

For example,

Blogs

The Department is using blogs, where appropriate, to engage audiences across specific programs and campaigns, for consultation purposes to support operational activities.

For example:

Aged Care Complaints Scheme
Reform news and helpful information.
Rural Champions
First-hand accounts from doctors and health students about their life and experiences in rural and regional Australia.
DoSomethingReal
Celebrating the real stories of real people who are working to deliver better health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Humanbiosecurity
New legislation to manage the risk of serious communicable diseases entering or spreading in Australia.

The Department also used blogs on its intranet for internal communication.

Facebook

The Department has used the Facebook service to support the Don't Turn A Night Out Into A Nightmare National Binge Drinking Campaign.

It is currently useing Facebook to support the 'Swap It, Don't Stop It' campaign and has used a Facebook application to hold a video competition.

The Department intends to use Facebook and other social network services, where appropriate, in future campaign and non-campaign activities as well as for programs, recruitment and general public engagement.

The Department maintains a company profile on LinkedIn to support staff using the service.

Slideshare

The Department uses Slideshare to provide access to key public presentations given by departmental officers.

Twitter

The Department uses the Twitter service to support the distribution of news, announcements, event notices and updates , to address enquiries and share important health messages. To review how the department uses Twitter, please refer to our Twitter public guidelines.

Wikipedia

The Department monitors its Wikipedia entry, and some other entries in similar socially aggregated information sites to ensure they accurately and objectively represent the current status of the organisation.

YouTube

The Department’s YouTube channel is used to share health commercials and other public video material.

Consultation tools

The yourHealth website, originally developed to support the National Health Reform Consultation in 2009-10, contained a number of custom-developed Web 2.0 consultation tools.

For example,

Open data

The Department has selectively released data for reuse.

The Pharmaceuticals Benefit Scheme (PBS) releases pharmaceuticals schedule data in a machine-readable format available for reuse. See PBS for Developers
The Rural Champions blog is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 copyright license.
National Toilet Map data has been released under the data.australia.gov.au beta for reuse

Mobile applications

The Department has several mobile applications.

The National Toilet Map has been released as both a mobile site and as an app for iPhones. Learn more at the National Toilet Map website.

Launching into its 10th year of The National Drugs Campaign, the newly released iPhone app gives parents and young people instant access to illicit drug information and advice. So if you're a parent or carer, you can use the app to find tips for talking to your teenager about:

drugs
consequences of drug use
advice for young people on avoiding drug use and helping friends and
support contacts for youth and families featuring AGPS functionality allows users to find support services based on their location.

Or you can share it with your own friends and family for their own knowledge.

Download the National Drugs Campaign iPhone app.