Round-Up: September 29

News

Last Friday an article ran nationally in Sun Media publications that drew more attention to the youtube video culture en peril.

The Globe and Mail reported that Public Service Staffing Tribunal is hearing testimony that the career paths of visible minorities working for the Immigration and Refuge Board are being blocked by systemtatic discrimination.

The Hill Times reports that the "Fallout of Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz leak will strain relations between ministers and senior public servants" (sadly, a subscription is still required).

Blogs

Peter Smith shed's some light on why people visit official GoC websites.

CPSRENEWAL.CA Weekly: In (Very) Brief: Public Service Branding in the Age of Social Media

[Disclaimer Note of frustration: For the record, I would just like to say that I have struggled to write this column hopefully the delivery doesn't dull the message.]

[h/t for the slidehare presentation below to Mike Kujawski]

What The F**K is Social Media?

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: socialmediamarketing marketing)

Ok so if you haven’t checked the deck yet, do it now. I refer back to it sometimes so it helps if you are familiar with it. Overall, the (excellent) presentation makes me wonder about how the government communicates with both its prospective and current employees.

An Awesome Hypothetical

Let's imagine for a second that the barcamp folks got together again, but for a different purpose. Say we were brought in to pitch to the central agencies (PCO, TB and Finance) about the vast potential for the use of social media in government. Let's further imagine that for some reason the central agencies decided to let us roll with it - specifically to address recruitment and retention issues. The central agencies ask us if we mind if the key players from the PSC, CPSA and the CSPS (and whoever else you can think of as relevant) join us. We enthusiastically welcome them – a bigger audience!

All of a sudden all the players are in the room and the barcampers have been given a safe space to be creative (une carte blanche) and walk people through how we can leverage social media to bolster the GoC’s recruitment and retention.

It’s like every social media guru / agent of change’s wet dream.

But what the hell would we do?

Given, we would all have some pretty cool ideas about what technologies to deploy (slide 4), the justification for deploying them (slides 5-46), and of course how to deploy them (slides 48-69).

In short the barcampers would provide the ‘what (technologies) to’, the ‘why to’, and the ‘how to’, but what about the ‘what (message) to’?

What is the Message?

What is the message that the GoC wants to deliver to its potential and existing hires? We have been poking around this issue recently on this blog while Etienne discussed it a while back when he blogged, Why Work for the Public Service?

Given, this blog and its authors are not officially cogs in the GoC’s message machine – neither are you. In fact, many of us are so far removed from that entire process that we may well be overlooking some very good work out there. This isn’t meant to be critical of existing mechanisms, but if there was a great piece of branding out there for the public service it would have likely been picked up by now and fed into the social media machine(s) … even if it was something simple and static. Given the familiarity and pervasiveness of social media, users would have mashed it, blogged it, podcasted it, dugg it, stumpled it, tweeted it, facebooked it, myspaced it, Delicious'd it, Reddited it, Newsvined it, Technoratied it, Slashdotted it, Blogmarked it, Twined it ...

The underlying point is that if there was a great example, we would all know it by now and that content would be all over the web, not just sitting and waiting at its point of origin.

Hmmm …. (recall slides 17 & 35?)



(BTW - Is this the message?)

Our Brand is Our Business (whether you care or not)

I suppose in a sense, what we do here is a small attempt at delivering that message through a different medium (blog) to a more specific audience (people interested in getting more involved in their organization’s culture). The point is that, as public servants, we are constantly engaged, (obvious when thumbing through this blog, but not so obvious when participating in seemingly unrelated fora) in a conversation about the public service brand.

Duh! (slide 31)




If other people care a whole lot more about recommendations from others (slide 25) than they do about advertisements (slide 24):




Then my conversation with a stranger on the bus about my job has greater implications for the public service brand then any advertisement delivered through a traditional medium (recall slides 21-23).

How many times have you as a public servant had to explain your job to eye-rollers or chucklers? Often just telling someone you are a public servant labels you. You are falling victim to the brand that already exists in the minds of other people.

Yes, the brand may be suffering. No the answer is NOT to try to control the brand further (recall slide 57):


(Oh and don't forget that messages are not conversations (recall slide 52)).

The answer may be to set the stage for current public servants (by engaging them!) to build their brand and engage in those conversations (with strangers on the bus, or with people via their social networks) about what it is like to work in the public service.

One logical step towards achieving that goal may be to allow them access to those tools at work, and support it with the necessary IT infrastructure. The only difference between the conversation they have on the bus and the one they have via social media is that the latter reaches a hellulva lot more people, and does it a lot quicker.

Nothing says committed to recruitment and retention in the age of social media like:

WARNING: Access to the Internet is monitored

The site you have tried to access is not authorized ... It has been rated as inappropriate ...

Round-Up: September 25

The Ottawa Citizen published this dandy today, most likely prompted by this story we linked to yesterday.

I feel the need to quote the entire text:

Slow government
The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Thursday, September 25, 2008

A federal election call can spark a flurry of activity across the country. In Ottawa, it tends to have the opposite effect.

For some Ottawa-area residents who work for the federal government -- as either permanent or contract employees -- a federal election means work slows down. Although some functions of the federal government -- food inspection, for example -- involve jobs that must be done no matter what, the election effect stalls or delays other work until the election is over.

This year, thanks to a clampdown on federal purchasing, the election effect is bigger than ever. And that is worrisome.

Public Works and Government Services Canada is reviewing all possible purchases of goods and services by the government to ensure only those deemed "essential and urgent" are purchased during the campaign. Add to that a clampdown on communications and business imposed by the Privy Council Office and you have a government crawling its way through the campaign.

Although it is normal to avoid signing large contracts during an election, the action taken in this campaign is considered unprecedented. It seems to be aimed at avoiding any gaffe or misstep that could affect the election. This is not only an unnecessary intrusion into the regular workings of government, but it sends a damaging signal about the government's faith in the competence and professionalism of the federal public service.

I will concede the last paragraph. But let's move on.

I would like to note that simply because outside procurement is being slowed it doesn't mean that every federal employee is sitting on their hands. The article alludes to "some functions of government (i.e food inspection) must be done no matter what"... when in fact its much larger then 'some'.

For example, the ENTIRE regulatory function of government operates its daily machinery REGARDLESS of election call (not to mention all the other services the GoC provides -- EI, immigration, and passports to name but three).

I would argue that one of the benefits of separating the politicians from the bureaucracy is so that the country can continue to function during election periods.

Oh and, on a more personal note, try telling someone working on (or in my case coordinating) a briefing book, that election calls grinds the wheels to a halt -- we are living in a completely different universe then the one the Ottawa Citizen is painting in this article.

On a more humerous note, sosaidthe.org put up this dandy, for which we officially have no comment.