Digital by default – mind the generation gap.

I recommend everyone,  from comms strategists and policy wonks to the merely socially curious,  take a look here  for a fascinating overview of British social attitudes in 2012, compiled by Ipsos Mori.

The research was presented at the Government Communications Network  last week and generated a flurry of startling factoids on Twitter – like this one:

more children between the ages of 2 and 5 can use a smartphone than can tie their own shoelaces.

There’s a mass of useful information for planners in the report.  I’ve  gathered together some of the insights revealed during the debate which highlight some important trends and generational differences:

• On average each UK household owns 3 different types of Internet-enabled devices
• For the 1st time, over half (52%) of all calls are made via mobile phones
• Big differences in methods of communications: 16-24s heavily text reliant. Over 65s opposite, voice-based
• 1/3 of 16-24 year olds live in a mobile-only home. More than double UK average of 15%
• 8/10 people in UK have Internet access. Figure drops for over 55s
• Implication is of increased polarisation between young and old. Rise of the smart phone. Texting as a mass medium.  TV remains strong. Young people are switching off the radio. Post is still v important to older people
• BT and Virgin’s superfast broadband services were available to around 60% of homes by March 2012

It’s clear  that a broad mass of people of all ages are perfectly comfortable in an online world and have multiple means of accessing it.  The generational divide isn’t as clear cut as you might think – here are some more statistics, from the Forster Company’s overview of age in the UK:

• 47% of 55 – 75 year olds connect to their friends with either Skype or instant messenger services
• 45% of 55 – 75 year olds spend up to 30 hours on the internet a week
• 33% of over 55s use social networks
• The fastest growing group of Facebook users is aged 50+

We’re not all digital natives yet

But it’s  also  clear that while many of the over 55s are fine online,  a significant minority aren’t - yet.  That’s an important issue for policy-makers.  Time will eventually iron out the difference until everyone left standing is a digital native , but we’re not there yet.  This makes the government’s strategy of making public service delivery “digital by default” by 2015 look slightly optimistic.

If people have to access the services they need online, what happens to those (currently 20%+ of the over 55s, according to the Ipsos Mori research)  who don’t have internet access?

If people over the age of 65 are more comfortable with having a conversation than dealing in “text-based communication”, how easy will they find negotiating an online application form for vital services like pensions or social care?

The recent story about the shortcomings of the helpline for the Police and Crime Commissioner elections didn’t inspire confidence:

[A whistleblower]  who is working at an Electoral Commission call centre dealing with queries about the election, told the Guardian that he spoke to hundreds of older people every day who could not access the information online. They were referred to a “very temperamental automated phoneline” at the Home Office, and then were only given a list of names and no real information”

And how long will it take before superfast broadband is available everywhere so that online applications can be done speedily even in remote rural areas?

Falling out of love with The Thick of It

I worked for lots of women in my time in Whitehall.

The thing that all of them - Harriet Harman, Margaret Hodge, Barbara Follett, Ruth Kelly - had in common with the men I worked for, was their absolute, unshakeable faith that they had what it took to run the country. They may or may not have been right. Politicians have as many personal imperfections as everyone else on the planet. What’s funny about politics is this mismatch of  total self-belief with the reality of what they achieve. As Armando Iannucci said last week “although it’s a big job it’s actually little people“.

But politics is hard. Getting anywhere near to the top demands huge self-confidence. There are no shrinking violets in the Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet.  Which is why the sight of Nicola Murray agonising about walking in a straight line while holding a poppy wreath on last night’s Thick of It made my teeth curl.

I appreciate that a former civil servant complaining about a political satire is like a hotelier arguing that Fawlty Towers didn’t capture the reality of working in the hospitality industry. Being true to life isn’t really the point. I also get that the best comedy comes from putting people into situations they are totally unfitted for – Basil Fawlty again. (And that sequence did give rise to a classic Thick of It-ism “She’s officially a Cenotwat” for which I  forgive them a bit)

But none of the women I ever worked for would have had a problem with walking and poppy-wielding at the same time.  Nor would they need to be told by their male comms advisor (even if he was the incomparable Malcolm Tucker) that they needed to toughen up their act. Nicola Murray shone like a schoolgirl who’d just been noticed by the coolest guy at the disco. Harriet Harman would have eaten him for breakfast then spat out the bits. 

