Here are the slides from my presentations – they’re pretty similar although the PSF presentation explored a bit more detail about social media and the impact it’s having on local government:

PSF presentation (download it here):

The CIPR presentation was intended for a mainly non-council audience so was a bit more focussed on public relations and how social media is affecting council communications (download it here):

First up I’m at the PSFBuzz event (also known as the Public Sector Forums event “Effective Social Networking & Web 2.0 Strategies for Local Authorities“) – talking about why I think the advent of web 2.0 is such a big deal for local government communicators.

Then I’m jumping in a taxi over to the CIPR North East region’s social media conference where I’ll be talking more generally about social media in public sector communications.

I’m really excited as it’s a couple of years since I’ve been in Newcastle and the speaker line-ups for both events are really good, so it’ll be a great opportunity to meet speakers and delegates alike.

More information and booking details here for the PSF event and here for the CIPR event.

Leave me a comment if you’re going to either conference – while it’ll be a bit of a whistlestop tour as I need to be back in Kent by the evening, I’ll be at the PSF for the morning coffee break and at the CIPR event for the lunch break, so will be good to meet then!

At Medway we’re hoping for approval at tomorrow’s full council meeting for funding to allow us to kick off our website redesign project with a brand new content management system – so many of Sarah’s thoughts and questions have been in my mind while putting together the proposals for a new site.

Sarah’s questions are below, along with my personal thoughts on them:

What experience does anyone else have?
Do others implement devolved authorship?
In Medway at the moment we have a hybrid devolved/centralised model on the main website where content is published by a service-based published, checked by a local co-ordinator, then checked and pushed live by a centrally-based web editor. The model is similar for the intranet but without the third step from the central web editor.

On other satellite sites there is usually a one step publishing model, although this publisher is more often than not a centrally based web editor rather than a service-based officer.

At Egg we had a centrally-based team that did all publishing. This was mainly for compliance reasons so an audit trail of all published content could be maintained and to ensure strict control over who could publish what.

However the number of pages and range of subjects covered on the site was much less – which is why I’m not convinced this model would be great for a council – as few councils would have resources to properly publish all material through a fully centralised publishing team, and to do this would require very strong and clear communication lines between the officers running services and those publishing web content.

What is the ratio of authors to size of organisation / website?
We have more than 100 publishers trained to use the content management system (CMS) from an organisation with around 3,000 staff. However the number of trained publishers that are active is much less.

What skills do those authors have? Why were they chosen as authors? Is it a dedicated web author role or part of A N Other job?
Our publishers typically undertake web publishing as part of another job role – there aren’t any dedicated web content people outside the centrally-based communications team.

The publishers are sometimes nominated by line managers, less often they put themselves forward for the training.

While writing for the web/house style is part of the web content publisher training, I think there’s a bit of a gap with this approach as it has meant the website has grown semi-organically from its planned structure into something unwieldy and, most importantly, internally-focussed rather than user experience-focussed.

What training is provided?
Two day web publisher training course – part-technical (ie how do you actually use the CMS) and part-writing (how to write web copy and about house style).

What is the incidence of retraining?
What level of support is needed / provided?
Typically on a one to one basis as requested by the publishers themselves.

Is content ‘let free’ by authors or is there an approval system in place?
As above – three-step approval process. While this does give a fair degree of control, it can also lead to inefficiencies.

The second stage co-ordinators don’t always check as thoroughly as they could, as they know there’s always someone else that will pick up mistakes, problems etc. This leads to greater workloads for the final stage editors as they pick up problems that should have been corrected earlier on.

Having a three stage model also causes a delay in the time it takes to get content live as it has to sit in two people’s queues of content to check – while the final editors are full-time on the web, the co-ordinators aren’t. There are ways to get content live quickly, but it relies on goodwill and clear communiction rather than a structurally quick content publishing model.

Has anyone gone from devolved authorship to centralisation of publishing or ’super users’ (sort of extension of the web team)? How was any change to the process received?
The launch of our current system was before my time at Medway, although this change is something I think Medway had to do as the previous model was, I believe, pretty much decentralised.

If you run more than one website do you have different levels of devolvement / approval? For example, do you approve web content but not intranet content?
Yes, intranet is two stage approval, while website is three stage.

I suspect as our intranet evolves in the new project, probably to something more resembling a collaborative workspace rather than a classic intranet site, we may relax the intranet approval process further – as genuine, real-time interactions on a collaborative intranet demand instant publishing rather than delays for content approval.

Update – a Redbridge perspective from Dan Harris is here.

Andy joined the LGiU in March 2008 having previosuly worked in parliament, at the LGA, and from 2004 as a policy and public affairs consultant for local authorities and organisations such as the National Association of Local Councils and the Association of Police Authorities.

He blogs here and is also on Twitter as @andysawford.

You’re Chief Executive at the Local Government Information Unit (LGiU) – what does LGiU do and why is it important to local government?

The LGiU is the leading national thinktank on local public services and local democracy, working through our Centre for Local Sustainability, Centre for Children’s Services, Centre for Service Transformation and Centre for Local Democracy.

We believe that democracy strengthens communities and improves services so that they better meet local needs and aspirations. Working with our network of 40,000 councillors, council officers, and others involved in local public services, we provide policy information and share good practice, develop new policy ideas, and contribute to the national policy debate.

Our activities include organising over 100 events each year, publishing Cllr Magazine which is sent to 10,000 councillors, advising the All Party Local Government Group, and running major national networks such as the Childrens Services Network, our Local Economies Network and Carbon Trading Councils.

