The Information Commissioner of Canada, Robert Marleau, provided his own personal reaction to a blog posting by Paul Wells, a columnist and blogger for Macleans magazine.

Commissioner Marleau followed up on his comments during a longer discussion with Wells, which Wells blogged this weekend.

The Information Commissioner, like my boss, is an independent Agent of the Parliament of Canada.

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!

If you remember the faux news conference held by FEMA on October 23, then you’ll be interested in the interview posted by Kami Huyse. She’s interviewed Pat Philbin, the former Director of External Relations for the agency.

Kami makes the point that Philbin, although villified for the Agency’s decision to fill their media theatre with staffers wielding questions, was not in Washington at the time.

The interview is also available as a For Immediate Release one-off.

Remember the faux news conference put on by FEMA last month to brief about the response to the California wildfires? The “internal investigation” is complete, and some people have fallen under the bus.

Apparently, some poor decisions were taken in deciding to hold a news conference at short notice, then, when reporters could not make it in time, have agency communications staff substitute for reporters by lobbing questions at the Deputy Administrator.

“Much like in an airline crash or automobile accident that was reconstructed, there were several different points leading up to the press conference where, had a single decision been made differently, the event itself could have been averted,” [DHS spokesperson Russ] Knocke said Thursday (AP, via TPM)

FEMA’s press secretary at the time now works for a public relations agency in Utah (For those of you keeping track at home, that Washington to Utah in two weeks). The Director of Communications had been scheduled to take up a new job with Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Needless to say, that job fell through.

There’s a couple of hints in the AP story that the FEMA staffers fell victim, in part, to a predetermined PR strategy and poor communications between the press shops at FEMA and DHS:

• DHS had asked the agency to hold a press conference before the DHS Secretary and the FEMA Administrator landed in California that day; and
• FEMA’s press secretary had sent an email to his boss and the DHS official responsible for communications, asking for more time - but only 43 minutes before the scheduled start of the news conference.

There’s a swipe at the civil servants involved in the Washington Post coverage:

“[FEMA Administrator] Paulison said he did not expect additional disciplinary action but would reorganize and retrain the agency’s 90-member external affairs staff.

“Those are career people. They should have stepped up and said something, they really should have. But their bosses said ‘Do this,’ and they did it — some reluctantly, but there’s no excuses for that,” Paulison said. He called the impact on FEMA’s credibility “devastating.”

Really? Is that sort of independent action possible when the upper ranks of the administration are staffed by partisan appointees?

I’d be really interested to know.

Technorati Tags: FEMA, puppet theatre, DHS

It’s at an international conference that your skills as a high master of government communications are tested.

Your policy and program colleagues have spent months developing a comprehensive agenda. They have convinced experts from around the country and around the world to attend - and to speak.

And they look to you for the entire gamut of communications skills:

Oh, and some communications plan that will tie everything together and wrap it with a pretty bow.

If you’re lucky, your organization has hired some very experienced conference planners to drive the process and make sure every detail of the event proceeds smoothly and as planned.

It’s still up to you and your communications staff to hit the bricks, so to speak. Pick apart the conference agenda, find the topics, the nuggets and the speakers who are at all interesting to the general public. And sell the bejesus out of them.

It’s an exercise in identifying your spheres of influence:

• people who normally cover your organization and your topic
• people who have covered your topic in the past
• people who have written about subjects related to your topic
• people who have interviewed the speakers invited to your conference
• people who have reported on the topics covered by your speakers
• reporters in the town where you’re hosting your conference
• assignment editors in other towns who will make reporters in the town where you’re hosting your conference actually come to your conference.

In our case, we managed to have an issue to lead into our conference. And it was an issue that drew attention.

Luckily, we brought most of our communications team to town in preparation. And I needed help from each and every one of them. Still, I’ve spent the entire day on the phone with reporters. As have four other, expert, spokespersons.

It shakes the bones of a staid government communicator, I’ll tell you. Sometimes we get used to events and schedules unfolding as expected - and as routinely and quietly as possible. It suits a government employee.

But all it takes is one day - just one day - where your skills as manager, strategist and media relations expert are challenged to remind you how most government communicators leave a lot on the table every day.

Really. We all arrive at work vowing to produce our best work and provide our clients with the best counsel possible. But how often do we arrive at work thinking “I want this file to explode - but in a good way.”

And the conference doesn’t really start until tomorrow. Stay tuned.

This week, I’ve had some opportunity to experiment with blogger relations in reaction to a fast-moving story. How do government spokespeople and representatives “engage” with bloggers, especially if your online conversation begins to outstrip your internal policy development process?

That’s the basic problem: program and policy decisions are rarely made quickly, especially in a government organization with responsibility to administrators and politicians.

There’s been some discussion lately of a blogger outreach code of ethics - particularly at Ogilvy. What would a blogger outreach code for government look like?

First, a caveat. Blogger outreach, in many cases, has involved a freebie of some sort. Unless you work in a tourism promotion program, you probably don’t have freebies.

Instead, blogger and social media outreach in a civil service context revolves largely around ideas, issues and public affairs.

