“Strategic Government Communications for the 21st Century” – The Galimberti Lecture, National Conference of the Institute of Public Administration of Canada, Victoria, BC, August 30, 2011. I
Introduction
Thank you for that kind introduction. It is a gigantic understatement to say that I am pleased and honoured to deliver this year’s Galimberti lecture. Joe Galimberti worked for IPAC from the late 1960s, serving from 1976-2006 as the very effective and highly respected Executive Director of the Institute. His sudden passing in 2006 was a shock to everyone in the public administration community in Canada and abroad. Joe provided exemplary leadership to the Institute for over thirty years. We all know that organizations like IPAC, with voluntary executives and boards, can at times suffer “power failures”. But Joe was always there to provide inspirational ideas and implementation skills. I know that Joe was offered senior leadership roles in government, but he stayed with IPAC because he believed deeply in the Institute’s mission of generating new research knowledge, and promoting improved practices in the field of public administration. Those of us who were fortunate to work with Joe remember his warm, engaging personality, the glint in his eye when he talked about a new project (of which there were many over the years) and the wise and witty advice that he shared so generously. Based on decades of experience, Joe became a master of the craft of quiet, shared leadership, which brought impressive results
through communication, persuasion and enlisting support for good ideas. In honour of this aspect of Joe’s legacy, I have chosen to talk about communications in the 21st century government. This topic also fits with the notion of story-telling in public organizations, which is one of the themes of this conference. Everyone in this room spends most of their professional time communicating. We speak, listen, write, read, email, tweet, interact, gossip, gesture, joke, grimace and maybe even scream with frustration or anger on the rare occasion. In other words, daily we make use of many formal and informal modes of communication. They so pervade our professional lives that we take them for granted. And most of us also see ourselves as good, if not great, communicators. We see no need for additional study or training in the field of communications. Of course, others may have a different opinion of our communication motives, aims and skills. Over the past decade, I have conducted four research studies into aspects of public sector communications. In doing so, I was struck by the absence of scholarly books and articles on the topic, especially in the Canadian context. I also discovered that there are very few courses on communications taught in the MPA programs across the country. There are some government reports on communications, and many governments provide “in-house� courses on communication, but the content of such sources tends to be operational and they tend to ignore the wider context and strategic significance of communications in the public service of today and tomorrow.
I need to attach two qualifications to what I am about to say. First, I come to the topic as an academic outsider and would welcome feedback and advice from practitioners who possess a distinctive type of knowledge that can only be gained from experience working inside government. I urge people interested in this topic to share with me their thoughts and criticisms of what I am about to say. Second, because of time limits, I will be forced to assert more than demonstrate the points that I am making, and would be happy to answer questions and/or share my work with anyone who is interested. II The Main Message Since this is not meant to be a mystery thriller, let me set forth my main argument immediately. You can then judge for yourself whether the lecture is an example of successful or unsuccessful communication. I want to make the case that communications has become a crucial strategic and tactical function within government today. It now ranks in importance with the traditional strategic activities of planning, budgetting and human resource management. A pre-occupation with communications has come to drive and shape the politics of governing on a daily basis. Communications has become central to shaping the content and the presentation of policy. Communications is also becoming more important to the implementation of policy, the administration of programs and the delivery of services..