In July 2008 we were voted ‘Thinktank of the Year’ in the national policy and public affairs awards.

Can you tell us a bit more about your career before you joined LGiU?

I joined the LGiU in March 2008 as Chief Executive. My previous experience includes working in parliament and at the LGA and from 2004 as a policy and public affairs consultant for numerous local authorities and organisations such as the National Association of Local Councils and the Association of Police Authorities.

In 2005 I led the establishment of the All Party Parliamentary Local Government Group to promote improved dialogue between local and national politicians, and make an impact in debates on key issues, such as the group’s major inquiries on the role of councillors (2007), the future of older people’s services (2008) and the current inquiry on localising criminal justice.

What’s the biggest challenge facing local government in the UK right now?

That’s a big question. Local councils right now are trying to keep all the balls in the air in terms of delivering good local public services, whilst also focusing on what they can do to support their communities through the recession.

Part of the work councils are doing in relation to the recession is making sure they are delivering good value, and getting to grips with the financial squeeze that is already biting, and that will have a major impact over the next decade.

And what does that mean for council communicators?

You have to keep doing what you’ve always done but do it better within ever tighter resources, which means finding new ways of doing things.

An example is how some councils, like Essex and Westminster CC are providing their comms services to other councils in a way that helps the client council, supports the overall improvement and reputation of local government and generates income and develops the capacity of the provider council.

Another major development, which you are leading the field in Simon, is around social networking and how you harness that. I am a big fan of Twitter and invite anyone reading this to follow my regular updates there.

On the economy specifically, it is important for comms teams to be tuned in to how the council and your elected members are trying to support the community and make sure you effectively get the message out, particularly if it is a new service, or where timing is key.

A good example is the investment that councils are making in credit unions, to help people manage their finances, and crucially to stop the loan sharks. It is a great idea but to be successful it needs effective communications so that people know what help is available. In this case you need to get a message across particularly to the more vulnerable, and perhaps harder to reach members of your communities, and you really need to work with the credit unions and local voluntary organisations, community and religious groups.

That means innovation and greater collaboration, and not just of the new media kind, because in this example you are probably not targeting the Facebook and Twitter users.

Genuinely empowering residents at a time when people are less concerned than ever with local democracy is a challenge. What do councils need to do to better engage citizens in policy development and effective service delivery?

I don’t accept the premise that people are less concerned with local democracy because as councils are getting more ambitious and starting to innovate around the role that they play, such as Essex’s work on post offices, people are going to take more interest.

We’ve seen people, both at a local level and the national political parties, looking to local democracy as one of the ways forward from the current political malaise around the MPs expenses scandals. Whitehall has to get over the fear of the postcode lottery and accept that local diversity in service provision exists already and that it can be a very positive thing if the diversity reflects local needs and the choices that people make.

I want to see us moving towards a new approach where local people, with and through their elected representatives, get much more say over how local services, particularly policing and healthcare, are run, rather than the situation now where Whitehall is in charge to a large extent.

As we move to give people more say, and I’m not talking about ‘consultation’ which unfortunately has become a bit discredited, we need to find new ways of giving people the information and the appropriate opportunities in the decision making process, to register their views.

It isn’t right to be prescriptive about how you do this in terms of what combination of ideas such as Citizen’s Panels, petitions, public meetings, Councillor surgeries, social networking, referendums, works best because I have seen good and bad examples of all these techniques.

One thing that you have to be consistent about though is making sure that elected members are central to your approach to getting the public engaged.

Comprehensive Area Assessments (CAA) mean councils need to work even more closely with local public sector partners. Where has this made a difference to the way local public sector organisations deliver communications?

In the area I live I don’t see a lot of evidence of effective ‘joined up’ communications from the various local public sector organisations. CAA is being driven by strategic and senior connections in the public sector organisations and the collaboration between teams of staff in those organisations is going to follow on, particularly where there is a clear benefit to this in delivering services.

The rationale for more effective collaboration in comms is clear but it will mean setting aside some of the normal rules of engagement, such as the drive to get maximum recognition and credit for your organisation, particularly for councils where there is a political element to this.

What advice would you give a young communicator thinking about working in the local public sector?

Do it. Public sector comms is going to have to keep innovating and new people coming in should have lots of scope and lots of fun. It depends of course what kind of person you are and what motivates you, but I say to my team all the time that we are there to change the world. There should be a feelgood element to working in the public sector because you are trying to help improve your community and improve people’s lives.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

There is a major comms implication from the government’s new legislating putting on councils a “Duty to promote democracy” and a “Duty to involve”.

Whilst I don’t think this kind of legislation is really necessary, of course it is right that councils inform and involve the public in the process of democracy. What I would particularly urge public sector comms to do is make sure you put the politicians and those in a governance role in organisations such as police authorites and PCTs to the fore in your communications, to increase the connection between the public and local decision makers.

Having done the usual backups beforehand, I foolishly tried the auto-upgrade feature that’s built into Wordpress – usually I upload manually by FTP.

The auto-upgrade didn’t seem to work fully – it put the site onto maintenance and then kept creating files in the web root called core.xxx with xxx being an ever increasing number – until the site reached it’s maximum data allowance. Upon deleting these files, it just kept creating more and I couldn’t work out how to stop this seemingly endless loop.

In the meantime I then had a 500 server error on all admin and frontend pages – thanks to a tip-off from Jack Pickard I went on the hunt for plugins that weren’t WP2.8 compatible.

