There are a couple of points that the survey throws up that illustrate some of the issues that we are facing here in New Zealand. Working on the assumption that there would not be too much difference between the views of the Canadians in the focus groups and their Kiwi counterparts (an assumption based on the fact that, reading the survey, the comments seem for the most part to be eminently sensible), there are some valuable insights to be gained.

Pace

The first point, and one that brings warmth to my cardigan wearing breast, is that there is no need to be bleeding edge with this stuff:

[G]overnment should proceed, if not cautiously, at least thoughtfully in the implementation of these technologies. Concretely, this involves preceding on a case-by-case basis when deciding which application to use and for what purpose. [...] the GC should not adopt Web 2.0 applications simply to look ‘cool’ or modern, but rather should adopt specific applications to address specific communications or service requirements. (My emphasis)

That means no gratuitous or ill-conceived attempts to deploy social media solutions for the sake of it. It also means that, from a planning point of view, these implementations are driven by business and communications objectives – not technology ones.

Supply

At the same time as framing the need for implementations that are part of a planned approach, participants in the focus groups did provide a strong mandate for government agencies to adopt social media.

There was a widespread perception that the GC must foster awareness of its use of these new applications among the population. This was a theme that recurred at various parts of the discussion, and was seen to be essential to their use.

This desire to see government introduce these tools was based on a number of reasons. Two that stood out for me, given one of the themes that I have been belaboring here, were inevitability:

[G]overnment cannot ignore these applications because they are more and more prevalent. [...]In short, there is a technological imperative at work, and one that will force the government to respond and/or adapt. (My emphasis)

and the opportunity to support more and richer engagement with our publics:

[A] recurring theme throughout the discussions was the perception that [Web 2.0] adoption represents an opportunity to transform the ‘face’ of the Government of Canada, to make it more approachable, less remote, and more responsive to Canadians. [...]Conversely, if it does not adopt these types of applications, the GC risks being seen as more out-of-touch than it is already perceived to be.

Audience

The risk that, in avoiding or being too slow to understand these tools, government’s can damage their reputations is a real one. The negative impact of this inability to adapt sufficiently nimbly to new technologies will manifest itself initially – and critically – with employees.

A related point and one of the most interesting observations is included as part of the final miscellaneous communications issues. The authors note that, of the sub group of participants classified as ‘Internet users,’ nearly all of them think that public servants should be able to use these tools as part of their work;

There was general agreement that public servants should be able to access these sites to understand how they work, as well as their potential strengths and weaknesses as communications vehicles if the government is considering using them.

If public servants can’t access these sites, can’t learn how social media work by observing how the public use them, then there is precious little chance of, when they need to be able to deploy one of these tools, of them getting it right.

Conclusion

If this paper is any guide, the second phase of the project, the quantitative survey, promises to yield a rich array of insights about citizens’ expectations of governments use of social media.

What would be really interesting, however, would be some data on views about how these tools might be implemented inside government, because that is where, for me, the real value for much of this lies.

Without the people and knowledge management practices that can be achieved through the smart use of social media, governments will struggle to attract and retain the type of public servants that could use these tools to effectively engage with citizens. The question is: how long will it take us to reach that point. And, more tellingly, where will everyone else be by the time we get there?

Photo: victoriapeckham

This has been motivated partly by the belief that we won’t be able to effectively adapt to the changing external environment without articulating a sound business case to senior managers – in a language that they relate to and respect. The second consideration has been the desire to promote the communications function as a strategic, rather than tactical or reactive, one.

Late last year the Arthur W. Page society issued a report on the evolution of corporate communications, The Authentic Enterprise [PDF 421 KB], that zeroes in on exactly these issues. And while it is written for the private sector, it has any number of valuable insights for public sector communicators.

The report is divided into two parts. The first looks at the changing environment for corporate communications, citing three factors as being central to the challenges for businesses:

• the emergence of a new digital information commons;
• the reality of a global economy; and
• the appearance and empowerment of myriad new stakeholders.
  The Authentic Enterprise, p.6

The second part of the report looks at the evolving profession. In order to succeed and thrive in this new environment, the authors suggest that the communications practitioner will need to develop not only new skills, but a new approach to the role. Including the advice that:

We must shift from changing perceptions to changing realities. In a world of radical transparency, 21^st century communications functions must lead in shaping behavior – inside and out – to make the company’s values a reality. (p.16)

Their point about shaping behaviour is a signal one. How do we, as communicators, shape those desired behaviours? I would argue that it is through a change process. Clearly articulating the future state (as well as, in the language of the report, the enduring values that will power the transformation), engaging with our publics through the change to monitor and evaluate progress and to fine-tune tactics, and continuing to cultivate support in the wider authorizing environment for the change.

In this scenario, what quickly becomes apparent is that in order for us to manage the change while still effectively discharging our accountabilites, we must have engaged and empowered staff. They are the most critical of all our publics.