As result of this development, there are many fundamental issues in public sector communications that require both scholarly inquiry and new policies and practices within governments. I have time today to address only a couple of issues, mainly how the overlap and intersection of partisan, political communication and professional, administrative communication has negative consequences for democracy. Excessive partisan communication also risks undermining the traditional role of an impartial public service relying upon objective evidence to shape policy options and the sharing of balanced information with the public. III Why the “Obsession� with Communications? The world of government communications is changing in response to a number of broad trends that you are no doubt familiar with. I will just list some of them, without much elaboration: - First, the multi-dimensional globalization process has accelerated the pace of change and contributed to the almost instantaneous flow of ideas, issues and crises across national borders; - Second, the globalization process has been driven in part by the ongoing revolution in information and communications technologies, including most recently the rise of social media. The ongoing ICT revolution has changed, and will continue to change, the expectations of citizens in terms of how they interact and communicate with their governments;
- Third, over several decades there has been a shift in all political cultures, in which citizens have become far less deferential to public officials (especially politicians) and there is a generalized lack of public trust and confidence in governments; - Fourth, in an effort to recover lost democratic legitimacy, and enabled by the new ICTs, politicians and governments have adopted new approaches to the formulation and implementation of public policy. - My late friend and highly esteemed colleague Peter Aucoin coined the phrase New Public Governance (NPG) to describe these new approaches. Part of NPG is a greater reliance upon communication, persuasion and the mobilization of support, especially targeted at those groups most directly affected by government activities. Today, there is far less reliance on top down command and control by governments than in the past. - Fifth, the communications environments of governments have become more legalized, regulated and controlled through the passage of access to information and privacy laws, rules on advertising and branding, government-wide communications policies and generally more attempts to impose discipline, focus and coherence on messaging; - Sixth, the emergence over time of a multi-channel, aggressive, adversarial and negative 24/7 media system has reflected and reinforced a political culture of scandal and caused the public to further mistrust government as a messenger;
In summary, external and internal government communications operates in a more fragmented, congested, competitive, suspicious, instantaneous, legalized, transparent and politicized environments. IV Government Responses to More Difficult Communications Environments There is a wide range of responses by governments to the new communications challenges that they face. Only a few developments can be highlighted here. First, on the political side of government, prime ministers and their advisers have transferred the techniques of election campaigning to the day-to-day processes of governing. This is most obvious when there is a minority government, but all governments have become preoccupied with moulding public opinion and tracking political support on a constant basis. With the encouragement and support of a growing number of influential media advisers public relations specialists and communications experts, there has emerged a strong focus on setting agendas, the use of polling and focus groups as a basis for framing issues, attempts to manage the media, the use of marketing and advertising to promote positive news, attacks on political opponents (even outside of the campaign period) and restrictions on the flow of information ; all part of a system intended as much as possible to avoid surprises and embarrassments. Second, most governments have adopted broad communication policy statements that enunciate some general principles which are meant to guide and coordinate communications activities that are more diverse in terms of their aims and modes of communicating; Third, governments have become more aggressive in using advertising and branding techniques to compete for attention in a
more congested media environment, to promote public awareness and to gain political credit for their spending and program initiatives; Fourth, the communications communities across governments are not only growing, they are becoming more mature, professionalized, sophisticated and cohesive in their activities, often with the support of a central communications office which strives to achieve consistency and coherence in messaging; Fifth, most departments and agencies now have directors of communications and in many cases those individuals have joined the executive committees of such organizations; an arrangement which brings them directly into policy-making and decisionmaking processes in a way that was not true in the past; Sixth, with the emphasis on “joined up� government and citizen engagement, specialized units in communications and consultation have emerged and more varied and sophisticated techniques to reach citizens are being employed; Seventh, the revolution in ICTs has both required and enabled government to develop more direct, unmediated communications with the public as opposed to relying upon the media; Eighth, many government have adopted defensive strategies to cope with the disclosure requirements of access to information laws and what they see as the mainly negative reporting of the media; Finally, as part of their efforts to manage the flow of information, many governments have established something similar to the Message Event Proposal (MEPs) introduced by the Harper government during the minority period. MEPs is a process for
