I’m not saying this is my experience, or my world, but I thought I’d share it with you:

“… The Minister took speeches seriously. He saw them as occasions to demonstrate his erudition by impressing audiences with quotations, statistics and flowery language. He had no sense of occasion: every speech, no matter how informal or mundane the occasion, had to be written not for the moment but for posterity.

All this made Beth’s job a living nightmare. Not only did she have to co-ordinate the speechwriting process so that it met the Minister’s exacting standards, she had to do it in time for both translation into the second official language and for distribution to the breathless media, most of whom she knew would glance at the title and relegate the document to either the blue circular file or to the back pages of the Saturday edition…” (Ottawa Citizen)

That’s from this week’s entry in the the E.X. Files - a weekly column that putatively speaks from the voice of a jaded and frustrated executive in the Canadian public service.

This week, the column focuses on the art of preparing speeches for government ministers.

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

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.

but we’ve pulled together a blog for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. It’s en francais as well.

Joe and others have asked for details, like why the identities of the authors aren’t more clearcut. I’m trying. My name is at the bottom of the Welcome page, and my name shows up on the posts in the RSS.

To be fair, we’re making this blog a true team effort. Two of the posts have been written by members of my Public Education and Communications team.

We’re really excited about the developments in our shop - the blog is just one step in our efforts to expand our outreach and public education efforts.

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.

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

We’re public policy experts, right? We’re communications specialists, right? So why can’t we pull together a simple web advocacy app like:

Does what happens in the Facebook stay in the Facebook?

Technorati Tags: privacy, Facebook, copyright, information protection

What’s the performance of call-to-action SMS text messages? We can draw some examples from a campaign launched by the John Edwards for President campaign.

Amy Rubin, the campaign’s Deputy Director for New Media, spoke to techPresident about the results and their observations.

• people who responded to SMS option to “call” a recorded message from John Edwards “… is comparable to our average open rate on national emails and almost twice as much as our average click-thru rate.”
• the number of people who opted to continue on to an operator after listening to the message from John Edwards “…was also slightly higher than our national email click-thru rate.”
• nearly all of the people who listened to the recorded message “… listened to the entire message” - even though it was a little long.
• the unsubscribe rate was higher than normal, “… but not by a significant amount and certainly not high enough to suggest that people consider this spam.”

To close, an observation:

“…This is very promising. The message was probably longer than many would have advised but it shows us that people who want to listen, will listen to the whole thing. As opposed to email, where many people may think they want to read it – because of the subject line – but then quickly realize that they should have just hit delete.

… it may also speak to the fact that people understand that they can always go back and look at an old email anytime but listening to a message from the campaign has more of a one-time chance uniqueness to it - if they hang-up they are not sure how to get back.

… the vast majority of people who connected to our phone banks expressed something you rarely hear when being asked for money – excitement. They were psyched about hearing the message and wanted to tell our volunteers how cool it was to have their phone ring with a call from John Edwards.”

h/t to e.politics

From Jeremy, a hint of the backroom preparation in government communications units that anticipates a Cabinet shuffle. And the ensuing waiting game.

I have to think that the change-over in Parliamentary governments is a greater challenge for comms shops. In Federal systems, there is usually some process of appointment and confirmation. A process that institutionalizes a time lag and time for fevered work.

In our wonderful Parliamentary system, the Prime Minister can reshuffle half the Cabinet over lunch and expect fully revamped Departmental web sites by dinner time.

On another note - wow - I forgot how much I liked Swing Out Sister’s Waiting Game.

From a piece by Christopher Hayes in The Nation:

“… the sublime value of bureaucracy. Not only is governance of any kind impossible without it; so too are the checks and balances of a constitutional republic. Red tape is what binds those in power to the mast of the law, what stands in the way of government by whim. That’s why an Administration hostile to any checks and balances has sought to reconstitute the federal civil service as just another lever in its machine.

… Like teachers at a high school who watch classes of students come and go, the bureaucrats remain while the administrations change. When the current occupant of the White House leaves, his appointed hacks will leave with him, and whether or not someone actually committed to governing takes his place, the bureaucrats will be there, as always, to do their duty. (The Nation)”

There’s some comment on this piece over on Matthew Yglesias’ blog at The Atlantic.
h/t to the Fedblog