I accept there’s a limit to how many rampant megalomaniacs you can have in one TV programme – especially as this series of  TTOI is trying to reflect a coalition government as well as the opposition, so that’s three sets of dunderheads who need to be differentiated somehow.   I just wish it wasn’t the woman who’s the simpering nitwit while the blokes get on with their plotting. 

And, finally: I do appreciate how bloody annoying it must be for every woman in a TV programme or film to be expected to represent one half of humanity everytime she opens her mouth on screen. But the rarity of showing women in positions of power makes them symbolise something bigger than themselves, like it or not – even in (especially in?) a comedy. 

I really hope the worm turns in the rest of this series.  Not least because Rebecca Front has been one of my favourite comedy performers since we were at university together.  I thought, aged 18, that she was the funniest person I’d ever met.  I’ve followed her career with a proprietorial pride ever since, even though we lost touch years ago.  I still think she’s a genius.  I just think she deserves better.

Politics, PR and the art of the image

Good PRs know that communication isn’t just about words.  Sometimes it’s not about the words at all.  It’s about getting the images right,  plugging into the visual cues audiences respond to, even if they’re not consciously aware of them (see the supreme example of Barack Obama’s Imperial entrance to Parliament  last year).   It’s corny but still true that a picture’s worth a 1,000 words. In that context, yesterday’s Nick Clegg/David Cameron re-dedication on their second anniversary was an extraordinary piece of PR.  And not in a good way.

I’m not talking about the political content of the event (although I wonder how someone who is having their Disability Living Allowance cut might respond to hearing “what you call austerity, I might call efficiency” from Cameron.)

But ignore the content, for the  moment.  Just look at the pictures.  This could be used as a training exercise for how not to do it.  So for their handlers’ future reference, here are some tips:

1.  Don’t show the talent with its back to the audience.

A slightly unfair criticism - they’re standing in a circle of people, so inevitably some people are behind them.  But the fixed camera position – and Cam/Clegg’s relentless focus towards the lens – means that the TV pictures show them apparently ignoring the people in the room.  The audience seems to be just there as set dressing, not a good look for people commonly portrayed as being out of touch with working people.  A more informal setting would have worked better, allowing Cam/Clegg to interact with people in the room without awkwardly spinning round – at tables in the canteen perhaps, if you’re determined to do it in a factory setting.

2.  Mix up the audience

The audience is almost exclusively white and male. The two woman you can clearly see are placed so that they are visible behind Dave and Nick when they speak, somehow emphasising that they’re different.  The pictures should reflect the diversity of the population.  We’re all paying for it, after all.  It’s not a useful image for a government accused of causing record levels of unemployment among young black men, and women to be seen addressing themselves almost exclusively to white men.

3.  Avoid the impression of Toffs lecturing the Workers

Again, slightly unfair – Cam/Clegg go to work every day in suits, you could argue it’s a uniform just as much as the factory workers’ overalls are.  Sending them along in anything else would be hugely patronising.  But the image of two expensively be-suited men standing in front of a passive crowd in overalls has a whiff of the Young Mr Graces about it.  The impression isn’t helped by the artificiality of the set up – a less formal atmosphere might have avoided the sense of the young masters coming down to talk to the hired help.  I wonder if Cameron felt this at the time and that’s why he took his jacket off?

