NPSC Blog

In case you had missed it, the Prime Minister announced yesterday that the country will go to the polls on November 8. That puts us, public servants, fairly and squarely in the pre-election period. What does that mean? For public sector communicators there are a couple of issues that we should consider.

SSC has guidance on the website for public servants in general, and the relevant information for communicators is split across two parts of the document. Section 2.2 contains specific guidance around communications issues. Appendix 2 has further guidance, including principles and some helpful examples.

Rather than rephrase the material on the SSC site, I thought it would be more useful to look at a couple of scenarios that involve social media, and consider how public sector communicators might manage these issues in the pre-election period.

Public comment

Public servants, like everyone else, have the right to participate in the democratic process. Unless you are one of the few bureaucrats in the country that spends a good part of your time in the Minister’s office, then you can happily get involved. You may decide to adopt an old-school approach and do letter box drops or stuff envelopes for one of the parties. Equally, you may decide that a thread on a forum or a particular blog post warrants comment. The caveat in both these scenarios is the same:

Don’t bring politics into your job, and don’t bring your job into politics

If you do decide that you want to weigh in to a debate on a blog or forum, make sure that you do it from your home computer, on your own time and, whatever you do for God’s sake, don’t preface your comment by establishing your expertise in a policy area by stating that you work for Ministry X. This may seem like a no-brainer, but it is not unheard of…

As well as not using your work machine for flaming trolls exciting forays in the political blogosphere, you might want to refrain from editing Wikipedia pages or otherwise leaving an obvious digital link back to your place of work.

For those of you who are running their own blogs or maintaining some other forms of social media presence, there is a particular line of the guidance that does bear repeating. Adopt a conservative approach. If you are in doubt about a particular tweet or post, pause and think how you would feel if it was brought to the attention of your chief executive or Minister…

Moderating comments

The other risk for public sector organizations (and one that is not restricted to a specific time in the election cycle) is for political comment to be posted to an agency social media site. This should be covered by your moderation or comments policy.

My approach would be to delete the comment and email the person who posted it and suggest they refrain from any further such activity. If the political content was only an aside and the rest of the comment was on-topic and thoughtful, you could redact the offensive lines and post a comment as to why the comment was edited.

Conclusion

Public sector communicators are at the front line when it comes to maintaining a professional, politically neutral public service. Elections bring more pressure onto communicators as they strive to continue to serve their Minister and to ensure that they are equally able to serve future governments. Social media have not had a big role to play in our thinking in previous elections, but as more and more New Zealanders, and by extension public servants, become active in this space that will change.

The only other point that I would add is that, after having read the guidance, if you are unsure as to where the line is on a particular issue, or would just like to test your thinking on someone who is not so close to that issue, please give me a call.

Photo: Jeremy Toeman