Officials discover the joy of blogging

If Jeff Dieffenbach, chairman of the Wayland School Committee, doesn't get enough time to air his views at the board's meetings, he has another option: He can blog about it.

''As much as anything, it just gives me an outlet to say what I want to say or what I think needs to be said," said Dieffenbach, a self-described ''techie" who started a blog for the committee last year.

Weblogs, online journals that have sprouted up all over the Internet, are now being used by local government officials who want to improve communication with constituents.

They're appearing around the country, in communities large and small. The District of Columbia's mayor, Anthony A. Williams, who started his own blog earlier this year, is one high-profile example. A spokeswoman, Sharon Gang, said he found it especially useful to reach out to D.C. residents who were dismayed watching the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

''He just wanted to expound on what he was seeing to as many people as were interested in reading about it," she said. ''I know he enjoyed doing it and hearing back from people."

Town officials in Boston's western suburbs are just starting to explore the use of the blog.

In addition to the Wayland school board blog, George P. King Jr., Framingham's former town manager, used one to give his own accounts of significant town news. A Franklin School Committee member also gave blogging a try for two months, but gave it up because it was too time-consuming.

King said he thinks the blog is a powerful communication tool for public officials. ''I could talk directly to the people," he said.

He ran the blog for three months before accepting a position as assistant superintendent of Nashoba Regional School District. King said the blog got a much better response than the public access television show he hosted every other week.

''Without much feedback, I started wondering who was watching," he said. He liked the fact that constituents could look at the blog at 3 a.m. if they wanted.

Geoff Beckwith, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, said his group hasn't taken a position on blogs but they raise complex questions about compliance with the open meetings law.

Discussion by officials is supposed to take place in a public forum at a scheduled time, he said. He worries that debate online could replace meetings. Making sure blogs don't circumvent the public process is important, he said.

Beckwith predicted that more public officials would be blogging in the near future. ''I don't think there's a critical mass yet," he said, ''but there will be soon."

Paul Taylor, chief strategy officer for the Center for Digital Government in Folsom, Calif., said blogs by elected officials are ''popping up all over the place." He said they're a good mode of communication because they're easy to set up and allow public officials to talk openly and directly without spin.

''Blogs present a channel where that can be encouraged, and it's also a channel where it's expected," he said.

Taylor said 2006 could be the first election cycle in which someone isn't considered a serious candidate for public office unless he has a blog.

Blogging doesn't work for every public official.

Ed Cafasso, a member of the Franklin School Committee, took his blog offline after a brief trial last year. He wanted to write on it every day but didn't have the time. He believes that sending mass e-mails is more effective.

''It was too time-consuming, and it was frankly very limiting," he said. ''You couldn't really have a conversation with somebody as you might on e-mail."

Cafasso said that while he thinks the blog is an ineffective tool for public officials in its current form, he believes it will evolve into a communication form that will allow public debate and public comment on issues before government boards.

Dieffenbach, the 40-year-old Wayland School Committee chairman, said his group's blog (www.waylandschoolcommittee.org/blog.htm), which is an offshoot of the committee's website, serves a useful purpose, though he doubts he has many readers. The blog gets about 200 hits a month.

It started as a way to point residents to information about Wayland's schools and the way they are governed. But he realized that he wanted to say more, and the blog has evolved into a site where he can keep a record of his evolving thinking on particular issues.

He also uses it, he said, as a way to lay down ''the board's side of the story" and ''to set the record straight." He often writes a blow-by-blow examination of articles and newsletters written by local media.

Earlier this month, Dieffenbach printed paragraphs from a Wayland newsletter followed by his suggestions for conveying ''a truer representation of the committee's meeting."

Sometimes, it can be too easy to be flippant or sarcastic, Dieffenbach admits.

Earlier this year, the newsletter reported that an observer of a meeting described Dieffenbach as ''having a chip on his shoulder." Dieffenbach shot back on the blog: ''Actually, it was a parrot."

Although the blog is intended to be a platform for the entire board, Dieffenbach is the only member who uses it. Sometimes, he said, board members will alert him if they think he has overstated the board's position, and he'll go back and tweak the entry. He said he notes the changes at the top.

Dieffenbach said his thinking becomes clearer as he writes on the blog.

''It's an internal sounding board as well as an external reference," he said. ''I hope it reflects the way that I think about things and nothing more."