As tipping points go, last week seemed like a pretty significant one in the world of UK government and social media. It was the week when Prime Minister Gordon Brown finally went on the attack looking to rebuff claims by opposition leader David Cameron that he was nothing more than an “analogue politician in a digital age“.

First appearing at Google’s Zeitgeist Europe 2008 (oh the irony of the Number 10 page only allowing viewers to launch this video in windows media player) and then at NESTA’s InnovationEdge conference, PM Brown (not to be confused with PM Dawn) came out fighting to establish his credentials as the man to lead Britain as the “innovation nation”.

While last week had been coming for a while, with Downing Street testing the water in a number of areas from Flickr to Twitter and now its very own Ask the PM YouTube channel, it was the week where it all came together in a unified show of online strength by the PM and his team. Indeed Downing Street even showed off a little by bringing this all together in a social media manifesto, I mean newsletter.

Safe to say the launch of these initiatives and the newsletter itself provoked widespread reaction from the Twitterati, myself included:

Having taken stock of this flurry of activity, my thoughts remain mixed.

The sceptics among us (myself often included) would say this is a cynical and transparent attempt by the PM to appear modern and connected in the world of technology and the web, while the man himself remains ill at ease with the subject, rarely progressing beyond broadcast into conversation. You might also question the tactic of the Brown team in exposing him to such an array of communication channels when being relaxed and chatty (the new media way) is just not his strength. And then there are the complex practicalities relating to opening the communication floodgates, balancing the need for openness and accountability with the perverse risk of driving down satisfaction as queries are not responded to having raised expectations.

While these risks are real, there is no doubting that Brown and his team should be applauded for their work in developing a strong approach to social media, an approach potentially capable of delivering the most accessible and interactive leadership of any country in history. While there is no doubting there are risks involved in this approach, the potential benefits in terms of personal reputation and, more importantly, improved government engagement with the people they serve certainly outweigh these risks.

Either way, we can only hope that this marks a watershed for social media in the public sector, providing the opportunity to move beyond the frustrating and distracting questions of the value of these tools in government, instead focusing on rolling out social media on a far greater scale from current ad hoc experiments and driving improvement and innovation in public service delivery and citizen engagement.