FOI release

Costs and benefits of DSA using social media

Published 2 August 2013

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

© Crown copyright 2013

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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/costs-and-benefits-of-dsa-using-social-media/costs-and-benefits-of-dsa-using-social-media

This is Freedom of Information request IA/00707/12.

1. Request 1

I would be grateful for information on the costs and benefits to the Driving Standards Agency of using social media. For each of the following channels: the DSA Twitter accounts, all DSA Facebook pages, the DSA’s YouTube channel could you please give me:

1.1 Response

Please find below a list of the benefits to our Agency of using social media:

  • being where our audiences are
  • increasing reach at no cost, eg DSA used to send out an ‘Are you ready?’ DVD to every driving test candidate - this is now on YouTube, along with other DSA information films, such as ‘Independent driving’ and ‘Show me, tell me’ - all DSA films are now produced in-house at no extra cost
  • increasing engagement with stakeholders - social media provides ideal media for monitoring our customers’ and stakeholders’ conversations and moods and the ability to respond immediately, rebut misleading information, myth-bust and crowd source ideas
  • humanising government, particularly through individual accounts on Twitter, with their different, individual voices
  • building advocates from those who become part of our shared online community
  • consulting immediately with followers to help DSA to understand our audiences
  • using social media metrics, such as information about our followers’ ages, gender, responsiveness to various topics etc, we can adapt and tailor our messages to a specific audience without the costs of reprinting materials or postage, eg the messages and tone for ‘Learning to ride’ won’t necessarily be the same for ‘I can’t wait to pass my driving test’
  • influencing beyond our immediate following. For example, the friends of our Facebook friends will see our messages and many of our Twitter messages are then retweeted
  • promoting other agencies’ messages relevant to our audiences, eg Highways Agency, Met Office, drink drive campaigns etc

2. Request 2

The success criteria/metrics for the channel.

3. Response

Please find below the metrics for each of the social media’s used by DSA.

3.1 DSA Twitter accounts

Account Name Number of followers
Corporate accounts  
DSAgovuk: 11,728
HighwayCodeGB: 16,851
Individuals accounts  
Liz_DSA: 1,720
Linda_DSA: 933
John_DSA: 645

3.2 Facebook

Account Name Number of likes Number of ‘friends of fans’
Driving Standards Agency (DSA) 2,642 619,256
I can’t wait to pass my driving test 22,711 5.9m
Learning to ride 2,420 745,454
HighwayCodeGB 14,112 3.4m

3.3 YouTube

Number of subscribers Total number of videos viewed
4,674 6.2m

Between 1 January 2012 and 4 December 2012 there have been 1.9m views, an estimated 3.5m minutes of video watched, 1,336 comments made about videos and videos have been shared on 703 occasions.

4. Request 3

Data for performance of the channel against the success criteria/metrics for the most recently available 12 month period

5. Response

Please find below a list of the success criteria for DSA’s use of social media:

  • growing numbers (see above) of followers and fans and excellent feedback
  • peers’ endorsement, respect and requests for advice on social media strategy and practice
  • feedback from customer insight survey 2012, featuring questions on DSA’s use of social media - results expected in January 2013

Awards:

  • short-listed for Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) award for Communications Excellence award 2011. This was for DSA’s communications campaign through social media for the introduction of Independent Driving into the practical driving test
  • winner of a Prince Michael International Road Safety Award 2012 for increasing the reach of the Highway Code through digital media, including social media

6. Request 4

Costs for the most recently available 12 month period of maintaining the channel OR estimate of the time spent maintaining the channel as % FTE, with grade(s) of staff (not including making videos) 2. Total budget for Communications for the same period

7. Response

7.1 Costs/Estimate of time spent maintaining the channel

The estimate of time allocated to the maintenance of DSA’s social media channels (not including the making of videos) expressed as full time equivalent (FTE) is as follows:

Grade FTE
Executive Officer (EO) 0.60
Higher Executive Officer (HEO) 0.85

The total budget for communications, including staff costs, for the same period was £777,153. These figures were correct as of 17 December 2012.

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