How do you balance the need to have a common set of messages and priorities across government - with the urge that frequently overwhelms scientists and researchers to speak frankly about their work and its implications?

From a manager’s point of view, you could lean towards imposing discipline in messaging and some limited form of central review and approval.

But then you’d be getting the same reactions facing managers in a Canadian government department:

“…Until now, Environment Canada has been one of the most open and accessible departments in the federal government, which the executive committee says is a problem that needs to be remedied.

…  The reality, say insiders, is the policy is blocking communication and infuriating scientists. Researchers have been told to refer all media queries to the government. The media office then asks reporters to submit their questions in writing. Sources say researchers are then asked to respond in writing to the media office, which then sends the answers to senior management for approval. If a researcher is eventually cleared to do an interview, he or she is instructed to stick to the ‘approved lines.’

…”They can’t even now comment on why a storm hit the area without going through head office,” says {University of Victoria climatologist] Mr. Weaver, whose been fielding calls from frustrated media organizations who can no longer get through to federal expert scientists who once spoke freely about their fields of work, be it atmospheric winds affecting airliners or disease outbreaks at bird colonies.” (Ottawa Citizen)

A hopeful, but pragmatic, hope for increased experimentation in outreach and consultation by government institutions in the recent Democracy Journal:

“…By being explicitly experimental with new forms of digital institution-building, we have an opportunity to increase the legitimacy of governmental decisions. The tools–increasingly cheap, sometimes free–will not replace the professionals. Technology will not, by itself, make complex regulatory problems any more tractable, or eliminate partisan disputes about values. What this next generation of civic software can do, however, is introduce better information by enabling the expert public to contribute targeted information. In doing so, it can make possible practices of governance that are, at once, more expert and more democratic…”

I’ve a wholly uninformed opinion about the consultation process here in Ottawa - which frequently depends upon publication in the Canada Gazette and distribution to a specialized but limited group of experts and interested parties.

How do you widen the participation in a consultative process while ensuring a level of informed debate and positive contribution?

After all, the real hurdle to comprehensive and open consultation is the effort it demands from the responsible parties in government: a policy analyst has to open, read, and render a judgment on all the contributions.

I’ve mentioned James Watson’s new book, Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science, elsewhere, but I thought this passage would appeal to public sector types:

“… Watson notes that many intellectual conflicts in science play themselves out as contests over the control of physical space. Salaries are important, but space is even more important, since it’s a publicly visible sign of your standing and power: “Always buy adjacent property that comes up for sale”; “Be prepared to resign over inadequate space”; “In the Darwinian world of an academic department, if you don’t create such crises, limited resources will surely go to gutsier colleagues.” (Harvard Magazine)

I’m not sure if the battle for space is really the fiercest in the bureaucratic jungle:  budget cuts, tax cuts and increasing emphasis on management efficiency have moved a lot of the hard work to the accountant’s shanty.

Still,  everyone reporting to a supervisor will tell you that space and appearances matter to some executives.

Do you want an informative hour long discussion on the details of launching a government blog? Joe Thornley of ProPr and ThornleyFallis was kind enough to record the Third Tuesday session last month, where I was the A in a lengthy Q &A session on the steps and strategy needed to launch a social media campaign for a government organization. Ian Ketcheson was the moderator that led me down the garden path.

I find you always sound more important if someone else filters your words and extracts the soundbites, as Joe did:

“I’d been spending four years slamming my head against a wall bringing up social media and building some sort of conversation within a much larger department. And I think everyone who’s worked in a bureaucracy realizes at some point or another that there are institutional barriers to social media - fairly strong ones. But what I realized coming into a smaller organization like the Privacy Commissioner … if you enter an organization that has at least one or two people who recognize the benefits of social media, if you build a strong business case … something that drives along a business case model that identifies risk and how you will mitigate risk, you can convince … people to try something new…”

If you every had an urge to hear my voice, Joe has also posted an mp3  of a substantial part of the discussion.

Sometimes, there are advantages to being an independent authority. Take, for example, how the London Underground handled the firing of their popular announcer, Emma Clarke. (She’s the one who recorded the announcements for the stops):

“London Underground is sorry to have to announce that further contracts for Ms. Clarke are experiencing severe delays,” a spokesman said.

