Osuna Millan spent over 3 million pesos on Facebook

The governor of the State of Baja California hired external companies to manage his social networks

By Laura Sánchez Ley2013-09-13T19:05:00+00:00

The most recurring images are that of the governor hugging children, smiling and happy in their school uniforms. Others pictures show him handing out awards to young students in schools with low resources. But the one that stand out is his profile picture with his mother leaning on his chest.

The Facebook page belonging to the Governor of Baja California, Jose Guadalupe Osuna Millan, has more than 136,863 Likes. The numbers are very similar to the Facebook page for the government of Baja California: with more pictures of Osuna Millan with children, elderly and politicians.

Apparently having so many followers in Facebook hast cost the citizens of Baja California a great deal, according the transparency website, the state government has spent 3,046,625 pesos in a concept called "Social Media" since the year 2011.

The amounts are divided as follow: During the administration of Jose Guadalupe Osuna Millan, the position of "Alternate media coordinator" was created, according to what was explained in the department of communication, it's the person who manages social media, like Facebook and Twitter.

One has to be able to communicate properly, that is why the state government pays the coordinator a monthly salary of $34,526 pesos (around 2600 USD ) , as well as a bonus of $46,021(around 3500 USD), multiply that by the 6 years and you get the surprisingly large number of $2,485,975 pesos, this is what handling social media pages cost the people of Baja California.

And if it wasn't enough to create this position in public office solely for the purpose of managing Facebook and Twitter, the government considered it was necessary to hire external service providers in order to administrate the government's social media networks.

Which is why on August 29th 2011, in the budget for "professional services" they hired the company called "Business Thinking", which was created in 2010 and according to their description of themselves "we offer Premium Facebook solutions".

Apparently the citizens of Baja California paid this company 200,000 pesos for "providing and promoting actions, programs and success stories of the government's reports, through communications strategies and marketing using the Premium tools on micro-targets"

Nearly a month after on September the 26th 2011, they paid this company Business Thinking once again for their services this time 160,750 pesos for "strategically administrating social media, monitoring external electronic media, both local and regional with relation to the state government and the execution of communication and marketing strategies, using the new information technologies about the actions of the government".

In 2012 another contract was renewed to the same company dedicated to social media handling, however, the government no longer specified the amount they were paid for their services.

Having 7,610 likes on the state government page, 136,863 likes on his personal page and 5,412 followers on twitter does have a price, almost $4 million pesos is the cost of maintaining the governor's "facebook".