4. It’s meant to be a conversation not a speech

Interaction with the audience seemed very limited.  It would have felt less like a staged PPB and more like a proper event if they had mixed up where the questions came from, so Cam/Clegg had to talk to different parts of the crowd, and had the confidence to actually ANSWER THE QUESTION without reverting to pre-prepared speeches.  No wonder members of the audience don’t look interested in what’s going on (I wonder how much choice they had in being there?)

and finally,

5. Have  a good reason for doing the event in the first place

I’m still puzzled why this was done at all.  It looked like a slightly panicky response to bad local election results. There were no new announcements (and so close to the Queen’s Speech there couldn’t have been).  A re-affirmation of their determination to stick it out together just draws attention to the possibility that they won’t.  Successful partners – in business or marriage – don’t keep banging on about how well they’re getting on, they just get on with doing stuff.  As celeb watchers the world over know, public declarations of devotion are usually followed by acrimonious splits.

It’s cotton, by the way, the second anniversary. In case you were thinking of getting them a gift.  It’s apparently traditional to give towels.  Useful for mopping up messes.

Is this the end of interims in government?

A declaration of interest that feels like a confession:

My name is Penny and I have provided consultancy services for the public sector through my own company.  There, I’ve said it.  I’ve done work for the government without being on the permanent payroll. Which puts me beyond the pale, if you’ve been following recent exposes on consultancy among the senior civil service.

When is a consultant not a consultant?

Let’s start –  as any good civil servant would -  by defining our terms. Interim managers are not necessarily the same as consultants who are not necessarily the same as freelancers or temps.  However, all of us seem to be boiling in the same pot as far as the papers are concerned.   I’m taking heart from the belief that the papers don’t have their sights on people like me (though it’s hard to be sure).

They’re  concerned with people trousering six-figure pay cheques, who are effectively full-time civil servants but are paid as consultants.  One case  was a senior manager who’s been in post since 2007.  If true, it’s hard to argue that he is anything other than a government employee who should be paid accordingly.

My case is different. In both cases where I’ve worked as a consultant in government (one 6 month stint, one about 8 months) I’ve worked on projects that didn’t exist before I was hired to set them up and where the required skills hadn’t been found in-house.  I didn’t take over an existing job or manage full-time staff (consultants aren’t allowed to, I wonder how they’ve been getting round that one since 2007?)  In both cases I left once the projects were completed.

I suspect that employing me that way saved taxpayers a fair bit. They didn’t   contribute to my pension for example, or pay employer’s NI contributions, or  holiday pay or sick pay.  The day the projects ended so did the money – no redundancy package to cushion the blow and no help getting another job. My conscience is clear.

There’s a role for interims in government

The civil service employment story has moved on to bemoan the rising cost of redundancies and the corresponding number of people being taken on through agencies to fill the gaps. I now learn, thanks to a storming series of posts on this issue at Flipchart Fairytales, that the use of interim managers in government may be about to end completely.

Well.  I’m all for protecting the employment rights of those in work, and questioned the wisdom of cutting the civil service when massive changes are being made to how public services are delivered.   But it’s not as simple as saying permanent staff = good: interim managers/ freelance consultants = spawn of the Devil.

First, pushing permanent civil servants out of the front door while bringing  freelancers in through the back is only evidence of poor planning if the jobs the two groups are doing are the same.  Bringing in agency temps because staff cuts have been made over-hastily is clearly not good.

But I know from experience that there is a superfluity of general administrators in the civil service  and a lack of specialist skills in some key areas.  Interim managers or specialist consultants offer a flexible, highly skilled resource for government (or any other employer) to deliver specific projects, where there is an acute need for good quality, specialist management  NOW.

The importance of workforce planning

Whitehall has, frankly, never been great at workforce planning.  I went to a  seminar last year given by the head of the team which worked in the Home Office, planning a structured approach to matching the recruitment and retention strategy to their projected future business.  Until that sort of long-term strategic planning becomes the norm in government departments I suspect there will always be a need for interim managers to step into the breach.  Cutting themselves adrift from potential help because the papers disapprove of interim employment arrangements doesn’t seem like good business sense to me.

The finest democracy money can buy: in defence of lobbyists.

Everyone knows who  lobbyists are.  They’re the mouthpieces of shadowy, wealthy businessmen prepared to pay for access to Ministers so that they can influence defence contracts, divert spending on major infrastructure projects, and make junk food an acceptable part of health policy.  They’re Nick Naylor in Thank You For Smoking,  described (not entirely un-admiringly) as : pimp, profiteer … yuppie Mephistopheles.

