This seems to be a new development. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, a standalone Crown Corporation wholly owned by the federal government, is advertising for a temporary media relations officer on Craigslist.

Well, the corporation isn’t. They’ve hired Quantum staffing to run the competition, and the consultant has posted the job description and requirements on the Ottawa Craigslist site.

It’s a mid-level position requiring experience in media relations and having acted as an organizational spokesperson.  Before you start snickering, we haven’t seen the same housing crunch and mortgage crisis  as the Americans.

Interesting, considering the job isn’t on the CMHC job site and is buried behind drop down menus on Quantum’s site. I can’t find the position on jobs.gc.ca, the public site intended to make federal government positions available to the general public.

Then again, the Craigslist posting was two weeks ago - maybe the position has been filled and Quantum is just slow in covering their tracks.

Thanks Daphne!

and I’m jealous of all the other Brits, heading off to their facilitation get-togethers, their community building projects and their semi-secretive social media initiatives for government.

Look at this recent twitter from Simon:

@Canuckflack Wait til you see next week. We’re going mashup crazy.

Meanwhile, he’s also pointing to experiments like the twittering of the next diplomatic mission to Washington. This from the official statement from 10 Downing Street:

“…Gordon Brown will visit the US next week, his second trip to the country as Prime Minister.

The Downing Street website will run a live microsite including images, rolling updates and a Twitter feed throughout the PM’s stay from 16 - 19 April. Log on from Wednesday to follow the PM’s activities.

Mr Brown is expected to visit Boston, the United Nations in New York and meet President Bush at the White House in Washington. His meetings will focus on the global economy and other areas of mutual bilateral interest.

Gordon Brown’s first trip to the US as PM saw him travel to Camp David in July last year.

Seeing as I AM a social media nerd, or a real politics nerd, I would ask:

• does this mean there’s a communications assistant responsible for the twitter feed?
• what sort of vetting process is there for twitter messages? On the fly?
• is the content going to concentrate on policy announcements? Any chance of side remarks about the entrees at the state dinner? Snide remarks about the little kids handing over flowers at events?
• what sort of twitter app are they going to use? Is it on a BlackBerry, Treo or other PDA?

Technorati Tags: government communications, United Kingdom, Gordon Brown, twitter, public diplomacy

Had an interesting meeting with a fellow Director of Communications yesterday - but this guy was from the Government of New Zealand. It’s always useful to compare how the communications function is managed in sister parliamentary systems - and often somewhat startling that the function can evolve in very different ways.

Midway through our conversation, I noticed that his Moleskine notebook had an embossed insignia on the back. Turns out Air New Zealand gives out custom notebooks to frequent fliers of a sort.

Sniff.

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to measure the success of my career against that of some former colleagues.

Boy, was I shocked.

The key, you see, is that these former colleagues had moved into a provincial Crown Agency - a government organization distanced from direct political control and managed according to market forces.

It’s fairly easy to measure the success of your career relative to other government communications officers. Your roles and responsibilities are standardized. Titles are mirrored across organizations. We all share a common pay scale.

For the less intuitive, the government’s formulaic job posters provide a codex to deciphering all this information.

As a result, a simple business card can provide all the intelligence you need to judge your competitors, your colleagues, and the also-rans.

My former colleagues, however, had decided (separately) some years ago to test the waters by working in the private sector.

They eventually moved to the same Crown Agency.

On Tuesday, the provincial government released the names, titles and salaries of every employee of a government department, organization and Crown Agency making more than $100k a year. It’s required by sunshine legislation designed to make the government more transparent.

There, on the list, was one colleague, a Director of Communications, making over $160k. The other? A VP of regulatory affairs making over $300k.

The first makes more than almost any communicator working for the federal government.

The second makes more than almost every Deputy Minister.

I guess I should re-evaluate my reliance on a steady pension and a good health plan.