Having renamed all the plugins via FTP to disable them (as I couldn’t get into the admin area to disable them properly), I started renaming them back to their original names one-by-one, testing the site each time to see if it reappeared.

Eventually I’ve traced the 500 server errors back to two plugins which don’t (at the time of posting) work with Wordpress 2.8:

WP-PluginsUsed
WP-Options-Manager

Once these two were out the way, the 500 server errors stopped and all seemed almost normal.

The only remaining problem was with the /blog/ section of the site, where all my blog entries reside. For some reason it was showing an old entry from 2007, when it should show recent posts in reverse chronological order.

This is controlled by the filosofo-home-page-control plugin – which looking in the admin section appeared to still be set up correctly. However by re-entering the settings for the plugin and resaving them, it all now seems fixed.

Please let me know if you spot anything looking amiss, but hopefully all is now well. I think I’ll do all future upgrades manually again as I could have done without three hours of fiddling with the Wordpress setup for what’s normally a simple and straightforward process.

ps just tried to upload an image with this post, but it seems the overlay image uploader in the admin area’s broken too, but it’s late and I can’t face troubleshooting that now!

Update 15 June 2009
Both the offending plug-ins above have now been updated and work fine with 2.8 – the lesson for me is to wait until plug-in releases catch up with Wordpress core releases!

But what does agility actually mean? While you may by this point have a mental image of Crufts, dogs and numerous hoops, hopefully the rest of this post will explain more about what I’m on about.

For me there are a number of things that define an agile approach:

Speed of response – having a team that’s able to reorient its work rapidly in the face of changing priorities, leadership or external factors.

Committed and passionate people – delivering an agile response demands having a team that’s prepared to “go the extra mile” to deliver something they truly believe in.

Ready infrastructure – basically having some building blocks in place that are flexible enough for a wide range of possible uses – while this might be technology-based (eg web hosting) it could easily be something relevant for a broader marketing or public relations use – like a strong list of suppliers for a wide range of deliverables or having an effective network of community contacts to help communicate with community groups rapidly.

Experience with building blocks – trying to do everything for the first time when the pressure’s on is tough. Doing something again that you’ve done before it a good deal easier – that’s why it’s important to have good experience of the tools of your trade – whether those are online services, media contacts, advertising formats – whatever it takes to deliver what you do in your day job normally.

Management support – agility in public sector communications needs strong and decisive management from those in the reporting line above the communicators. Agility demands the confidence and knowledge to make decisions quickly – not falling back on deferring decisions to more senior management unless absolutely necessary.

A great example of this agility in practice is demonstrated by today’s launch of the new Department for Business, Innovation & Skills website – put together in the space of 72 hours this week by teams from the two previous government departments that were merged last week.

Check out the full story from the two of the team involved – Steph Gray and Neil Williams – and when reading their accounts remember that these guys did this against the background of (presumably) a fair degree of uncertainty about their personal positions within the merged organisation – a clear demonstration of the importance of personal commitment and passion in delivering public sector agility.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be thinking about how to make sure our team is ready to deliver agile communications – as I’m sure at some point we’ll need to be ready to respond to an unanticipated eventuality and I’d be delighted if we were able to deliver agility in the way the web guys at BIS have demonstrated is possible.

SOCITM Insight’s survey of online election results coverage by councils looked at websites of county councils and new unitaries to see how the results were being reported, following up on a similar study in the May 2005 elections.

This time around, some of the key features of successful online coverage of elections were:

Pre-election coverage and promotion – elections aren’t just about the count night and the results. Councils have a role (and soon a duty) to promote local democracy – in the context of local elections this means making sure people can vote (through promoting electoral registration and how to vote) and do vote (through increasing engagement with council activity and decision-making processes).

There’s a role for the full communications mix here as the challenges of increasing democratic participation vary across the different parts of the community.

Live reporting of results online – as the organisations running elections and with access to publish from the count floor directly to their online presences, councils can be first with election news. On the count night itself there were plenty of examples of council sites carrying election results, while local and regional news sites were still playing catch-up.

Estimates of when results expected – something that’s extremely hard to do accurately, but really makes a difference if it can be done. Needs a good working relationship between officers on the count floor and those working in communications and web teams.

RSS feeds for results – this is all about making data available in a way that can be easily reused by other people and services. A good example of this is how easy it is to republish RSS-based content onto Twitter – during the election Derbyshire County Council’s Twitter follower count went up from 122 to 335.

For a really useful inside view on how one council put all its online election coverage together, check out two posts from Sarah Lay from Derbyshire County Council – parts one and two.

For councils, elections are a great opportunity to raise the profile of their websites among people that may not previously have had a reason to visit the site – councils need to think about how to harness this traffic and convert it to longer-term take-up of online services, as well as reaping the reputational benefits of being able to publish election results and news quickly and accurately.

What are you responsible for at the council?
I look after media relations, internal communications including the monthly staff magazine, corporate marketing and design, and our monthly newspaper for residents.

How did you end up doing this role?
I’ve previously worked for another local authority for three years, a regional newspaper for seven years, and a PR agency.

To be honest it was down to chance that a local government comms opportunity arose at a time when I was developing my academic management knowledge and wanted to put my new skills into practice in a different kind of role. Qualifications include an MBA, a CAM diploma in marketing communications and a degree in law and English literature.