This is borne out in the second part of the report where 31 CEOs were surveyed about their perceptions and expectations of communications chiefs. Emerging strongly from this section is the view that internal communications are now regarded by the CEO as, if not more important than, at least on par with external communications.

The weight of the job between external and internal communications has shifted. And I think internal communications is just more important than it ever used to be. (p. 42)

Before, PR was mostly generating stories, but today a big part of the job is enlisting your own employees and associates to buy into and help drive the strategy of the company. (p. 47, my emphasis)

In the public sector, this translates to driving employee engagement and communicating the values of the Code of Conduct. It also reinforces the notion that, in terms of introducing social media into out communications planning, we should be implementing it for internal audiences first.

In fact, this view gives rise to the best quote in the paper, one that senior public sector managers should cut out and paste on to their office walls:

It is in the corporation’s best interests to empower more and more of its workforce with new collaborative tools, training, know-how – and trust – so they can responsibly and strategically interact with the external world. (p. 29)

If you don’t trust your staff to act responsibly, you will quickly find yourself with a disengaged workforce and, as a result, fundamentally incapable of responding to the challenges that the authors identify in the report.

This is a valuable report for anyone interested in understanding how we might conceive a strategic approach to the changes in the operating environment of the public management system. For public sector communicators, however, I would rate it as essential reading.

Photo: krystal.pritchett

Thompson wants to examine the view that the relationship between the media and the public sphere is damaged and that this is contributing to declining levels of trust in public institutions. He does this, perversely but perhaps understandably, by looking at a public media institution, the BBC.

Quoting Tony Blair, Thompson wonders whether the British media’s ferocity is a contributing factor:

It is not enough for someone to make an error. It has to be venal. Conspiratorial.
Blair’s speech to Reuters

I am sure few public sector communicators were surprised by these comments. We all have our moments with the media. As we should. Democracy thrives on scrutiny. I wouldn’t want to live and work in a society where the media didn’t –or couldn’t– look critically at the government. As Thompson says:

One of the tasks of a free press is to uncover public malfeasance. The media is right to be alert to it and to pursue and investigate any evidence that it is taking place.

He is also right when he notes later that it is under this sort of intense scrutiny that a politician (and it applies equally to institutions) is in the best position to build trust and confidence in their performance:

[...] it’s in the big and sometimes tough interviews that you really build credibility and public confidence.

Quality

However, the underlying assumption here is the quality of the journalism. And this is the issue that, for me, seems to be central to any understanding of the role of the media in the trust people have in their public institutions.

Firstly, rigorous scrutiny should always be part of an open and objective inquiry. Shrinking media ownership (and newsrooms) has meant, to this avid news consumer, a move away from studied, investigative and local stories to the production of content that is more readily syndicatable to the other parts of the media franchise. What translates in all markets? Scandal, crime and, occassionally, human interest pieces with quirky angles.

Thompson is right about the tough interviews building credibility, but how often do we actually see those sorts of exchanges? Perhaps the British media are chock full of that sort of content but in the antipodes it is a much rarer occurrence. When he talks about the BBC’s commitment to make more space for ideas about policy and policy choices just reinforces the dearth of that sort of programming here.

Influence

Secondly, trust in public institutions, and indeed in the mainstream media, is now not just dependent upon the same. The democratization of the means of publishing content has seen a flourishing of commentary and critique (much of it well informed) about the way the news is reported, packaged and delivered to us. In fact, many people now trust blogs more than conventional media as a reliable source of information.

With the increasing accessibility of alternative commentary and criticism, people are becoming more literate readers/interpreters of news and what Thompson disingenuously disparages as scepticism (the ET argument is truly specious), for me, epitomizes this profound shift away from reliance upon a single, authoritative ‘medium of record.’

Trust

How does this affect trust in public institutions? As I noted above, the media are critical to a healthy democracy; it does not follow, however, that they are necessarily the dominant part of the trust equation. This is a function of a more complex relationship with our publics, one that is primarily the result of direct experience. As I said last year, trust is:

the fundamental social and political legitimacy that we have to keep earning every day.
Online reputation management

Part of that process is media relations. A small part. Most of the work is in successfully dealing with the multitude of engagement opportunities that your organization has every day, online and off.

Closing thoughts

At 18 pages (I had to print it out, there is no way I can read 6,000 words on screen), and given he is a broadcaster, you would hope that it would be written for the ear not the eye. Alas, no. There are no concessions for the ear, nor use of rhetoric; no repetition or stories, indeed nothing as fundamental as a key message. It is both abstract and prolix. Don’t ever write a speech like this; nothing will diminish trust in government more than subjecting an audience to this sort of ordeal.

There is one other egregious error. Thompson posts the transcript to the blog with this introduction:

The full text of my speech is below and I’d be interested to know what you think about it.

That may be so, but despite 34 people (as of this post going up) sharing their thoughts, Thompson himself is absent from the conversation. If you are trying to build trust, then perhaps it might be worth your while engaging with the audience whose thoughts you are professing an interest in hearing.

