  Social media have become a valuable source for extracting data about societal
crises and an important outlet to disseminate official information. Government
agencies are increasingly turning to social media to use it as a mouthpiece in
times of crisis. Gaining intelligence through social media analytics, however,
remains a challenge for government agencies, e.g. due to a lack of training and
instruments. To mitigate this shortcoming, government agencies need tools that
support them in analysing social media data for the public good. This paper
presents a design science research approach that guides the development of a
social media analytics dashboard for a regional government agency. Preliminary
results from a workshop and the resulting design of a first prototype are
reported. A user-friendly and responsive design that is secure, flexible, and
quick in use could identified as requirements, as well as information display
of regional discussion statistics, sentiment, and emerging topics.