Can you tell us about a project or campaign you’ve worked on that you’re really proud of?
Well I’ve done a fair bit of work on developing the content and presentation of the civic publications at two local authorities, and was certainly very pleased by increased readership and winning national awards!

Council newspapers and magazines have taken a bit of a battering recently with the national debate about their impact on local newspapers, but I firmly believe direct communications with residents is essential and complements the media offering.

Tell us a bit more about North East Lincolnshire – what are the council’s priorities for the area?
The council has just launched it’s new three-year vision for the borough. The aims are to improve the quality of the built and natural environment; strengthen the local economy; create a safer and more secure area; improve health and wellbeing and be a well managed, top performing council.

What do you think is the biggest challenge facing local government communications today?
Having a measurable impact on those all-important satisfaction ratings, which we know are linked to people feeling well informed. And possibly facing the shadow of the axe as council purse strings are pulled ever tighter in the next few years.

How is the new comprehensive area assessment (CAA) process changing the way your council communicates?
We need to get better at measuring the outcomes of our communications rather than just our outputs, and we’ll need to look at how we link in with other local agencies and organisations to improve co-ordination, consistency and value for money across the piece rather than in silos. Social media will have a key role to play too in terms of the CAA and the use of digital communications.

How is the growth of social media affecting your job/team?
We are dipping our toes in the waters and multi-media communications are built into one specific role within the team, but it’s still very much unknown territory – however we are willing to explore!

What advice would you have for a young PR professional wanting to work in public sector communications?
Get some experience of working in the media to gain a good understanding of what makes a journalist tick, and be prepared to be multi-disciplined as many comms roles are becomingly increasingly broad – you may be writing news releases, working on employee engagement, devising an integrated marketing campaign or organising a major event.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?
I’m particularly interested in potential future developments for local government communications – as we move to area/place-based service delivery, will communications follow suit with a move away from corporate comms from different public sector organisations to a single voice and function?

First up I’m at the CIPR North East Social Media Conference – providing a public sector and local government perspective on the use of social media in public relations. More info here.

Then I’m hotfooting it over to Life to the PSF event Effective Social Networking & Web 2.0 Strategies for Local Authorities (aka PSFbuzz) where I’ll be talking about our experience of using social media and what it means for local government communicators. More info here.

If you’re heading to either event drop me a line or leave a comment – as ever it’s great to have the opportunity to meet people face to face.

We’re looking for a self-motivated marketing executive to plan and deliver a range of marketing campaigns for us.

You’ll need to be great at identifying appropriate marketing solutions, managing budgets and maintaining good relationships with council services, suppliers and colleagues.

The team has more than 170 marketing projects on the go at any one time, so you’ve got to be good at multi-tasking, planning and project management.

The job’s on a three month contract to start as soon as possible. It’s based in the council’s offices at Gun Wharf, Chatham.

For more information give our acting Marketing Manager Charlotte Edwards a call on 01634 332449.

Salary is in the range £19,427 to £26,016 pro rata depending on experience. Closing date is 8 June so if you’re interested check out the details and apply here.

My talk looked at social media and focussed on how these new tools can help drive take-up of online council services. Slides are below:

Last week’s source of anger was this piece of direct mail received at home last week:

It’s not a great picture, but just so we’re clear, it’s a box approx 4×4x4 inches, containing just a piece of paper folded up into a fortune teller like you used to make at school. Nothing else.

It’s from terminatetherate.org.

The first problem with this is that I shouldn’t have received it in the first place. I’m on the Mailing Preference Service (MPS), which means I shouldn’t receive commercial direct marketing material, although I’m not absolutely sure whether this is considered commercial as it’s trying to get the recipient to sign an online petition, but the site’s backers are primarily commercial players with a commercial goal. Certainly not screening any mailing against the MPS list breaks the Direct Marketing Association’s code of practice.

But that’s not my main bugbear with this mailing. It first arrived at our house last Thursday, but because there was no-one here when the post arrived, we got the note from the postman asking us to collect from the depot.

Given the 4 inch cube box never had a chance of fitting through a standard letterbox, the lesson here is that unsolicited direct mail that doesn’t fit through a letterbox is a great way to alienate your intended audience before they’ve even opened your mail piece.

The size of the fortune teller inside could probably have just about fitted in a box that would have gone through the letterbox – it may have been a little squashed but the box it came in had a lot of spare space in it – and a smaller box wouldn’t have cost the £1.20 that terminatetherate.org paid to send it to me.

I’m not making any comment on the campaign’s goal itself here – just the approach to direct marketing that they’ve chosen to take.

It just smacks to me of direct mailing that doesn’t take account of the audience’s context – sending an unsolicited mailing of a piece of folded paper in an overly large cardboard box suggests they don’t understand their consumers and that they have marketing budget to waste – something that doesn’t sit well with their positioning as a pseudo-grassroots campaign to eliminate a certain type of mobile phone charge rate.

Update
Had an email the day after I wrote this post from Matt at 3mobilebuzz about this:

I’m writing to you concerning your blog post on the Terminate the Rate fortune teller. Though it was in support of Terminate the Rate, it was actually sent by 3mobilebuzz; as you were a previous Skypephone and Mobile Broadband trialist we thought this would be of interest to you.

An email informing you about both the fortune teller and the Terminate the Rate launch campaign was sent to you on the 20th May, but it may have been missed.

Please accept our apologies if you feel you should not have been sent anything from us. We’ll ensure you do not receive anything again and your details will be removed from our 3 contacts list.

