The CSPS hosts armchair discussions, almost weekly, on topics of interest to the Canadian public service. Unfortunately these discussions reach a tiny group of local attendees and those who join by 90's-style webcasting having reserved the time on their 90's computer (complete with Windows 95).
If CSPS had a channel on YouTube, employees (like Research Analysts) could disseminate views, information, news, updates to the public service at large and its own employees, without costly systems, upgrades and inferior systems. Of particular value would be to develop learning modules and lessons.
Instead of having a 90's style website where the video is stored as a video file for download by users, if the video is uploaded to YouTube or Google Video, the video is centralized for fast streaming and commenting and rating (if permitted) by users, and the content can be found by others not familiar with CSPS or its material, and hence expand the relevance of CSPS by expanding its user base.
The issue of copyright and ownership has come up...to this I point out the
many examples that YouTube has removed content due to copyright violation, and user controls enable users to remove content they have put up, as well as specify
who can see what video (private or public). Furthermore, it's also easier to manage the videos all in one place, instead of having users download the videos.
There is precedence for this. Instead of storing videos on their website, CBC has a channel on YouTube for disseminating their best videos (and hence expanding and responding better) to their user base.:
http://www.youtube.com/user/CBCtv
Other channels of interest:
There are music companies that have channels on YouTube, with full music videos and interviews:
There are learning channels, where companies create content for dissemination on YouTube:
There is an opportunity here for the CSPS:
No Channels found for “school of public service”
(leading link). This is an interesting way to go about planning - the mock up. Instead of working meticulously for each technology to be enabled in an organisation (RSS, blogging, a portal, the webpages, a CMS...), a mock-up of how the organisation would look like for its clients/citizens can help set the destination, and then chart the signposts along the way to achieve it. Brilliant.
