OMBlog: Research Days at GW

Though not quite comparable to the high-stakes security protocol I witnessed during my brief time as a student-intern at the CIA, the OMB’s standards of info classification are among the highest in the government. Producing research based only on publicly available, non-Executive Branch-specific material forced me to view the OMB not from the perspective of an intern with (albeit limited!) securities clearances and privilege, but from the perspective of an American answering email from a non- eop.gov email address from anywhere other than a cubicle in NEOB.
As part of my faculty-supervised HONR2182 internship at the Office of Management and Budget, I am doing research that I will present at the University’s Research Days, which run from April 1^st-2^nd this year. The project—titled, “OMBlog— The Efficacy of Government Blogs: Exploring the Intentions of Internet-based PR, its Audience, and its Future”— explores government employment of social media and of the public relations wisdom in the literature that serves as the PR beacon of private sector self-promoters in a comparative and analytical sense. With the help of a Trachtenberg professor, I have been working towards a comprehensive project about the motivations of agencies seeking to engage the public online as well as about the challenges agencies face in incorporating modern technology in a way that produces ideal outcomes for specific federal agencies looking to accomplish their unique, PR-related goals.
Material electronically disseminated by the OMB, such as the Google-able “OMBlog” was my springboard for comparing the OMB’s online presence with other organizations’. By framing OMBlog, the White House Blog, and other federal agencies’ similarly intended posts, sites, and pages in the context of PR theory, I have noticed stark contrasts in the degree to which certain online efforts are useful, understood, or apparently interesting—among other metrics—to the audience the government has so far engaged online.
While the deadline to present at Research Days 2014 has passed, look out for the opportunity when it comes around next year, and check out other students’ projects at Research Days next month.
http://research.gwu.edu/research-days-2014