July 12, 2010 by Jack Fox
Following recent government activity looking to reduce their spending on online services, Chancellor George Osborne has been meeting with a number of people who have submitted ideas online, to establish how web spending can be cut back.
A new website has been set up in conjunction with Facebook, requesting input from online UK users. People have been invited to submit suggestions, and vote on areas which they feel could be improved. The 23 million Facebook users in the UK have been requested to give feedback on how the government should tailor their spending to optimise their web resources.
A new website has been implemented to engage online service users and request where cuts should be made. This week, over 50,000 suggestions have been made by public visitors to the site. Facebook have launched the ‘Spending challenge channel’ in an effort to encourage input from site users, and David Cameron has met with Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, to instigate a new working relationship.
Cameron has been known to utilise social media in the past, through blogging and other channels. The government has now stated that they will use social media as the primary vehicle for letting people know of spending cuts, and eliciting two-way communications on how budget cuts should be made.
The coalition government have announced that they intend to make a financial cut of one quarter over the next four years. Only foreign aid and the health service are exempt from this process. Now, public sector workers are being encouraged to give input to how services could be improved, and to give insight in to which services are dispensable. It seems that online social networking has finally achieved the recognition it deserves when it comes to gauging public opinion and leveraging change with the government, with Facebook being the vehicle of choice.
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