With that in mind, I suggest some social media outreach maxims for civil servants:

• Know your strategy - your strategy for policy development as well as communications. Your contact and discussion with bloggers and social media must fit into your overall strategy for outreach, consultation and legislative action.
• Build a detailed outreach list. Make sure you’re speaking to influencers and bloggers well-versed in your issues and concerns.
• What does it take to win? Agree on your organization’s goals for your outreach.
• Explain how your outreach program can go wrong. Map out for others how a comment stream can go negative.
• Be thoroughly aware of the “state of play” in your issue or program. What are you trying to say? What are the limits to what you can say?
• What is the logical next step? Be ready to continue the conversation or debate.
• Be straightforward about your limitations. Don’t just drop a conversation or comment thread - explain your reasons for disengaging and identify how your organization may pursue the subject in other ways.
• ALWAYS be clear about your identity and level of authority. Communications staff shouldn’t wade knee deep into a technical conversation.
• Link and Point - don’t just restrict the conversation to your own knowledge. Point to other sources of information and commentary, especially if its buried deep inside the site map of your own organization, partners or international organizations.

Any thoughts?

UPDATE: Kaye points out in her response (linked in the comments) that quite good codes already exist, including that developed by WOMMA. I still feel that some work needs to be done to help bridge between the existing and traditional policy development process and the new world of social networks, honest conversation and frank discussion.

Technorati Tags: blogger outreach code, blogger outreach, government communications, social media code

I can understand why some government agencies feel they need to centralize control of “messaging” - particularly if the agency is responsible for wide-ranging issues or fundamental policies, like economic development, unemployment insurance, or fiscal policy.

But a policy of centralization tends to backfire when applied to an organization made up of scientists and researchers. Any attempt to truly restrict communication, whether by limiting the number of spokespeople on  truly technical matters or by boiling messaging down until only a wisp of information remains, will inevitably result in dis-satisfaction among the technical corps.

It’s also reflective of a poor understanding of the way scientists and researchers work. They may spend a lot of time in the lab or at a research station, but they also depend upon a web of publications, seminars, academic conferences and professional consultation to further their work and their careers. Increasingly, universities, businesses and governments are funding multi-disciplinary research projects. By their very nature, these projects encourage cooperation and information sharing.

Communicators earn their bread and butter by working with technically-minded folk to identify the innovative or ground-breaking nature of their work, then develop a theme or storyline appealing to the public and the media. Often, the scientists and researchers have done most of this work.

Which makes the centralization effort by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration unusual. Apparently, the NHTSA Administrator is the principal spokesperson for the agency.

“…I found this out recently when I asked to talk to an N.H.T.S.A. researcher about some technical safety issues in which he had a great deal of expertise. Agency officials told me I could talk to the expert on a background basis, but if I wanted to use any information or quotes from him, that would have to be worked out later with a N.H.T.S.A. official.”

“…Ms. Nason [the Administrator] felt it was necessary for N.H.T.S.A. to have a “central spokesperson” and “we were finding a lot of stuff did not need to be on the record,” David Kelly, her chief of staff, told me. He also insisted, after our telephone conversation, that he did not want to be quoted and had intended to speak only on background. (My notes show no such request.)” (NYTimes Wheels blog) 

This sort of policy doesn’t encourage fealty and silence. Just the opposite: scientists and researchers still have to do their work. They just stop telling communications staff and headquarters officials what they’re doing. Want evidence? Try this comment posted in response to the blog post cited above:

“… I’m a mid-level (non-management) lifer at a government agency that sometimes makes the news. I have talked to reporters before and will continue to do so. When I do so I inform my boss and the public affairs people after the fact. (They’re friends, and they deserve not to be blindsided.) I get a good paycheck and in return surrender 40+ hours of my time each week, but they can’t buy my silence … — Posted by Bureaucrat”

Google’s about to add a comment feature to Google news - but with a twist. Only people directly involved with the story, like those quoted in it, can submit a comment to be moderated by the Google News staff.

We’ll be trying out a mechanism for publishing comments from a special subset of readers: those people or organizations who were actual participants in the story in question. Our long-term vision is that any participant will be able to send in their comments, and we’ll show them next to the articles about the story. Comments will be published in full, without any edits, but marked as “comments” so readers know it’s the individual’s perspective, rather than part of a journalist’s report. (Google News Blog)

I’m also interested in this part of the FAQ on the new comments policy:

“However, we’ll try to be in touch with you and possibly include your comments in future stories that mention you. “

Future stories? You mean a pre-emptive attack?

This is another avenue for spokespersons, technical experts and plain old communications folk to consider when evaluating their coverage. Why not respond to how your interview, fact sheet or news release were interpreted in the article?

British researchers, working in conjunction with an Ottawa government lab, discovered a rock with the composition sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide - which is the imaginary chemical formula for kryptonite. That’s right - the rock that could defeat Superman.

It was, as one Ottawa communicator called it, “a science writer’s dream.” The Citizen tells us why the trans-Atlantic partnership failed in its attempts to cross-promote the discovery. It’s all in an article called Even with kryptonite, scientists can’t smite red tape.

After nearly six years, I’m back to being an official spokesperson. And I like it. The back room’s a fine place to work, but I also like speaking to researchers, reporters, clients and Canadians in general.

There’s a sense of personal accountability and professional pride that comes with actually explaining and debating your organization’s programs and policies.

In some fashion, the change in jobs has prompted an adrenaline rush, like Hunter S. Thompson’s jackrabbits.

Oh - and there’s the google juice too. Your personal and professional profile benefits from the online media coverage. - unless you really screw up.

That’s one thing that’s changed since we were partying like it was 1999.

Technorati Tags: spokesperson, online media relations