Regarding the packaging, we felt that it was best to send the fortune tellers pre-made but obviously this meant they would not fit inside an envelope. Again, we apologise if you felt the packaging was
unnecessary.

If you’d like to speak to anyone directly about this, please let me
know and we can arrange a call.

It’s good to see they’re monitoring for mentions of the campaign and nice to see an email response – while I stand by my original comments, Matt’s email goes some way to improving the reputation of the campaign in my eyes.

Ashley’s piece makes some pretty sound points:

Treat social media as part of the comms mix, not a quick fix gimmick
Absolutely – social media provides new communications tools, but does far more than that by shifting the balance of communications power in the relationship between the public sector and the public – tokenism or box ticking by just deploying new media comms tools for the sake of it is a short term strategy that will undermine effective communications.

Comprehensive area assessment (CAA) means the public sector needs to make better use of social media
Yes – CAA explicitly mentions the role of digital media in engaging with residents, but more importantly also forces the public sector to focus on residents’ experience of living in a particular place – and for many people that includes their digital experience as well as their physical experience of a place.

Two-way communications through social media is vital, and even more so given the declining role of local media
Again, he’s right. The role of the local media as gatekeeper for local public sector messages is in rapid decline, thanks to declining circulations and reduced resources in local media.

The public sector needs to understand this and grasp the ever-growing opportunities to communicate directly with their publics – whether through direct marketing (through email, for example) or through social media.

The issue of public sector workers not having access to social media at work
This is something that features strongly in the emails I receive, but is something, thankfully, I haven’t experienced personally. There’s a conversation going on out there about people’s experience of living in a place, and if the public sector blocks it out, it’ll still be going on, it’s just those that should be listening and responding won’t be able to.

As Ashley says

They need to trust staff and stop missing massive opportunities to speak to their service users.

It’s really encouraging to see some social media advocacy from a council communicator from outside the usual group of social media proponents – the mix of CAA, growth of social media and structural changes in mainstream media means interesting times ahead for public sector communicators.

This week’s email interview is with Stephen Parkinson – he’s been Head of Communications at Preston City Council since 2003. Stephen has improved internal and external communications at Preston culminating in winning three gold awards from LG Communications in 2007 including best A-Z, best environmental campaign and best district communications.  He is married with three children and enjoys running, squash, photography as well as being an avid supporter of Preston North End.

What’s your current job and what does it involve? What are you responsible for?

Head of Communications – responsible for internal communications, external communications, media relations, website and new media, consultation, and supporting corporate projects and initiatives.

How did you end up doing this role?

By accident really.  I started my local government career in 1988 at Lancaster City Council as a YTS trainee working in the general office earning £25 a week! I then managed to get a full time position in committee administration and the council supported me with my studies enabling me to gain an ONC, HNC and professional qualifications in administration.  I worked my way up in administration and then in 1996 the council set up a dedicated Policy and Public Relations Section.  I was asked to help set up the section and I’ve never looked back, joining Preston in 2000 as Public Relations Officer and becoming Head of Communications in 2003. Administration has been a really good background for me – working with elected members in developing a political and PR antennae as well as having good organisational and writing skills. 

Can you tell us about a project or campaign you’ve worked on that you’re really proud of?

Winning three gold awards in 2007 from LG Communications, including best district communications is certainly a highlight but the stand out project is Preston’s successful bid for city status in 2002.  The Chief Executive asked me to lead project and it was wonderful experience.  We worked hard on getting the local community, businesses, key partners and the local media right behind the bid and that was one of our biggest strengths.  Looking back, it would be different now as new media and on-line would play a much bigger role in the bid than it did then.  Preston was a 25-1 shot to get city status, but we knew we had a strong, well supported bid and we were all absolutely thrilled when we won. 

Tell us a bit more about Preston – what are the council’s priorities for the area?

Preston is a great, vibrant, young city.  We have a wonderful community spirit and people from all different communities get on well together.  This is down in part to the University of Central Lancashire (sixth largest in the UK) which really helps with the vibrancy of the city.  The council’s main focus is on regeneration.  We have plans for a £700m city centre regeneration which would see Preston achieve its vision to offer an alternative city experience to Manchester and Liverpool.

What do you think is the biggest challenge facing local government communications today?

Getting heard, or getting the message over.  The proliferation of communication channels means it is harder for local government to get its message over.  People now have more choice over what they watch, listen and read and if you are not on their playlist then you will be anonymous. As communicators we have to use all forms of communication to reach out to people and also make what we say more relevant to people’s lives.  There is a lot of interest out their – the growth in grass roots activity and communications including residents and campaign groups, community blogs, and discussion forums means we have to reach out in new ways.  The days of relying on press releases and community magazines are over.  Whilst this is a challenge, it is also a real opportunity for councils to engage with people, address issues of concern in the community and work together. 

How is the new comprehensive area assessment (CAA) process changing the way your council communicates?

It means we are more focused on outcomes, customer/community intelligence and public satisfaction.  This is a good thing – especially for communicators whose skills are needed to help councils successfully engage and have two way communications with citizens.  With the advent of new media too, it’s an exciting time to work in local government communications and as local government communicators, we are well placed to work with members, senior officers and the community to harness the potential of this change and improve the work, relevance and standing of local government within our communities. 

How is the growth of social media affecting your job/team?