There seem to be several different reasons for her firing - one of which was the mock in-train announcements available on her personal site:

“Passengers filling in answers on their Sudokus, please accept they are just crosswords for the unimaginative and are not in any way more impressive just because they contain numbers.”

Of course, the interview she gave to This is London may not have helped:

“The thought of being stuck in the Tube with strangers for minutes on end and having to listen to endless repeated messages of my own voice fills me with horror.”

Here’s the new strategy for communications undertaken by the European Union: a shared agenda and framework, but with an extremely local focus. The innovation? Looks like the EU may pony up the funds to underwrite some of this activity.

For too long we have blamed one another for the EU’s communication failures. It is time to work together on a shared agenda based on agreed priorities.
Cooperation and coherent communication is the way forward. Moreover, we need an agreed framework within which to cooperate. What we proposed in our recent paper is an inter-institutional agreement under which much of the communication work done by the commission, council and parliament would be based on a common annual work plan, reflecting a common set of communication priorities and linked to the annual policy strategy the three institutions have agreed on.
The commission has also proposed to establish management partnerships with individual member states. To put it simply, this means that individual governments – if they so wish – will implement specific communication plans that have been agreed with the commission and are financed by the commission. The action taken under these plans should be as decentralized as possible – with the emphasis on going local.

That’s an excerpt from an article penned by Margot Wallström, the EU Commissioner responsible for communications, in Parliament Magazine.

This week, in Ottawa’s Hill Times, we can find a discussion of the centralized message control for Cabinet Ministers, Parliamentary Secretaries and Members of Parliament in Ottawa.

“Reporters who work hard and want to find a minister? Hang out by their car for an afternoon. You’ll get an interview,” the reporter said, adding that he has a database in his BlackBerry that identifies ministers by their licence plates. “It’s my secret sauce.”  (PMO Clears Media Requests, Hill Times)

Another observation, confirmed by a number of off-the-record quotes and not-for-attribution comments, is that the strategy is not media-phobic, but simply centred on media outside Ottawa.

Wow. Sucks to the press attache to the French Embassy in Washington.

Chris Anderson just outed Amaury Laporte, as well as dozens of other people, for spamming his inbox.

“All of them have sent me something inappropriate at some point in the past 30 days. Many of them sent press releases; others just added me to a distribution list without asking.”

As a result, he’s blocked their addresses.

The comments to the post are valuable for their discussion of how public relations pros (or amateurs) handle their mail lists.

Another international organization is hitting the beaches of Second Life. On October 26, the World Bank is releasing the latest report from the Doing Business group:

“…“Second Life, as a global community with residents from more than 100 countries, is an ideal venue to host a virtual launch of a report that compares how easy it is for people to start and operate a business in 178 economies,” Dahlia Khalifa said.

Second Life is on the frontier of collaboration and technology. It brings people from around the world together by removing boundaries,” she added. …(news release)

It’s a noble effort and an example that the World Bank and its’ partners are looking for new ways to communicate their ideas - but Second Life has not proven its worth as a communication tool.

Earlier this year, Eric Kintz at HP argued why he still needed convincing about Second Life. Bandwidth and computing power were among the factors he identified for his reluctance to jump on the bandwagon, so to speak.

Those are very big issues for most government departments. Even OECD members have to evaluate the capacity of their network to deliver content over a service like Second Life - but also their network’s capacity to deliver that content back to their own employees.

I suspect that many organizations with outposts in Second Life (like Sweden) have set up separate networks and better equipment for their in-world representatives.

More on the event:

“…The event will be an open forum where policy makers and the public from around the world, including Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, can ask questions, challenge the findings, and contribute to a global business dialogue aimed at stimulating reforms that improve the business environment, and ultimately create more business startups, job opportunities, and economic growth.

Digital copies of the report’s overview, as well as World Bank–IFC virtual apparel and products, will be available to Second Life residents who attend the event.”

How are the clients of the World Bank - many of them living in remote corners of the internet - supposed to sign on for this report launch?

XP from Canuckflack

Technorati Tags: Second Life, World Bank, Doing Business, third world, international organizations, multilateral

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