Working in the open: life beyond blogs

Joanne Rewcastle
Nov 5 · 6 min read

I’ve been following some of the recent tweets around working in the open in government, and interested to see Ben Holliday, Chief Design Officer at FutureGov, blog about how the DWP Digital communications team is semi-working in the open.

I’m part of this team, and know Ben from his time in the Department for Work and Pensions, so I was curious to read this:

“It has got harder to read about real service delivery in government. It’s not that this isn’t happening, it’s that government department digital programmes and communications teams, like DWP Digital, seem from the outside to be focusing more on their people and team values, rather than the work that they do and why.”

Feedback is always welcome (it’s a gift, as Lisa Jeffries so brilliantly said at #Sprint19 in Leeds) and it’s good to see your work being noticed. It also got me thinking, are we in DWP Digital comms too focused on our people and values rather than the work that we do? Do we have the balance right? Is our DWP Digital blog imbalanced? We’re rethinking our content strategy right now so this is a good debate.

This doesn’t feel like the sort of thing to require an ‘official’ response, it’s just twitter and blog chat, after all and we’re about to enter the pre-election period when civil servants can’t comment as much so the timing isn’t great.

But I’ve worked in communications in digital government for 5 years and spend a lot of time helping others to work out loud, so I wanted to share some ideas. I work alongside our recruitment marketing team and we share and collaborate on the DWP Digital blog and other comms. I’m not claiming credit for the blog – I really value and appreciate our collaboration and team work and I shared with them that I was going to blog about this and share some of their insight and experience, as well as my own.

User research and insight

As a member of the Government Communication Service (GCS) who has worked in digital government for 5 years, I’ve seen and enjoyed the parallel between user research in government service design and insight in government communications.

In communications, we gather insight and research into what users need to hear about. We know that people outside the organisation want to know what it’s like to work here, the sort of role, how people work, what the digital profession is like. They want to know about innovation and some of the technical problems we’re working on, and they want to hear from authentic voices and people. Insight like this drives our content strategy to create a variety of stories to meet these needs.

Diverse ideas from across the DDaT profession

Five or even three years ago, it felt like government blogs were predominantly authored by product owners, designers and user researchers. I haven’t analysed this, it’s just my impression from remembering who I used to spend my time working with.

However, the Digital Data and Technology (DDaT) profession is broad. Service design is one profession, but it sits in a world inhabited by engineering, data science, architecture, user research and more.

It’s refreshing to hear from people who are site reliability engineers, data scientists, service analysts, tech support managers, devops managers, architects, infrastructure engineers and more. People in all of these roles have told a story on our blog this year. Helping such people to tell their story gives a fuller, more rounded and truthful picture of working in digital government and the roles and people who work here. This is why we encourage people in these roles to tell their story beyond just the services we’re building.

Honesty, integrity, objectivity, impartiality

Working in digital government is challenging. As Ben said:

“… individuals and the communications teams in government departments are working hard within different sets of constraints, including the surrounding bigger political picture, and sensitive policy areas like welfare reform.”

Many government departments have attracted people into their organisations who have never worked in government before, creating a brilliantly diverse mix of ideas and opinions. However, for many people working in government for the first time, it’s a bit daunting knowing how to work in the open, what can be shared, how to talk openly about your work while maintaining the civil service values of honesty, integrity, objectivity and impartiality. As we enter the pre-election period, this is more relevant than ever.

My experience is that people often find their voice by sharing their thoughts on their role, community or network first. We therefore work with people to do tell these sort of stories. If this is a positive experience for a person, this can build confidence and encourage them to go on to talk about their work and delivery in more detail, which then leads to more service-focused content in future.

Talking about people and values

It’s important that people feel comfortable and find their voice to talk about themselves, their role and values as a member of a community or network. It gives a clear signal that an organisation values both diversity and inclusion and encourages people to ‘bring their whole selves to work’.

It’s vital to show visible role models to support creating an inclusive environment and welcome diversity of thought, ideas, experience and protected characteristics. Helping people to work out loud about their values can encourage this, and explain the importance of values, communities and networks to everyone in digital government.

I make no apologies for sharing stories about our people and what’s important to them, whether it’s their race, gender, faith, health, age, sexual orientation, working pattern, or what they give back to the community outside their day job. This shows the richness of working in digital government and encourages the diverse thinking that we need to design services that meet users’ needs.

Life beyond blogs

Government blogs can be a bit like a broadcast. It’s a message from an official channel and has a consistent tone of voice and character. It’s useful for some messages but not the best channel for others.

Our research tells us that people want to hear from authentic people and will often respond more to an individual’s personal post on LinkedIn, twitter, Medium or elsewhere. We’ve done a lot to encourage our people to post on their own channels, rather than relying on a government blog to tell our story.

Three or 4 years ago, digital communications in government were very reliant on blogs and twitter. It’s a good thing that we’re using different content formats and channels to share information, such as events, trade media, LinkedIn, video, YouTube and Facebook, as people prefer to engage in different ways.

I also believe that the channel that people prefer to be active on is important. Some people aren’t great consumers of blogs and therefore aren’t drawn to writing them. Speaking at an event or running a workshop works better for some people, as it’s a chance to present in their own style and face-to-face, and can lead to further collaboration across government and the digital sector through conversation.

Leading in your profession

The best content and stories come from people, and leaders in each profession have a responsibility to tell their story, create and encourage their communities to do the same, and show the way. There are stories that I’d have liked to tell over the years but a leader in the community didn’t feel that the time was right, wasn’t sure how to present their points, wasn’t confident about working out loud. I respect their views – they know their profession – but I’ll still offer encouragement, advice and support to help them or others own their story – it’s what any communications team will do behind the scenes.

Working in the open

To sum up, Ben’s opinion has been useful while we’re thinking through our content strategy. We’ve published almost 100 DWP Digital blogs in 2019, covering a broad range of topics. We aim for a balance of stories about people, collaboration, service and technology, and we take opportunities to work in the open about our service design, through things like GDS Service Week, our product and service design communities and our cross-government engagement and events. I haven’t counted our many pieces on LinkedIn, our events, webinars or speaking opportunities too, but it adds up to a lot of content, beyond just blogs.

I believe that we are working in the open, not just semi-working in the open, and I’ll aim to share more about how we do this in future. For now, the pre-election period is about to start so DM me if you want a chat about this. Or come back in December.

Joanne Rewcastle

Written by

Telling stories about communications and engagement

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