Massively.  We are using new media to communicate with people directly.  It’s a really powerfully tool and presents a whole host of new opportunities.  The sheer speed of communications in using Twitter and Facebook is amazing and gives us a platform to have a two way dialogue with people interested in Preston and the city as a whole.  We’ve recently updated our website www.preston.gov.uk to include blogs, discussion forums, even the ability to upload photos like Flickr which is popular too.  New media and social networking is a bit like having new tools in the toolbox – only they are “power tools” and really help you to do your job. It’s great for members too, to be able to connect with people and as local government communicators we are well placed to help the make the most of this great new technology.  The two way nature of social networking is great too as it allows you to engage and get feedback from people – helping you to improve what you do.  And, using social networking like Twitter of Facebook is free! Although to be effective, you do need to commit time resources to it.

What advice would you have for a young PR professional wanting to work in public sector communications?

Go for it.  It’s a varied and interesting career and you’ll meet all sorts of people.  Every day is different, bringing its own unique challenges. You need to be savvy to the sometimes conflicting needs and demands of members, the council, the community and the media!  All this keeps you interested and with new media there has never been a better time to join public sector communications and make a difference to the communities we serve.

If you work in public sector communications and would like to be featured in my weekly interview blog, drop me a line or find me on Twitter.

While the changes are, in part, about the rapid growth of social media, what’s also relevant is how “mainstream” media outlets are changing and how the practice of media relations.

Before the internet was around, news media was typically produced and consumed on an episodic basis – whether that was a TV news bulletin or a newspaper published every morning or evening.

And that rigid schedule meant a certain predictability to the news cycle – journalists had deadlines, which meant media relations officers had deadlines and everyone knew when the news became available in public.

But nowadays things are a bit different. While publication deadlines do still exist, they’re less important in driving the business of news than before.

Mark Borkowski sums the advent of internet-enabled media nicely on his blog:

Consider the net a wire service, a huge, powerful story feed where everyone who wants it can get the message at high speed – delivered to their mobiles the moment it goes up if needs be. Psy Ops campaigns on the net are simple and easy to run, but it’s ludicrous and hypocritical of the media to suggest that this evil propaganda device is a new phenomenon. It’s just running at the speed of thought now.

So what does this mean for media relations in the public sector?

Media relations officers need to understand the changing way journalists have to work now. Many media relations officers are ex-journalists, but if they’ve been on the PR side of the fence for more than a few years, they’re mistaken if they think journalism is the same as when they were journalists.

The advent of multimedia newsrooms means news needs to be produced quickly across print, audio, video and online – so when writing news releases and supplying supporting assets, media relations professionals need to bear that in mind.

And when producing this content, whatever it is, it’s more important than ever that it’s produced with the end audience in mind – not your internal stakeholders who need to agree it – because there’s no time in a typical journalist’s day to rewrite corporate marketing-speak into copy worth publishing or extensively edit your polished PR video into a segment that can be published onto a website.

The role of deadlines is also interesting – the pressure to publish fast means public sector organisations need to be ready to respond quickly – quicker than before – otherwise the story will go without a comment, quote or response – losing any chance of influencing the direction of the story at the early stage.

This means ensuring effective working relationships with colleagues throughout the organisation as well as making it more important than ever to prepare for issues that are likely to become news stories – requiring a strong and well managed approach to issues management.

The rapid changes in the media, both through the role of the internet and the evolution of traditional media organisations, are changing the role of media relations beyond recognition – and that’s before even considering the role of social media and how public sector communications teams need to evolve in response to that.

The first ten miles went nicely, but after the first ascent of the North Downs about 12miles the heavens opened and a fast downhill laced with sharp gravel chippings seemed to cause tens of punctures for riders, including me.

So two inner tubes later I rolled into the feed station at Rochester (30 miles) wet and miserable. The race mechanics helped me out with two more spare inner tubes and a decent amount of air into my tyres – and a couple of colleagues from Medway Council came down to cheer me on waving their posters.

The next 20 miles were hard work – two ascents and descents of the North Downs, gusty winds and driving rain made it tough. Passing through the 50 mile mark and over the M20 into West Kent the weather picked up, the sun shone and the roads got flatter and surfaces smoother (important when your backside feels every little bump and ride!).

After a brief lunch stop in Headcorn (56 miles) it was onwards through the picturesque Weald in the sunshine to feed stations at Bodiam Castle (80 miles) and Goudhurst (90 miles).

Leaving Goudhurst I knew I was going to make it and relaxed into the last ten miles with heavy legs but excited that the end was in sight.

Looking back on the day, I really enjoyed the experience and the opportunity to test my physical and mental abilities against possibly the toughest physical challenge I’ve taken on (so far!).

And most important of all, thanks to generous sponsorship I raised over £450 for Action Medical Research’s important work into children’s health, tackling problems affecting pregnancy, childbirth, babies, children and adolescents.

Thank you so much to everyone who sponsored me on the ride – your support is very much appreciated:

Alison Goldsmith
Andy and Nicky Wake
Billie Jeyes
Catherine and Tim Day
Cathy and Mike Barrow
Colette Glasson
Doug Haslam
Jenny Wells
Jo Knowles
Jo, Olly and Toby Wakeman
John Fox
Julian Day
Kathleen and Graham Vinten
Kelly Wood
Laura Cheshire
Malcolm Wright
Mark Dent
Mark Wakeman
Nick Tatt
Paul and Di Cheshire
Philip Young
Rachel Davis
Richard and Pat Wakeman
Sarah McNally
Simon Lewis
Steph Coole
Stephanie Fearria
Steve Briley
Tim Cooper
Tina Larby
Victoria Crabtree

Thanks to all of you who have sponsored me in aid of this great charity – and if you would still like to you can read more about the charity and sponsor me online here.