Of course the  email campaigners and dogged defenders of the NHS, 38 Degrees, are also lobbyists.  So are the policy directors of the NSPCC, the National Trust and  the Child Poverty Action Group.  So’s Jamie Oliver.  Anyone who works to influence government policy is a lobbyist, even if that’s not what’s written on their business card. 

I’d far rather policy was made in open debate with business, the voluntary sector, interested experts and concerned members of the public than not.  Access to Ministers is not, of itself, a bad thing – though it’s interesting that no-one seems to expect Ministers to be able to resist the lure of the lobbyists’ lolly while they’re making up their minds up.

While I completely agree that the people with the deepest pockets shouldn’t be able to buy a say in policy-making, I think it’s naive to assume that the current solution – a register of lobbyists  - would improve the situation.  Who’s to be listed? By whom? How’s the register to be kept? Updated? Administered? What would constitute an abuse of the system?  What sanctions will there be against abuse?  How will they be enforced? By whom?  Despite promising to be the most transparent government ever, the current administration seems to have difficulty reporting on the meetings it’s having now, I somehow don’t see a new register of meetings with lobby groups getting us very far.  I also don’t see how a curb on lobbying could have prevented the Fox/Werritty saga which seems to me to be more about an extraordinary sense of personal entitlement,  hubris and complete disdain for a devalued civil service. 

During the recent party conference season, a great deal was made of how expensive it is to attend conference these days – more than £700 to mix with the Tories in Manchester, apparently.  Ordinary members are frozen out and the only delegates are professional lobbyists of one sort or another.  Michael Crick did much eye-rolling on Channel 4 news at the discovery that some lobbyists were actually paying  £800 to attend policy sessions with the party hierarchy.  His (presumably synthetic) astonishment was dismissed by the redoubtable Olly Grender who pointed out that political parties have few other means of funding their activities and that conference is generally a commercial opportunity for them.  If we’re serious about reducing the influence of murky money in the political process, it might be an idea to start looking seriously at the issue of party funding, as she suggested.  Much harder than just listing lobbyists, of course.  And suggesting that more cash should be diverted towards MPs at a time when funds are being withdrawn from social services would be electorally suicidal.  But it might help avoid headlines like this:  Andrew Lansley bankrolled by private healthcare provider - originally written when the Tories were still in opposition, but which re-emerged on Twitter yesterday as part of the campaign against his NHS reforms.

Tory PPB – Smart #PR or cynical stunt?

The Tories abandoned the usual Party Political broadcast format this evening,  in favour of an appeal from a range of Ministers and others on behalf of the East African famine crisis.  Twitter’s response so far has been mixed – from Jon Gaunt castigating them for “using dying kids to get votes” to others describing it as “decidedly different” and “random” – there will no doubt be a more varied response if it’s repeated after the news at 10, when the politicos settle down with their cocoa and get ready to luxuriate in Newsnight.  I’ll look out for the debate.

With much relief I can reveal that I disagree with Gaunty.

Personally I think it might be the most interesting piece of political PR the Tories have done in a long time, as well as a pragmatic response to a difficult content issue.

What would have been the point of  a standard pitch for votes when the nearest election where those votes might be useful is far over the horizon?   And what could they say about policy and politics which doesn’t raise the spectres of the many, many problems the electorate are currently facing and drag down the public mood?  So why not try something to position the Tories as caring and generous and concerned with bigger issues than petty politics?  Why not use it as an opportunity to humanise the party a bit – getting away from the notion that they’re just posh, white men in suits -  and let them send themselves up a bit?  Why not stress the party’s commitment to international aid – a rare example of policy that appeals to people from beyond the traditional Tory vote?  Oh, and in the process, why not try to raise some money for an extremely good cause?

