My favourite combination - 1970s design and pictures of bureaucrats. I found this on the cover of a study associated with the 1972 Task Force on Privacy and Computers.

It sort of looks like an abstract McGruff the Crime dog, represented as a member of the British Civil Service. And this was a report comissionned and published by the Government of Canada!

Ooohhhh. Jim Lahey, “you had me at hello.”

This month, the Deputy Secretary to Cabinet at the Canadian Privy Council Office (org chart) wrote a short opinion column on the renewal of the communications functional community for Canadian Government Executive.

“… The relatively recent influx of new recruits has brought new ideas and vitality. The presence of more Generation X and Y communicators will facilitate the use of new technologies to engage the Canadian population. As we move to realizing some of the potential of Web 2.0 and the promise of more truly collaborative and open government, the need for technological virtuosity will only grow. At the same time, however, having a generally younger workforce has implications on institutional memory and continuity. This clearly speaks to a need within the community to develop effective knowledge transfer tools as well as robust development mechanisms such as mentoring …”

“… Of course, crossing professional boundaries needs to be broadly encouraged. Effective long-term renewal demands that greater effort be made to “ventilate” the public service and to break out of the bubble within which the institution occasionally functions. In many respects, the most important thing that communicators can bring to the table is a better understanding of, and connection with, Canadians.

At its heart, effective communications is about appreciating how ideas will play in the “real world.” Communicators need to be plugged into the interests and priorities of stakeholders, organizations and the public at large. There is a clear need for greater cross-pollination of ideas that can only be achieved through more effective engagement and mobility between sectors. Communicators must be at the forefront of driving change in this area …”

If you’re in the IS community in the Canadian Public Service, you should read this.

It seems like the tide is turning in Canada, and more senior executives in the public service are expressing an interest in social media of all types.

Being a cautious species, many are experimenting behind the firewall, with Deputy Ministers setting up blogs to speak with their employees, and departments using wikis to revitalize their intranet.

Over the next year or so, this trend will accelerate - and managers will find themselves facing a staffing crunch.

That’s right. I think we all agree that social media demands a flexible skil lset, capable of interpreting organizational priorities, incorporating communications goals and acting as a strategic advisor on engagement and consultation

Social media strategists also need to have a sense of experimentation and an appetite for risk - in tools, tactics and strategy.

That’s not a combination easily found in the public service.

I can see a point - not too far in the future - when communications branches will be identifying the social media strategist as a valuable and high profile position in the branch.

It will be a transitional appointment, where young and upcoming strategists will be given the opportunity to bridge the world of traditional policy development and innovative communications.

It will be a recruiting tool and a staff retention strategy - to prevent the bleeding of otherwise interesting and stimulating staff in the communications branch.

These strategists will have to navigate the world of information technology, strategic communications planning and reassuring senior management - a skill set that will prepare them well for larger horizontal files and wide-ranging projects.

As we begin to see concrete and measurable results from government experiments in social media, these multi-faceted communications strategists will find more doors open to them at more senior levels of the bureaucracy.

The question is, will they want to move on?

The plodding and somewhat regressive bureaucrat. These are the subjects of Jan Banning’s portraits, drawn from trips to Bolivia, India, Central Asia and other places.

I admire the pictures for their composition, but despise them for the effort they imply: the bureaucrats are shown posed behind their desks, stiff backed and waiting for a request to be opposed or denied.

There may be signs of modernity, like a solar calculator or a large bakelite phone, but the overwhelming imagery is of large bulky furniture, a traditionally built space in some form of disrepair, and a process that is largely dictated by paper documents and personal relationships.

That may be reality, but I don’t have to like it.

This is perhaps the must succinct guide to working with digitally enabled employees: whether a Generation “Y”, a millenial, or a particularly adept Generation Xer.

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Well. I find myself in an interesting situation. After years of working as a government communicator, albeit with extensive exposure to the policy development process, I have just moved over to a largely research-based role.

This means I am busy ginning up on leading an actual policy and research function. And adjusting to being responsible for a planning window that extends beyond next Tuesday (us communicators, especially media relations types, are notoriously short sighted).

You may have felt the effects - my posting rate has been erratic of late.

Rest assured, my interest in communications and social media remains strong (and I am restraining from making a lame Yoda reference here).

But I’m certainly being helped by these great guides from New Zealand, via Jason.

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!

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.

Canada’s Public Service Commission prepared a back-of-the-envelope survey of labour mobility last year, and identified the civil service professions that are experiencing the most turnover and volatility. The results were reported in the Ottawa Citizen this morning.

Not surprisingly, the official category for communications specialists and public relations flacks was among the top five (of something ridiculous like 40) classification groups. Communications specialists, economists and human resources specialists seem to be able to write their own ticket in the public service - as long as they have appropriate qualifications and relevant work experience.

This means that there is a fairly fluid system of supply and demand for their services. Communications specialists can move from position to position, and department to department, unlike most other professions, which tend to be more inflexible. (After all, where are those woodlot specialists, marine engineers and toy testers going to go?)

Some of this movement is between Communications Branches, the Deputy Minister’s Office and the Minister’s Office. After all, communications specialists have specific skills as aggregators and analysts of information that are much sought after by these higher offices.

Do we have any statistics about the movement of public servants between the public service and Federal Minister’s Offices? Well, you’re in luck! The PSC just completed an audit of such movements, as undertaken between April 1990 and January 2006.

A total of 157 public servants moved between departments and Minister’s Offices in that time. The PSC decided that 99 of those staffing actions were of little risk - but that the other 58 warranted further investigation. Here are those 58 positions, broken down by movement among classification groups that require a post-secondary degree:

Okay. 19/58 for the IS group. That’s 33% of the movement. Considering that most Minister’s offices have a communications assistant, a press secretary, and a Director of Communications, that’s a strong statement. Strong enough to elicit this comment in the audit:

“Approximately 44% of the public servants included in the audit came from the IS or ES classification groups. These groups are often responsible for aspects of communications or policy advice within an organization. Because of the nature and profile of their duties, public servants in these types of positions or in higher-level positions who work in a minister’s office may present a greater risk (real or perceived) to political impartiality when returning to their home departments.”

Here’s a new twist on the implications of social media for government organizations - as fodder for union disputes about the staffing of new graduates.

A couple of former Canada Border Services Agency employees - who don’t seem to have been hired for full-time work after several summers as part-timers - have been tracking the Facebook postings of summer students and new recruits for the Agency.

In these posts, comments and profiles, the recruits talk openly and maybe a little too frankly about their work. Oh - and have posted pictures of themselves drinking while in uniform.

There are certainly implications for an organization’s public image, but even greater are the obvious challenges for the internal communications and human resources teams.

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