Swede ghost writes a Ministerial Q&A online
Okay. I’ll let the cat out of the bag. Most documents signed by a Minister or Secretary were not actually written by that person.
Shocking, I know, but it’s the truth. In fact, if there’s an official crest at the top of the document, it was probably written by:
- a staffer in the political office
- the Deputy’s correspondence unit
- the Department’s public affairs unit
- or - god forbid - someone in the department with an intimate knowledge of the file in question.
Of course, the document was eventually reviewed and approved by the official - maybe with some small or even major changes. Let’s remember that the workload of most Ministers and Secretaries is so great, they rarely have the time to compose business correspondence.
The institutional default to ghost writing is so ubiquitous, I have to guess it played some part in the decision by a Swedish Minister’s press secretary to fake an online Q&A with a national newspaper.
Hans passes along that Lisa Wärn, the press secretary to the Swedish Minister for Enterprise and Energy, apparently double booked her boss for a live interview and online interview at the same time.
In an effort to keep both commitments, Wärn impersonated her boss in an online Q&A with Aftonbladet.se - and was caught out.
My Swedish isn’t up to scratch, so I can’t comment further on the actual details of the exchange or the repercussions, but it does seem a pity that the organization was willing to participate in the medium, but failed to be completely forthcoming about who was participating.
Technorati Tags: epolitics, egovernment, online news