Photo: SeenyaRita

What I found interesting about his first post (he has posted two more on the topic with the fourth to come) Reputation: where the personal and the participatory meet up was that the discussion (so far) is limited to individuals; the implications of what online reputations mean for organizations doesn’t feature. So I thought I might explore some of those implications, particularly as they relate to government agencies.

Before I get to the 3-step approach to a reputation management, it might be worth pausing to consider what exactly we mean by an agency reputation. I’m not sure that I necessarily agree with the definition Andy derives from the symposium, at least not in a public sector context:

reputation can be seen as a market in which people invest in reputation, store it, exchange it, and expend it as necessary for other goods.

My take on it is that reputation is a product of the degree of trust that your publics have in your agency. It is not an end in itself — and it is certainly not something that we are in a position to trade. Public sector agencies have public monies and public authority ceded to them by the citizens of the state. The extent to which we effectively manage that money and authority determines the level of trust that the citizens have in their public institutions; reputation is one expression of that degree of trust.

Other expressions of trust may be, for example, the willingness to comply with taxation policies, to engage in public consultations or elections or to participate in the census. None of which, in a functioning democracy, you would want to see compromised…

The 3 Steps

A public sector communicator’s job consists in part as being the curator of their agency’s trust. While their fellow managers have responsibility for the effective discharge of the public’s money and authority, the communicator is responsible for ensuring that this is transparent to that authorizing public.

Within this framework, what then can a public sector communicator do to effectively manage their agency’s online reputation?

Online/offline

Any consideration of an agency’s online reputation must first acknowledge that, no matter how much work you do in cyberspace, most of the transactions that impact upon your reputation will still take place offline. For that reason, you might want to focus your attentions on your internal communications. If you can engage your staff and have them embrace the vision of your agency (and the values of the public service), then you have a solid foundation on which to build your management strategy.

Online, all the time

Your online presence is, for all intents and purposes, ubiquitous. No matter how many people you have in the field, at the counter or behind the wheel, the simple fact of the matter is that your web sites are available 24/7 to anyone, anywhere. Or they should be.

And, as more and more people use their phones and other portable devices to access the Internet, the smart money would be on those agencies that make a strategic investment in exceeding these customers’ expectations.

Not busy, engaged

Social media offer real opportunities, if deployed intelligently, for an agency to engage with it’s publics in ways that are both convenient, transparent and, increasingly, expected by younger citizens who are only just forming their own impressions of what it is like to deal with government agencies.

Conclusion

Ultimately, any and all of these tactics are only ever going to assist you to manage the outputs of your online reputation, not the outcomes. These are contingent upon the nature of the many and complex interactions that your publics have with your agency. However, while you can’t control the outcomes, you are obliged to do your best to manage those elements within your control.

Trust in government is an indicator of a lot more than reputation. It is not just a measure of credibility or a record of successful transactions (the TradeMe model) but is the fundamental social and political legitimacy that we have to keep earning every day.

Photo: sonicbloom

It strikes me as being analogous to saying to someone who approaches you for advice about a specific topic you advertise your expertise in, yeah, I can provide you with advice; but you can’t rely on what I tell you.

Obviously, this sort of stance is even more problematic when you consider that people who approach government agencies for advice don’t –as a rule (of law)– have any other options. If, for example, they need definitive advice about licensing a motor vehicle they have to go to LTNZ.

It is for this reason I argued that the fourth principle for public sector social media should be trust:

do not disclaim the content on the blog/wiki/podcast etc. If you are engaging your publics through these media they should be able to expect a straightforward exchange of ideas and information. If your Legal team intend on vetting every post, the venture is doomed.

Of course, the default position for government websites is to disclaim everything on their sites, often to a point that strains both credulity and, in this one case that I feel compelled to share, logic:

Nothing contained on this website is, nor should be relied on as, a promise or representation about past or future events.

This, to my mind, is so nonsensical it borders on being a zen koan. Let’s pause to think about this for a minute. Nothing on this website is, or can be relied upon as, a formal statement of the facts about past events (paraphrasing from the OED). This presumably includes the advice and the policy that is, mysteriously, published on the site in spite of it’s apparent lack of relation to reality…

The point that I am belabouring here is that, if you are launching a social media project, you would be well advised to avoid this sort of pseudo-prophylaxis. In any event, and I haven’t taken legal advice on this but the comments are open, I doubt whether the standard disclaimers you see on blogs would protect you from the law. What they will protect you from is the sort of trust with your publics that leads to engaged communication.

What you should be disclaiming is the comments or edits contributed by those publics, as they are not the intellectual property of your agency. But for all the other content, if you publish it then own it.

There are two reasons for this. One, it means that visitors to your site will be reassured that the content in the government namespace is authoritative and that your agency stands behind it. That builds trust in government.

The second reason is that the staff who are contributing content to your agency blog/wiki/podcast etc., will be a little more cautious about what they post if it is considered to be definitive. And, in terms of your online reputation management strategy, that is no bad thing.

Photo: prozaciswack.