Hyderabad: From now, the Twitter handles of Telangana police personnel will be verified. Once a profile is verified as authentic it have a blue tick mark.
Ms Mahima Kaul, head, public policy and government, of Twitter India, undertook the task to give verified handles to all police officers. The details are being compiled and will be sent across to Twitter India.
“We are yet to submit our proposals to the DGP office, which will be forwarded to Twitter. In Hyderabad, all the SHO profiles were verified and have blue ticks. The supervisor ranks are yet to get their Twitter handles,” DCP, East, M. Ramesh said.Most of these Twitter handles follow conventional naming such as “SHO Kachiguda” or “DCPEASTZONE” or “DCPNZHyd”.
In case of transfers, these Twitter handles will be given to the new officer. Last week, the IT department and Twitter India conducted a joint workshop on effective use of Twitter in governance for Twitter users from the GHMC, Transco and police to enable them to use the service better.
“Minister K.T. Rama Rao has been driving this initiative and despite his busy schedule he responds to people. He wants the officers to take the cue. We want to train the existing users and bring in new users. When a person represents the government on social media, there are several nuances like responding well and ignoring trolls,” said Mr Dileep Konatham, digital media director of the state government.
The Twitter India team gave best practices and do's and don'ts, and exercise previously done by Facebook and Google.
“Many people approach the government with grievances. We want to use it in the right way and foster digital governance. Citizens are on social media and they expect government agencies to respond. We are training all departments to use such tools. All collectors are online now. Likewise, we want officials to be available for the people,” Mr Konatham said.
In a scenario where it is easy to create a fake profile, adding a trust badge would help people.
Twitter's new product head Kayvon Beykpour announced that it had put a hold on the verification process and was concentrating on preventing giving wrong information to maintain election integrity ahead of the US elections in November. “We still verify accounts ad hoc when we think it serves the public conversation and is in line with our policy,” he said.
