As we dip our fingers and toes into this New Year 2010, thankfully escaping the still-nameless first decade of the new millennium pretty much still intact, we’re filled with optimism about what we’ll find at the intersection of technology and better government in the coming year. What with the successes on the social media front in 2009, there’s plenty to look forward to up ahead. So here, for some holiday weekend reading to get you juiced up for Monday, a few of the biggest social media stories in gov of 2009.

State and city governments who are getting busy

In September OhMyGov profiled Utah.gov, the state of Utah’s award winning new website. Utah.gov proves that a government website can be amusing and attractive while also being highly informative. The tweets fly at Utah.gov… in just a short span on a recent morning I counted10, from a congratulatory note to the BYU football team to an announcement about a new Braille calendar.

City governments are getting into the act as well. San Francisco was recently featured on Mashable because of their efforts to make their government site a model for employing technology and social media. The city and county data is now available online at datasf.org and they also have a 311 Service address where residents can tweet for online services and report problems.

In the arena of public safety it is the Los Angeles Fire Department and the Boston Police Department who have been outstanding in their adoption of social media. The LAFD was way out in front of the pack when they started using Twitter to notify the public of safety issues back in 2007. The BPD has been using Twitter to track down bike thieves. Already know as the “tweeting police department” they have created a way for owners to report stolen bikes so that local security and followers can keep their eyes out for the missing two-wheelers.

Federal Agency social media superheroes

 The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has been a sprint-ahead leader in the social media race among federal agencies. Granted, the agency gets to talk about cool space stuff. But they’ve amassed over 200,000 Twitter followers of NASA News tweets and another 14,000 who keep track of tweeting astronauts. NASA also has a unique strategy by creating Facebook pages and Twitter feeds that are dedicated to individual missions so that visitors can follow the progress of Ares-IX or Earth Conservatory.

And speaking of superheroes, the National Park Service makes our list for its inventive use of social media to plan, design and fund the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pa. Early in the process the NPS brought in the company Neighborhood America to help them create an interactive website that allowed for public participation in the creation of the park. The NPS received thousands of ideas from citizens who became a part of a collaborative effort that has resulted in a chosen design and a groundbreaking ceremony all within the two year deadline.

There is another agency that has risen to a challenge this year using social media tools and that is the Center for Disease Control. At the start of 2009 the World Health Organization and the media were ringing alarm bells right and left about the spreading H1N1 virus. The CDC quickly created multiple methods of tracking swine flu online: websites, podcasts, instructional videos, and twitter accounts @CDCFlu, @cdc_ehealth, and @cdcemergency.

Best use of social media to create a good spin

We all have the need for a good spin every once in a while as in “Sorry that I’m late for work, but I had to stop and help a blind person across the street.” Government agencies are no different than the rest of us in that regard so when they make a blunder, or what seems like a blunder, they need to find a way to smooth the waters. Some of them have found that social media can do wonders to turn things around.

The Transportation Security Administration is an agency that for reasons not always of their own making finds themselves in need of some good public relations. In October of this year a young mother from Annapolis, Md., claimed on her blog that the TSA had taken her son from her during a routine inspection at the Atlanta airport. Her deeply involved story, dialogue included, painted a sorry picture of the TSA security personnel and provoked many angry responses against the TSA on the blogosphere.

The TSA got wind of the situation and responded with a blog post and tweet on the very same day! A video was posted by the TSA from the Atlanta airport that showed the accuser and her child going through security together and at no time being separated by the staff. Within hours the public anger at TSA had changed course to point directly at the less than truthful Mommy.

Another agency that required a bit of spin this year was the Air Force. You may recall that in April the Air Force decided it needed to take some pictures of Air Force One flying low over Manhattan. In response to the bad publicity the Force called on a special unit called the Combat Information Cell. Its job: monitor the blogosphere and other social media to find out exactly how the public perceives the Air Force at any given time. In this case the Combat Information Cell correctly recognized that “no positive spin was possible.” But the CIC noted that after a few days had passed the anger had turned away from the Air Force towards the White House…..hmmm.

It would figure that the Central Intelligence Agency would find the most novel use of social media this year: spying on people. Although it shouldn’t be a surprise that the agency would mine this rich source of information, there are others that aren’t so sure the CIA spying on your Twitter posts is all that constitutional. A non-profit group dedicated to protecting freedoms in the digital age, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has filed suit against the CIA in order to get information about the practice.

The Best of the Rest

The Department of Defense has been no slouch in the world of social media this year and in using new technologies in general. Offices and service branches from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the National Guard have been blogging, tweeting and updating their Facebook pages on a regular basis. The use of social media has turned out to one of the most useful recruiting tools the military has had in years.

And we'd be remiss not to mention perhaps the biggest government social media event of the year when the White House became involved with Twitter during the chaos after the Iranian elections. The coverage of the protests that erupted in Iran after the June election was suppressed by the Iranian government. What little news emerged from the country came almost exclusively from young Iranians using Twitter.

When the White House learned that Twitter was planning on cutting service for a planned upgrade in the middle of the “event” in Iran the State Department contacted them and requested that it be postponed. “We highlighted to them (Twitter) that this was an important part of communication,” said a State Department official. It is apparent that it has become an important tool for communication for all government organizations.

What will 2010 have in store? Check out some social media predictions for the new year. What do you think will happen?