I’m planning to use the MapMyTracks GPS mobile phone sports tracking tool to show my progress live on the internet (disclosure: MapMyTracks is a client) – the ride starts around 7am tomorrow morning and live tracking will appear on the MapMyTracks site here.

This week we meet John Shewell, Head of Corporate Communications at Brighton & Hove City Council. His interview gives a really interesting insight into the work of a senior communicator within a unitary council in southern England.

John makes some interesting observations about how the new comprehensive area assessment will lead to changes in the way council communicators deliver campaigns, as well as giving an insight into how Brighton & Hove City Council is integrating social media into its communications mix.

What’s your current job and what does it involve? What are you responsible for?

I am the head of corporate communications at Brighton & Hove City Council. My role basically boils down to promoting and defending the reputation of the council. This means providing advice to the leadership of the organisation in terms of managing the council’s reputation, setting out a clear direction for building the council’s reputation, and making sure that the communications team remains focused on this purpose. I am ultimately responsible for my team’s actions to deliver a successful outcome, and this means having an effective strategy that drives performance.

I also regularly meet with the chief executive and leader to discuss how the organisation is moving and agree a course of action.

In terms of operational responsibility, I have just restructured the team and I’m currently working on centralising communications activity. The new structure will see five units merged into three – media relations, marketing-communications and design services; and all three have a head of service who report to me. I’ve just recruited a former director of Text100 (a global comms agency) to be our new head of marketing, so I’m really looking forward to the next six to 12-months.

How did you end up doing this role?

I applied for the head of corporate communications at Brighton & Hove City Council after seeing it advertised in the Guardian back in November 2007. Before this role, I was the campaigns & reputation manager at the London Borough of Sutton (where I worked for over four years) and led on several major campaigns – one of which I won the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (Local Public Sector) award for best campaign on a shoestring. Before LB Sutton I worked in the private sector. I was at Golley Slater where I worked on clients such as the Army, which was a great experience. And before GS I worked at one of Australia’s largest public affairs agencies called Brumfield Bird & Sandford where I worked on clients in the banking sector, regional and national government, property and also dipped my toes in the lobbying arena. I learnt a lot at BBS and my mentor there was a chap by the name of Paul Turner who was a former political advisor and he taught me a lot (including the art of ‘Australian diplomacy’). But I’d have to say that my biggest inspiration in terms of career support was Paul Martin, the current chief executive at LB Sutton. I wouldn’t be where I am today without his support and continued guidance, and he’s such a great advocate for local government. He’s probably the main reason why I’ve continued working in local government because he inspired me to make a difference.

I studied two degrees – Bachelor of Arts (majoring in media studies) and Bachelor of Business at the Queensland University of Technology – during this time I worked for Nestle in their marketing department and then at Brisbane City Council.

I currently sit on the management committee of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations – Local Public Sector Group and I’m also a full member of the CIPR.

Can you tell us about a project or campaign you’ve worked on that you’re really proud of?

I’d have to say that the project that I’m really proud of was getting Brighton & Hove City Council to agree their vision – ‘city of opportunity’. When I started at Brighton & Hove CC they didn’t have one clear vision and I basically pestered them to develop one. Nine months later and we had one and by the time my first 12-months came round we were signing it off. So that’s been a huge achievement and one that I’m especially proud of.

A close second would be the ‘Take Part Take Pride’ campaign that I ran for LB Sutton. I created this campaign to fit the council’s vision but was given virtually no money to run it. I had to leverage support from partners, build word of mouth and actually get out and about selling the concept to colleagues to get them to back it. In the end, we got hundreds of local residents participating in the event and lots of good coverage. The following year BBC London radio came along and held live broadcasts over three days to promote the event. I was mentally and physically drained as I did virtually the whole lot from strategy to execution – and only with a handful of others pitching in – but it showed me that you can deliver quite a lot with a bit of imagination and hard work. The icing was winning the CIPR award for it.

Tell us a bit about Brighton & Hove – what are the council’s priorities?

Brighton & Hove is a fantastic city with an established place brand built on fun, festival, diversity, creativity, architectural legacy and cosmopolitan free-thinking lifestyle. It’s a city full of ideas and passionate people. There are about 260,000 people living in the city and we’ve got one of the most highly qualified adult populations in the country with nearly half the working age population having the equivalent of a degree or higher. The city has 32,000 students at two universities. This means our residents are very much interested in current affairs and take an active interest in their community, which the council plays an important role.

Our top priority is steering the city through the recession – we’re doing everything we can to shield the city from the recession and position the city to benefit when we come out of it. We’ve been running a very successful campaign called ‘Be Local. Buy Local’ (www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/buylocal) and our two initial objectives were to get 100 businesses signed up to the campaign and 1000 residents backing it by March of this year. I’m pleased to say that we exceeded those targets and the campaign is really taking a life of its own now. If you walk around parts of the city all you will see in shop windows the Be Local. Buy Local campaign stickers – the response has been huge and the media have lapped it up. Polly Toynbee wrote to us congratulating our efforts, so we’re really pleased with the way it’s going.

What do you think is the biggest challenge facing local government?

