By Russ Ward (@russcward)

The FDA’s Transparency Blog recently unveiled a new initiative, a simple “FDA Basics” site with general information about the agency.

In addition to the Transparency Blog and the FDA Basics site, they ran a webinar for bloggers interested in writing about health information, and they’ve got a very active YouTube channel. It’s all aimed at the general public.

It’s interesting to see how such a Byzantine organization is working to become more accessible, transparent and socially engaged. Interesting, inspiring, and immensely challenging. If they can do it, what excuse does any other organization have?

By DJ Edgerton (@wiltonbound)

Have you ever thought of the government as a business partner?

Over the holidays I managed to catch up on a lot of reading. The always insightful Chris Brogan had an interesting post on how a music company had created a custom version of Tweetdeck (a Twitter aggregator) that was preprogrammed with interesting artists to follow on Twitter. Chris was pointing out that this kind of “extra work” could be done by a lot of companies and that it would really provide value to consumers.

Of course, I started thinking about how Pharma could apply this strategy. Like everyone else, I thought about the barriers first. How adverse event reporting requirements would stop companies from being able to recommend specific tweeters. But then I thought about how companies might be able to create other tools that used trusted third party information to achieve the same goals. Why can’t companies us e the wealth of information provided by the FDA, the CDC and other government agencies to build digital tools that inform and empower their consumers. Lysol’s Germ Information Center is a terrific example of this kind of project. And there are many more out there.

Yes, we live and work is in a very strictly regulated field. But hose same regulatory organizations also provide us with a wealth of resources that we can use to help the people who keep us in business. Barack Obama and his administration have been incredibly forward thinking in their use of technology to share information with the public. We  can learn from those efforts and use the tools they’ve created to make our customers lives better.

We’ve been doing a lot of brainstorming about this stuff at P & P lately and very soon we’ll have some news about a project that taps directly in to this type of thinking. In the meantime, ask yourself – why can’t my organization do something like this too?

PS: If you come up with a great idea but don’t feel that it’s something your company can do (due to regulatory restraints, budget restrictions or whatever) share it here. Somebody reading this may be able to take the your idea and run with it (and that benefits everyone)!

By DJ Edgerton

Congratulations: you’ve just been assigned to create the social media policy for your company. You feel a bit puffed-up with your social media expertise. But slowly, you will begin to think that there are few more daunting tasks.

You will remember that policies mean legalities. And legal stuff is scary.

Next, you’ll admit to yourself that you know enough about social media to know that you don’t know everything that you probably should know in order to do this right.

Then, when you finally make yourself sit down and do a quick Google to get started, you find a completely overwhelming number of results.

Now you’re scared and intimidated and overwhelmed – and you still haven’t even gotten started.

Done one way, being the author of a social media policy could be a rotten job, as you desperately and awkwardly fight to plant your official “I promise to be the expert on all things social media” flag.

Done another way, it could actually be a collaborative, trust-building process.

Here are some points to consider, once you’re done breathing into your paper bag.

* Trust your employees and tell them so. Assume that they are sensible and well meaning. If you can’t, you have much bigger problems.
* Do not go it alone. If you are not a lawyer, it is not your job to be able to write a legal document without help. Get counsel involved.
* Explicitly encourage dialogue. Make it clear that you are not Moses coming down the mountain with stone tablets.
* Keep it philosophical. Keep to common-sense generalities (see “trust your employees”) and be specific about what’s outlawed, not what’s permitted – because if you try to define the entire universe of social media, three things will happen. First, you’ll leave something out. Second, you’ll be instantly outdated. Third, you’ll be exhausted.

Perhaps the best social media policy online is by Jeffrey Levy, director of web communications at EPA and author of Government 2.0 Beta. His take:

1. Do use social media to serve your mission.
2. Don’t be stupid.

There’s really nothing else to say.