It’s often hard to find training and development materials designed for government communicators and available on the web. By that, I mean free. Or low-cost. There are plenty of products and events produced for the public sector, but at quite a cost. $2500 conferences. $250 webinars. $80 photocopied packages of award-winning cases.

The breadth of public relations material and debate available online certainly helps, but these materials often need to be customized to fit the particular qualities of our working environment. Clearly, we’re professional communicators, public relations specialists, and marketers, but our workload often demands competence in a variety of specialized skills.

Corporate social responsibility? Seems awfully familiar to people working on accountability and stewardship files. Community relations? That’s well-trodden ground for municipal flacks working on zoning disputes. Crisis Communications? Try working for a police department, transportation investigation board or the armed forces. Community building? Try talking to some communicators who specialize in public health issues.

That’s why my RSS subscriptions dig into a number of blogs with specialized topics. One group with particular relevance to government PR are community and issues activists: putting all issue-specific quarrels aside (please?), both activists and government communicators honestly want to encourage a two-way conversation on issues important to society.

And, frankly, it seems that these groups and their sponsors are preparing more material and making it available online. Like the latest report from the Communications Leadership Institute.

Discovering the Activation Point, as Green Media Toolshed explains, helps groups find the point where constituents, members and supporters will actually take action in support of an issue. A sample:

• What are you trying to persuade people to do?
• What is the smallest number of people you need to activate to get what
you want?
• How can they be persuaded?
• How many audience segments do they break into?
• Do they bring others with them (i.e., are they a social reference group)?
• How can you test your requested action to make sure it will compel
your audience target?

The report is available after a free registration, and is well worth the download.

With U.S. Presidential spokesperson Tony Snow in the background because of a recurrence of cancer, his deputy, Dana Perino, has stepped up to the podium.

At 34, the former Capitol Hill aide has been thrust into what can be a harsh spotlight, but for now seems to be coping without too much squinting. While she lacks Snow’s practiced ease before the cameras, Perino projects an earnest, ever-polite demeanor, like an airline ticket agent who keeps smiling as irate customers demand to know why their flight has been canceled. …

Perino has been flooded with calls of support, including one, she says, from Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, who told her: “Put your big-girl panties on.”

hat/tip to FedBlog for the pointer to the WPost article.

David Jones, the Head of Communications at the Serious Fraud Office in the United Kingdom, provides some commentary on the relationship between government officials and international media. (PDF)

“I don’t know if there is a stereotypical profile in [Eastern] Europe of media practice and habit between a journalist and a government press officer. No doubt it would be a mistake for me to assume that my experience with journalists in Bosnia on a corruption case there involving the electricity power industry would be a safe model or dealing with a Polish journalist on a similar case in Warsaw. “

This is one presentation at Transparency and Media Relations as a Means of Fighting Fraud, a training seminar put on by the OLAF Anti-Fraud Communicators’ Network.

A Summary of the Seminar has also been prepared, and a quick search reveals many of the prepared speeches that were presented.

A more light hearted aspect of Mr. Jones’ work for the SFO is presented in this letter to the Editor of the Observer.

by Colin McKay

It seems to me that we are at a crossroads with the social media release and the decisions and actions that we make now, especially in a government context, will have important consequences in the coming years. This is not unexpected in the early phases of the development of any emergent media, however, it does mean we should be paying attention to what transpires and engaging where we have either an obligation or believe that we can add some perspective to the issue.

Let me begin by saying that I think that the idea of a social media news release is a terrific one. Kudos to Tom Foremski for initiating the concept with his influential post and to Todd Defren for actually sitting down and producing the alpha version. Similarly, the work of Chris Heuer and co. in this space is exemplary.

Should we adopt it in government? My answer is an unequivocal yes. Who will it benefit? Are there tangible benefits? As a rough indication – and I assume my experience is fairly standard – in the period after a press release, I may typically get calls/emails from the following (in addition to journalists):

• Parliamentary staffers
• researchers, academics and students
• vendors and industry groups
• NGOs and non-profits
• other governments
• the general public

Anything that makes it easier for all of these people to discover, access and re-use the information that we publish has to be considered as beneficial. Our responsibility as communicators to improve the way we promulgate government information is both a key professional obligation and a fundamental support for the democratic process.

Government news is not ‘pitched’ to journalists (at least not in New Zealand). It is the definitive statement of a department/agencies position on a given topic at a specific time. It is of interest to more than just the media, and should be made available in a format that reflects this wide range of potentially interested parties. Importantly, this format should not exclude anyone.

This is the reason that I am so excited by the prospect of microfomatting the SMR. The semantic markup benefits all users, whether people or machines and makes the information more discoverable, more usable and more re-usable.

Unfortunately, hRelease (the proposed microformat) hasn’t made it to draft yet and the real world examples of the SMR have not delivered quality markup.

While I welcome all the effort to get this off the ground, it is both perplexing and frustrating to see much of this effort going into the style and not the substance of the format. Edelman’s StoryCrafter is a good example (and I pick them because, more than any other organization, they have the resources and the intelligence to deal to this): their SMRs are woefully inadequate in terms of the markup. Escher-like recursions of nested tables, font tags and other deprecated markup. Completely at odds with the first principle of the SMR: democratize the access.

Does this matter? If you are in government then you are probably required by law to publish your information in an accessible format. Most jurisdictions have some form of mandated web standards.

Additionally it seems to me that, as government communicators, we have an obligation to advise our agencies about the most effective way to take advantage of technological developments for communications. As public affairs practitioners, we represent the interests of all those people who want to know what their government is spending their tax dollars on. And as professionals we want to embrace new techniques and best practice to enhance the services we deliver. Understanding social media seems to be pretty important across all of these facets of our job.

