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.

Technorati Tags: Facebook. government communications, border guards

Regeneration and recruitment. It’s a fact of life in many organizations, but a particular challenge for civil services around the world. Most civil services have traditionally been structured to retain experts and encourage the concentration of specialist knowledge and corporate history. In practice, this means that recruitment and regeneration of the working force has proved difficult.

We are facing tremendous challenges with the arrival of the wired generation - the kids who used to be called the Nintendo generation. They bring a ground-breaking approach to communication to their life and their work. And it may threaten stability in the office.

(Not that a little disruption and iconoclasm can’t be good - in moderation)

Take, for instance, how a generation used to interacting with insight, sarcasm, disregard for the feelings of others, or irrationality - largely through comment fields - might restructure the traditional business meeting.

A video from College Humour shows us the possible result.

h/t to Jake McKee.

Beta vs. Pilot Project

Which one is sexier? And which one is preferred by bureaucrats, politicians and heads of the civil service?

We’re back to our old discussion about risk.

When you’re in beta, there’s a tacit acknowledgment that the whole experiment could go sideways. You’ve hit upon a good idea, your idea is based on solid analysis and an understanding of the market … but you’ve got crazy eyes.

In beta, people are willing to bet that your crazy eyes are a strategic advantage. Your funders, your mentors, your underpaid employees - they all believe that the end result will outweigh the risk.

In a pilot project, the entire process is built around eliminating risk. That initial spark of insight and creativity may have found a backer and some money, but let’s not get out of hand here folks!

The fundamental weakness is right there in the name: pilot project. The expectations have already been raised: colleagues and bosses are expecting big things.

A beta is allowed to wander. A beta is allowed to make a mis-step or two. A pilot project has already been enrolled in engineering school.

For the older members of my readership, a beta is Tweety Bird. A pilot project is that nerdy chick, the one Foghorn Leghorn used to push around.

It’s a fundamental problem: how does a government bureaucracy, built on ensuring stability and rational order, accomodate risk?

Unfortunately, many government organizations shy away from any risk that cannot be modelled and quantified.

If it cannot be quantified, it must be controlled. It must be boxed in. It must be measured, evaluated and reported on.

Talk about setting up ol’ crazy eyes for failure. It’s a real poke in the eye.

In today’s world, we are all used to a superior making a last minute change to a document. Sometimes it’s a valuable contribution. Sometimes its an accurate correction of an error. Other times, it may just be a power play. The decision may be subliminal or it may be explicit, but it still forces the author to rework the document.

Last minute editing has really only become endemic because of the introduction of electronic writing and editing. Before the word processor, revising a document at the last minute meant finding someone from the typing pool who could rework the whole text - just to add a comma or an adverb.

Which made this powerplay seem amusing and quaint:

“How often has the drafter of a paper come rushing into a senior’s office, saying, breathlessly, ‘Hope you can read this right away, sir. I spent all weekend on it, and it’s got to go to the DD this afternoon. Incidentally, the girls have started typing, so I hope you won’t have too many suggestions.’”

Basic Psychology for Intelligence Analysts, Studies in Intelligence (Winter 1971)

How do you spot a civil servant in a crowd? It’s normally quite difficult, especially if the civil servant is out of its element and traveling outside the capital.

Launch an ethnographic expedition into the heart of the civil servant’s breeding grounds, however, and specific badges, insignia and markings become quite evident. Like the feathers of a peacock - or the raised tail of a skunk - these details mark a civil servant as ripe for de-briefing and a presentation.

Now, this is a typically Canadian civil servant I’m describing, but I’m sure you’ll see shadows of your own colleagues in this description.

• a two year old Blackberry, extremely worn (managers)
• brand new Blackberry, never used (executives)
• hair, cut short sides and back
• pleather large Daytimer, with pocket calculator and notepad
• pleated 50/50 slacks with pursed pockets
• a cordura carrier bag, branded for a 1994 OECD policy conference
• generic black government notebook, with printout of Outlook daily calendar
• neck lanyard imprinted with an unintelligible departmental url
• on lanyard: departmental I.D. card, office phone list and transit pass
• wide collection of hotel pens
• book of taxi chits
• for the older civil servant, a lapel pin with multiple flags

When you run through a staffing exercise to hire a new media analyst, remember two things:

• monitor staff appropriately as they conduct the exercise;
• and teach proper email procedures.

Quite a large kerfuffle in Toronto about a completely insensitive email mistakenly sent to an applicant for a low-level media analyst position in the provincial government - an email where a contract employee referred to one applicant for the job as the “ghetto dude.” How did Evon Reid, the applicant, find out? The contract employee sent her comment to him instead of her colleague as intended. (Toronto Star, among many)

Not only does this incident reflect poorly on how the hiring process was managed, but it also highlights a shift in attitudes towards winning a job in the civil service.

Back in the old, old days, a civil service position was such a sinecure that applications (or should that be supplicants) approached each qualifying exam and screening interview with a sense of deference or fear. Hiring managers often believed that applicants “should be glad we’re even looking at them, this is such a golden opportunity” - and behaved that way during the hiring process.

Well, the world has changed. Many applicants have no fear in criticizing what they see as a flawed process. Clearly, Mr. Reid was entitled to bring the email to light and highlight the inherent insensitivity of the comment about him.

But other applicants feel no reticence in highlighting unprofessional behaviour in the hiring process. Like this commenter on the Torontoist blog, who applied for the same job as Mr. Reid:

“However, when i was interviewed i was absolutely dumbstruck by Ms. Siu’s lack of professionalism. The interview process was basically Ms. Siu and her colleague, who both seemed to be recent grads themselves, and their supervisor who seemed like d a legitimate government employee of several years. They made it clear that i would have to impress all three in order to get my second interview, and questions were shared equally between the three.