vetting and managing all outgoing messages which might have a media impact. The Harper government claimed it needed MEPs to control the flow of information in order not to be blindsided by controversies. However, communications specialists across government complained that MEPs significantly restricted their freedom to respond to inquiries, especially from the media, and prevented government from taking full advantage of the instantaneous communication made possible by the new social media. V The Significance of the Changed World of Public Sector Communications There is a great need for more scholarly inquiry and internal review of the changing policies, structural arrangements and practices of public sector communications. I am not talking about courses and studies of political marketing and/or training in socalled retail politics. There is enough, probably too much, of that happening already. Rather, I am talking about knowledge and skills to enhance communication and trust within the governing process –trust between public officials and citizens, trust between governments and the media, and trust inside of government between politicians and public servants and between senior management and front line public servants. Trustworthy leadership based on honest communication is the most important value of 21st century government. Many issues related to public sector communications need to be investigated by public administration, political science and media specialists. Nearly all the available studies focus on communications in the Government of Canada, there is a great
need for investigations of communications policies and practices at the provincial and municipal levels of government where the scale is often much smaller. As suggested earlier, a leading issue is whether government communications is becoming too political in purpose and content. An over-reliance on public relations and advertising for partisan purposes undermines the credibility of all government communication. In this way it deepens the mistrust of government that already exists, both in the media and the public-at-large. It also gives governing parties an advantage over opposition parties. Along with control over the flow of information, communications can be used to defuse or to restrict civil society dissent from policies and other actions of governments. Communications specialists serving ministers have a variety of formal names such as directors of communications, press secretaries and media consultants. The work of such specialists needs to be distinguished from that of communications officials in departments whose activities include informing and listening to the public, interacting with the media, coordinating messaging and designing various communications packages. Let me make it clear, ministers need advice and support in their communications activities. The term “spin doctor” has become a pejorative term used to denigrate the work of ministerial advisers, especially by media representatives who have an inherently adversarial relationship with these new actors in the political process. The eminent journalist Bill Moyers quotes a media colleague as saying: “News is what governments want to keep hidden, everything else is publicity”. This is an extreme position, but it highlights the thinking of many journalists.
Spin happens in all fields. In politics, spin involves defining and getting the message out to emphasize the positive aspects of government performance and perhaps the stupidity of the ideas of the opposition. It is also about keeping ministers on message. It is also, of course, all about gaining positive media coverage, which is often used by governments as a proxy measure of how well they are doing in terms of gaining public approval for their actions. Spin can be about both image and substance, but it still increases the theatrical content of politics and a pre-occupation with appearances. Not all issues can be successfully spun , of course. On this point, since we are in beautiful British Columbia the HST comes to mind as a policy that no amount of spinning could sell. The increasing danger is that in an era of permanent campaigning and spin, partisan political communication, and professional administrative communication overlap and become blurred in practice, despite what is said in official communication policy statements that declare they must be kept separated. Ministerial staff should not be interfering in administrative communications, including the handling of access to information requests. Codes of conduct for ministerial staff should be adopted and the principle of non-interference in the neutral communications activities of the public service should be part of such codes. Such codes should make it absolutely clear that ministerial advisers are not allowed to issue directions to public servants, only ministers and administrative superiors should be permitted to give binding instructions. Public servants should not be involved with spin, either in crafting messages or withholding information. The public has the right to expect objective, accurate, complete, balanced relevant and timely information from their governments.
Open government is coming to Canada at a slower pace than in many other countries. An open government approach differs from the prevailing complaint-based access to information systems by allowing on-line access to raw government data and adopting proactive disclosure techniques. Governments should move towards more direct communication with the public, using all relevant channels of communication and reducing reliance on the media to get these messages out. Genuine engagement with the public as part of policy formation and service delivery should be the aspirational goal, not communicating to them as an afterthought as part of a “selling� campaign. Coordinated communication of issues that cut across departmental and even jurisdictional lines is a challenging area that is in need of great improvement. The pendulum has swung too far towards centralization of communications activities. Departments need to attract top quality communications staff who have the talent and permission to address issues beyond simply parroting press releases. More research, education, training and development for the growing communications profession inside of government needs to be promoted and supported based on the changing context and strategic importance of communications, especially as present trends continue into the 21st century. Let me conclude by suggesting that Joe Galimberti would recognize the need and the opportunities for IPAC and its members in terms of research projects and conferences examining public sector communications issues. I am deeply honoured to have been offered this chance to speak in his name.
I thank you for listening. I welcome your feedback, both positive and negative, which is a hallmark of effective communication.