Now, while the SMR is still in its infancy, is the time to engage and support the original principle. Get involved in the process, ensure that your peers are aware of these developments and of their implications for their agencies. Government communicators have something to add to this conversation: make sure your voice gets heard.

Technorati Tags: social media, SMR, hRelease, microformats, government, public servants.

Ever wondered about the relationship between public information officers (PIOs) and local news media? One university communications specialist examined the relationship between PIOs and radio, print and TV media in the Tampa Bay area, and there is a lot of personal commentary to be found in the annexed interviews with general assignment print reporters, editors, television reporters and public information officers.

“I think I’m reflecting the attitudes of our newsroom, that by and large, PIOs are fair, and they’re competent and professional, to do what they do, but we often, usually, don’t stop at the PIO and often go around the PIO to get the information we need, because it’s more efficient, mainly. You know, why do we want to hear the information through the filter of the PIO, when we can go to the mayor, city manager, police chief, investigator, and get the information directly? (Newspaper City Editor)

The commentary gets much more interesting than that. It may confirm preconceptions or prejudices about professional behaviour held by actors on either side of the divide.

“A Qualitative Analysis of Trust Issues in the Journalist / Government Communicator Relationship: An Explanatory Study” by Davina Yetter Gould. (PDF)

And why don’t I get crate after crate of Cadbury’s creme eggs delivered to my office? Oh - because I work for the government.

Don’t you feel a slight sense of embarassment when colleagues and neighbours ask if your office has any tchotchkes for charity auctions? Environmentally sustainable, low budget, low profile office supplies never leave much of an impression.

(cross-posted to my old (but still running) blog, Canuckflack)

Building on yesterday’s post about Web 2.0 technology adoption in businesses, some more data on business intentions for the technology. From the table excerpted below, it’s hard to tell whether adoption has reached a peak - with a sizable proportion reluctant to invest in anything but “web services” or “peer-to-peer networking” - or whether technologies like podcasts and wikis are about to tip over into popularity.

There’s much more information available at McKinsey’s “How businesses are using Web 2.0: A McKinsey Global Survey” - including how many respondents plan to bring in these technologies, broken down by region and continent.

Once again, I see similarities between these corporate results and government intentions. (my observations are completely unsupported by data, by the way)

This just in: the results of a November/December survey of agencies, corporate clients and communications experts, sponsored by the European Public Relations Education and Research Association. (n=409 from 24 countries)

Not really ground breaking news, but the results do reinforce the impression that corporate adoption of blogging and social media is still difficult once you step outside of the technology community.

The survey was conducted by lead researchers Philip Young (University of Sunderland, UK), Swaran Sandhu (University of Lucerne, Switzerland) and Ansgar Zerfass (University of Leipzig, Germany)

h/t to Tom Murphy.

Remember how James Hansen, the director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, had some differences of opinion with his government superiors over his scientific presentations?

Depositions, supporting documents, and testimony before the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform hearing on March 19 are now available.

Interesting to government communicators is the testimony of George C. Deutsch III, a campaign worker turned public affairs officer, who details some of the basic work demanded of a public affairs officer at NASA.

As a sorbet, I offer an excerpt from a speech by the Director of the National Science Foundation:

“… The concept of “civic scientist” was not intended to diminish the magnificent contributions of scientists over centuries, and today, but rather to get scientists more broadly involved in the society that was built on their insight and intellect.

First, is to create a dialogue with the public about science and technology that is on the one hand a process of educating the public about what they want and need to know. The flip side of the dialogue is learning to listen to what the public thinks about the directions in which our science and technology are taking us.

And if you think that the job of a civic scientist is to do more talking than listening, think again. The scientist should be as much the listener and learner. In a science and technology driven society, the civic scientist is an integrator — one who knits together what is discovered, what are the opportunities and implications of the discovery, and what is the most necessary new knowledge.”

Even More: Survey of Factors Affecting Science Communications by Scientists and Engineers, from the Royal Society, July 2006. (.pdf)

And Even More: a summary of past programmes supported by the OECD’s Promoting Dialogue between Scientists and Engineers and the Public.

Today is Budget Day for the Government of Canada. For a parliamentary democracy, a budget can help identify government priorities and themes for the coming months or years. This, naturally, has a great impact on the daily life of a government public relations type.

Deirdre McMurdy writes in the Ottawa Citizen:

“‘Budgets are unique because there are really no other opportunities for a government to command the full attention of the public, the media and every other stakeholder,” says Scott Reid, former communications director for Paul Martin and now a principal with Feschuk Reid, a speechwriting and strategy firm.

“Given the degree of focus and scrutiny, spinning and packaging the information is beyond important.”

That, he explains, involves selecting a clear theme — deficit reduction, tax cuts, health care, to name a few from the past — and then carefully choosing the language and sequence of arguments required to reinforce it.

Special attention is paid to the speech and the summary notes and the front end of the document, because that’s where the quotes and clips tend to come from — through the media to the masses.

It’s also crucial for the Finance Department staff members who are in the media lockup as an information resource, to be well-briefed on sticking to the script.

“You have to give reporters a hook that they can grasp quickly,” says Mr. Reid. “Something clean and clear that they can peg.”

He adds that one of the common tricks in federal budgets is to bury the items where there may be losers on page 521 of the technical tax change paper.

“A lot of it is about lighting: You want to cast the best light on the items you choose. It’s important to retain that control.”