Why bad States PR has to end
SPEAKING on the radio yesterday, the Treasury minister made it clear the department's director of communications was unlikely be replaced after he leaves to return to the private sector and the reason was to the effect that, well, we've tried it as an experiment, money needs to be saved and we'll do it in-house from now on.
SPEAKING on the radio yesterday, the Treasury minister made it clear the department's director of communications was unlikely be replaced after he leaves to return to the private sector and the reason was to the effect that, well, we've tried it as an experiment, money needs to be saved and we'll do it in-house from now on.
From the point of view of the taxpayer and any reasonably interested follower of what the States does, that is far from the whole picture.
The director of communications' initial two-year contract was extended and it has more than a year to run. That does not appear to be particularly experimental.
Additionally, while Treasury and Resources might be comfortable handling its own publicity - the minister has a reputation for being open and honest with journalists and generally being helpful - that is not the case elsewhere in the States.
Other departments, notably Commerce and Employment, Public Services, Education and Health, have all employed media-savvy individuals from the private sector to handle calls from reporters and some of those departments additionally use external PR agencies at a cost of more than £1 a minute to provide similar services.
While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with that, it indicates the States of Guernsey does not have a central policy on this or, more importantly, a coherent strategy for speaking to islanders through the local media.
One of the reasons is that, collectively, government is rather nervous of appearing in the media spotlight. Some individual officials and politicians are rather good at it but, as a whole, most would prefer not to run the risk as they see it of being exposed (just look at what happened, they will say, when Bernard tried to tell a joke).
That attitude is unfortunate because it makes so much of what government does look underhand or positively suspect.
Pay rise for the airport firefighters? That's a secret. Man dead in prison? No comment. Half a million pounds wasted on suspending a health professional at the PEH? Why are you asking?..
This attitude has to change - if only because two of the six tenets of good governance require taking informed, transparent decisions and engaging stakeholders and making accountability real.
