GovComms: The Future of Government Communication

This week on InTransition we will listen to a speech made by Gavin Slater, the new CEO of the Digital Transformation Agency, held by the Institute of Public Administration Australia at the National Gallery of Australia. 

Mr Slater spent the last seven years at the National Australia Bank (NAB) focused on driving a widespread digital transformation agenda and leading initiatives to overhaul NAB's technology. Mr Slater is known for driving transformational change and responding to digital disruption having 30 years’ experience working in the private Financial Services sector.

In this speech, he discusses:

• Challenges in improving the government’s service delivery;
• The Senate probe into the government’s $10bn IT spend; and
• His vision for the future, including more transparency and website consolidation.

Content communication is a strategic, measurable, and accountable business process that relies on the creation, curation, and distribution of useful, relevant, and consistent content. The purpose is to engage and inform a specific audience in order to achieve a desired citizen and/or stakeholder action. That is the practise and the process of content communication.

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This week on InTransition we speak with Alison Wright, Assistant Director of the National Gallery of Australia and all-round strategic marketing and communications guru.

Join us in this funny and frank account of her career and lessons learned as Alison delves into how she’s navigated turbulent times at the NGA, and why her straight-shooting style works. "I think that we deploy enormous filters [in our professional lives], I see it every day, and I've seen it all throughout my career. I do not do is deploy those filters... I'm simply not interested in the filter because it's cutting out a lot of time, but also, it doesn't enable a truth telling environment.”

Alison’s career spans 20 years, from working as a journalist in regional Australia to leading the ABC’s Sydney newsroom, embracing PR in China and starting as the Head of Communication at the peak of an international scandal at the NGA.

Alison talks managing the message, why permission to fail is a must, the switch from journalism to “the dark side” and her perpetual fear of being like everyone else.

Also in this episode:

• When to cut the BS and get to the point;
• When complete transparency is the best way to work with the media;
• The one thing all public servants should remember to make themselves a better worker; and
• Why the best time to step into a communications role may be when they’re “knee-deep in it”.

What is content communication? It is a strategic, measurable, and accountable business process that relies on the creation, curation, and distribution of useful, relevant, and consistent content. The purpose is to engage and inform a specific audience in order to achieve a desired citizen and/or stakeholder action. That is the practise and the process of content communication.

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This week on the InTransition Podcast David talks to a ‘legend of the communications business’ Angela Sinickas who has been the in the field since 1974. Labelled as a pioneer of organisational communications measurement and measuring effectiveness Angela is quite renowned amongst publications such as Harvard Business Review, the Journal of Communication Management and Communication World.

Now the CEO of Sinickas Communications she is a consultant for brands all around the world including Barclays, CISCO, Ergon, Verizon and ING Bank with a reputation for making a promise and sticking to it.

Discussed in this podcast:

• The importance of measurement in communications
• Her history in the field – from journalism to avoid maths to pioneering data analysis for communications
• Turning communication into numbers
• Problems faced in the field and tips to counteract them
• How to stay afloat in a fast-growing industry

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This week for the InTransition Podcast we're delving into the archives and revisiting our interview with David Rawlings, a social media professional starting his online career in 1996. With his background knowledge in the field, David P and David R discuss challenges facing the government in getting started with content marketing and the endless opportunities the government has to publish engaging content upholding the responsibility of explaining policy and programs to the public.

Discussed in this edition:

• Using skills learnt in one area communications (PR or journalism) and applying it to another (social media)
• Governments learning social media engagement comes from quality and consistency, not one or the other
• How to keep things interesting and curating information to cater for your audience

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This week on InTransition David speaks with Kanchan Dutt, Director of Media, Digital and Design Communications at the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Originally from the UK and with a background in journalism, Kanchan has been in the Australian public service for around a decade now, moving from the ACT government and community services into the federal statistics agency. As a self-described "dutiful public servant", Kanchan's experience has equipped him with insights he shares with David in this episode of InTransition, such as:

* The growing importance of story telling;

* Why meeting people face-to-face is the key to communication success;

* How to effectively reach reporters and relay the story you want told; and

* That ABS census debacle.

 

Tune in for the whole chat.

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Clinton Parr's job, as head of people and culture at Clemenger BBDO, Australia's largest and most successful marketing communications company, is to deliver happiness. As he describes it, happy employees mean happy clients, happy clients mean happy companies, happy companies mean happy communities and happy communities mean a happy world. Keeping in mind contentgroup's mission of helping government and the public sector strengthen communities and improve the well-being of citizens, we reckon Clint is right on our level.

In this week's episode of InTransition, David finds out how is Clint is helping to foster happiness in the workplace, even in these increasingly stressful, stretched and strenuous times. We're all being asked to do more with less. We've got technology, we've got change, we've got pace, we've got new channels, we've got expectations, we've got accountabilities, we've got automation, we've got artificial intelligence, we've got machine learning, and we've got to do it all.

Tune in to hear how Clint is managing to tackle these challenges, one happy connection at a time.

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contentgroup's CEO David Pembroke calls her "one of the smartest young people in Australia" and he sure isn't wrong. Our podcast guest this week is Renee Noble, a 25-year-old computer scientist who is responsible for the algorithm behind Data61's Ribit student-employer matchmaking platform. A self-confessed lifelong "nerd" and lover of all things mathematics, Renee shares some fascinating insights into the power of data, its huge potential to do good in this world and the importance of knowing your target audience - this week on InTransition.

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Tim Conway is the founder and chief executive of C-Metrics and the Asia-Pacific director of the Global Digital Foundation, a think tank and policy network that provides an interdisciplinary framework for dialogue between policymakers, stakeholders and scholars in support of an evidence-based approach to policy. He has a passionate interest in the transformational impact of ICT and the importance of ensuring that the topic is recognised and discussed on both regional and global policy stages.

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In this episode of InTransition, David speaks with Paul X. McCarthy, author of Online Gravity. A leader in Australia's digital industry, Paul is an authority on the transformative nature of technology and the internet, and shares intriguing insights about what the future of online might look like and how it will shape our world and workforce.

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About eight months ago, the National Innovation and Science Agenda identified the problem that small businesses and their engagement with university was a very weak part of the Australian innovation system. contentgroup was then fortunate enough to apply for and receive an Innovations Connections Funding. We are now using this grant to bolster our content communications methodology with evidence-based research and specially designed toolkits. As aprt of this, Dr Ying-Yi Chih and her team have engaged 20-plus governments from local, state, federal and multilateral levels, to test, validate and feedback on the contentgroup approach. David Pembroke speaks to Dr Ying-Yi about some of this feedback and where the project will go from here.

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