Anyway, the problems came when their supervisor had to leave half way during the interview, and Siu and her colleague began joking around. Hey, i love jokes, initially they were doing a great deal to put me at ease, as i’m generally very tense in an interview. But they just kept going with it to the point where Siu was pretending to collapse drunk on the table and all focus was taken off asking me questions and trying to find out if i was the right person for the job, which was why I was there. When the questions did return to me, at least one of the questions ask was an illegal on as set forth by the ministry of labor, or however if in charge of making such guidelines (see, very under qualified for the job.) The question asked was “How do you plan on getting to work each day?” which as innocent as it sounds, cannot be asked in an interview situation. Now, should not the Ontario Government be following the same rules as its given all other HR departments in the province?”

In the past, most civil services tried to recruit from the same informal network of candidates and applicants - people with similar educational, social and economic backgrounds.

Today, we have tried to cast our net wider, to expand the range of interests, expertise and experience recruited into the civil service.

And, thanks to online technologies, candidates and applicants can continue to share information, caution and criticism about the jobs (and the managers) on offer.

h/t to Accordion Guy

As more and more civil servants, government employees and politicians dip their toes in the rolling sea we like to call social media*, they are separating into three schools of behaviour:

• advocates for social media
• advocates for increased transparency in government
• advocates for advances in policy and programs

It’s that last group that can find themselves in real trouble. The first two are just blowing smoke and talking sweetness, in most citizen’s eyes.

Take the example of Owen Barder, currently the Director of the Global Development Effectiveness Department at the U.K. Department for International Development.

His personal blog is down after a right slagging in the Daily Mail. The Mail excerpted from his blog posts, concentrating in particular on an entry that apparently drew ties between Tony Blair, George Bush and Adolph Hitler. (commenters on LGNewMedia point out that his post was actually quoting from a piece published in the Guardian)

Now, Barder is not a neophyte to communications. He’s a senior official in the British government, and among previous positions was Director of Information, Communications and Knowledge at the same Department.

I haven’t been able to read his blog, so I won’t make any assumptions about its content or his judgment. Several commenters note that the Mail may have been motivated, in part, by Barder’s past work for Labour PM Tony Blair.

But civil servants have to be aware that their online musings may be exposed to much greater criticism than normally expected online. The freewheeling and bare chested mannerisms promoted by most pioneer bloggers are inconceivable for government bloggers: they will targeted for greater scrutiny and will be allowed less room for error.

Government blogs, podcasts, and other social media experiments will likely be researched to death for evidence of:

• political bias
• poor theoretical judgment
• poor political judgment
• selective use of information
• levity and lack of timbre befitting a civil servant
• lack of empathy for the common man

As Che Tibby points out, a “hot-heated morning with too much coffee can, and will, become a permanent record. If you’re a public servant who wants to blog, try to avoid typing anything at all around heated events in the political cycle.”

Most civil servants are used to tempering how they express their actual opinions when speaking in the pub, at conferences and around crazy Aunt Mae the libertarian. Maybe we need to remember that caution when working online.

At the very least, civil servants have to remember to provide context, clearly identify sources and ring fence their arguments. Oh - and remember the role civil servants always play in relation to their political leaders.

*(wow, really beat that metaphor to death, didn’t I?)

 Originally posted on Canuckflack.com on October 30, 2006.

[fade to studio] Hello. My name is Colin McKay. I’m an evangelist for government communications. You may remember me from such popular posts as Government Communications is interesting, dammit! and Government Communications doesn’t suck: I mean it. Thank you for taking time out of your busy day to spend a few minutes with us.

We’ll return to this afternoon’s movie, Office Space, in a moment.

There’s a lesson to be learned from the tale of Peter, Samir and Michael: wasting countless hours in a cubicle punching keys can be a mind-numbing and soul-destroying exercise. Unless you have an inspiring vision, that is.

Just like Brian, the waiter at Chotchkie’s. His personal vision was excellence: being the best damn lunchtime waiter at an industrial park franchise quick serve restaurant.

You have a vision. You have an interest in learning and personal enrichment. Either that, or you secretly harbour a dream that marketing and public relations blogs have hidden links to illegal mp3s and other naughty things.

The hidden advantage to a career as a communicator or marketer in the government is the opportunity for progression and growth. Think of the government as a network of agencies and consultancies, separated by areas of practice.

Each department, agency or commission is a stand-alone unit, but can draw upon the same shared pool of qualified employees. In effect, winning a competition (or job search) as a government communicator or marketer demonstrates that you’re equally qualified for similar jobs in other government organizations.

It’s like Omnicom or WPP, but with much more transparent hiring processes and far less reliance on personal relationships for career advancement.

Sure, there are obstacles like any large organization. Your career can grind to a halt because you jumped on the wrong coat-tails or found yourself at the wrong end of a re-organization.

The financial rewards aren’t as great: they likely plateau earlier than most high achievers’ salaries in the private sector.

Most other organziations, though, won’t let you jump from a multi-year career specializing in speechwriting to a position in social marketing; from intensive stakeholder relations to social marketing on health causes.

The key to such a flexible and rewarding career is curiousity: only with an active interest in professional growth and a willingness to experiment can you mold a career that’s challenging and rewarding.

That’s true for a career in any organization, but I happen to think the job market in government communications is fluid (or cannibalistic) enough to encourage movement and experimentation.

Now, back to the show. [Fade to Lawrence explaining the difference between Federal and Minimum Security Prison]