I think the single biggest issue facing local government is the economic situation. The government has decided to spend its way out of this recession and to do that it has borrowed heavily, which is creating a budget deficit of immense proportions. The FT reported recently that because of rising real spending on debt interest payments, tax credits and social security benefits, a freeze will mean real cuts on schools, hospitals and other politically sensitive programmes. Failing that, taxes will have to rise by an average of £1,250 each family for the next six to eight years. The other option is to cut public spending. Personally, I can’t see the public agreeing to a tax rise in these tough times and independent surveys show that there is no appetite for further stimulus measures. This means local government can expect an even greater tightening of the public purse; therefore we’ve got to prepare for this now by being more innovative and disciplined; and we’ve got to get used to making some very tough choices.

How is the new comprehensive area assessment (CAA) process changing the way your council communicates?

Brighton & Hove City Council has an excellent track record of working with other partners – it’s famous for being collaborative – and given that we’re a city that attracts a lot of people, we’ve already been working with a number of partners to promote the city. We just got our Place Survey results back and we did really well on nearly all our indicators and in some instances we’re bucking the national trend. So I think we’re well placed to benefit from the CAA, but I do think we will need to work a lot more closely with our local partners in terms of comms planning and coordination to promote the place. I’m currently setting up a working group with all the Local Strategic Partners’ heads of comms to discuss how we can work together. I think the next logical step is for more ‘place communications’ with partners, which the local authority should be taking the leadership role.

How is the growth of social media affecting your job/team?

Immensely. Social media is all around us now and in a city like Brighton & Hove in which the digital industry is regarded as amongst the best in Europe we just cannot hide our heads in the sand. We’ve dipped out toes in the water with twitter, facebook and youtube – but to be honest we’re a long way from cracking it. We’ve just drafted an online marketing-communications strategy which will enable us to exploit social media in a more focussed and authentic way. One of the key issues we’ve got to get to grips with is that the ‘old’ model of funnelling information through a ‘mediator’ (journalist) is gone and now we’re into a ‘mashed up’ style of comms in which the online community has the same, if not more, access to information that we do. The online community (which is just about everyone today) doesn’t have to rely on the top-down model of comms anymore – witness some of the stories that have broken recently and look where they came from – bloggers! You don’t really need to read the papers to find out the latest news anymore, you can follow bloggers and Twitter is going to make this even more interesting. News will be constant and more democratic. For councils (and any organisation for that matter) this is a huge challenge that we’ve got to get to grips with now.

At the council we’re in the process of mapping out our social media eco-system in the city to find out where people go, what they talk about and what influences them so we can start having a more meaningful dialogue with them. This also means that everyone in the team must understand social media and how to create conversations on the likes of Twitter etc. We’ll be training everyone from media officers to internal comms on social media. We’re also exploring how we can use social media as part of our internal communications activity. The best thing about social media is that it’s about two-way communications, which is what we should always be aiming for.

What advice would you have for young PR professionals wanting to work in the public sector?

Do it. The public sector is a great place to work. Having worked in both private and public sector, I can definitely say that the public sector is one of the most challenging and satisfying places to work. But it needs more talented and ambitious young people who want to make a difference – particularly to the lives of people and the way their organisations work. I’d also suggest they join the Chartered Institute of Public Relations’ Local Public Sector Group so they can benefit from some excellent training like ’second steps’ which helps young PR professionals understand the ‘politics’ of public sector better.

Anything else you’d like to add?

I am an Australian who arrived in the UK in 2001. I live with my partner and three year old son in Brighton. I also sit on the management committee of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (Local Public Sector Group).

Next week it’s the turn of Stephen Parkinson from Preston City Council to tell us more about his work. If you work in public sector communications and would like to be featured in my weekly interview blog, drop me a line or find me on Twitter.

As usual I had plenty of helpful comments back, as well as a fair few people wanting to know the answers so I thought I’d summarise in a blog post here.

There are a few lists of local government Twitter users out there worth checking:

• Andy Sawford from LGIU maintains his top ten list on his blog here – includes elected members as well as officers
• Dave Briggs has a comprehensive list including central and local government people here
• Carl Haggerty also pointed me in the direction of this site – www.governingpeople.com – where a number of the contributing authors are clearly marked as Twitter users

I’m not going to try to replicate a full list here, but if you do work in local government and are on Twitter feel free to add yourself in the comments below or to Dave’s list on his site.

However the best way to discover interesting people (from any sector or interest group) on Twitter is to explore the network – follow a few people you know, check out interesting exchanges they’re having with others, and before you know it you’ll be discovering and connecting with likeminded people you’ve never met or heard of before – and to me that’s one of the most powerful things about Twitter.

The video was produced professionally and features a couple of members of staff from the council to get the message across:

While using video on YouTube isn’t particularly innovative, it’s worked for Chorley on this campaign so was clearly worth doing.

But what caught my eye about this was that while the video itself has supported the campaign, it has become a story in itself, as Andrew notes:

It’s also generated a front page news story in the local press, featured on the radio and we’ve had debates on local PR/media websites. It’s also been picked up on local blogs and forums.

There’s definitely potential for use of new or different communications tools as a trigger for debate and coverage in other places – and this is something that we can sometimes underexploit when our focus is on delivery of the core campaign itself.

It’s also interesting to see how the council has responded to some of the less than positive feedback that has been made about the broader topic of recycling in the video comments. The council has answered the comments factually and in a friendly, non-corporate tone – which reflects the need to engage on a person-to-person not organisation-to-person basis.

Getting coverage for this kind of thing also has an impact on the way the council itself is perceived – done well, it can position the council as more forward-thinking and in touch. Done badly it can make the council look remote, out of touch or amateur.