They’ve obviously decided that the risks - that people will see it as exploiting human tragedy or a way of ducking out of a conversation about domestic politics – are worth taking.  It’s not been a great week for the Tories’ PR machine what with the cat flap, and the hasty re-write of the Leader’s speech - but this is an intriguing note to end on.   Smart PR, cynical stunt, generous gesture or all three?

What do women want?

 

The story that the government wants to woo back women voters was headline news last week, though probably not getting the kind of headlines they would have wanted. 

The plans: shortening school holidays to make things easier for working women, banning advertising to under-16s and overhauling child benefit, made the classic assumption that women’s interests are limited to children’s issues.   The idea that family policy and women’s issues are the same (whereas men get to be interested in all kinds of things, even if they have children and families too) received short shrift from women, already anxious about the  impact of government policy on women’s lives .  

Sadly the Labour Party hasn’t got past the women = children stage either.  Despite no longer being a member, I was invited to submit ideas to the party’s National Women’s Conference yesterday.  Under the headline What Women Want I was invited to propose “policies which will deliver for women” because: “Labour women have experience and expertise across a vast range of areas”.  So why have they asked us to think about:

• How do we best support family life?
• How do we create an NHS that works for all?
• How can we best support women in work?

My rather snarky reply was for them to stop acting as though the only issues that women care about are family related and start thinking about issues which affect women whether they have kids or not (and are not family/health-related which affect men just as much as women and need to be pulled out of the “women’s issues” ghetto). 

Strengthening  protection for victims of sexual and domestic violence was one area which sprang to mind – particularly as it is coming under attack on a number of different fronts at the moment.

Other areas in need of work are the gender pay gap and the unequal representation of women in senior jobs – this is slightly different to “supporting women at work” which I took to be a reference to the childcare/flexible working debate. 

There’s lots of room for improvement.   Research out in August suggested female executives will have to wait until 2109 before their average salary catches up with their male peers’.  Last year the government abandoned compulsory pay audits which were an attempt to close the pay gap.    Sex and Power, a report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission warned it will take  70 years  to achieve an equal number of women MPs, that the number of women in the Cabinet has fallen to its lowest level in a decade and that women are in short supply at the top of the media, business, the judiciary, the arts and education.

Get some of that lot sorted out and perhaps politicians will see that women are more than ”just” mums – because more of them will look like us.

Are summer schools the answer? Five questions for Nick Clegg

Nick Clegg is to announce that he will be spending £50m to set up summer schools for children on the verge of starting secondary school as a “compassionate response” to last month’s riots.

I’m all in favour of anything being provided for young people, who seem to be at the sharp end of a lot of current cuts.  But I do have some questions:

1. This money seems to be being taken from the pupil premium fund designed to help schools to support children in most need (ie it doesn’t appear to be new money).  How does making schools spend their money in this particular way support the government’s notions of promoting freedom and school autonomy? 
2. Where’s the evidence that a fortnight’s voluntary summer school at 11 will have any impact on stopping young people “falling through the cracks” ?  Is the government already so clear about the causes of the riots that Ministers are prepared to spend a substantial sum (admittedly of someone else’s money) to put it right?  As Theresa May said earlier this month,  “it [is] not helpful for politicians to “suddenly speculate” over what happened. The causes would only be known once all the evidence had been analysed”.
   
3. The summer schools are not, apparently, going to be compulsory.  Being realistic, how many of the target children, those seemingly at risk of falling through the cracks into rioting, criminality and beyond are likely to attend them? How will the impact of the scheme be measured? 
4. Assuming that the target children do turn out for the fortnight.  What is being planned to keep them on the straight and narrow afterwards?  Or is 14 days of the right kind of training going to be enough?
5. How far would £50m go if it was put back into Connexions or some other form of careers advice for school leavers to “put them in touch with their own future” through  training or employment? (The Guardian reported recently that:  Under proposed reforms to careers guidance, a new national service is due to launch next April, which would see teenagers no longer entitled to any face-to-face careers guidance. Instead they will be pointed to a website or told to call a helpline. The duty to provide face-to-face advice will be transferred to schools, though they are to get none of the £203m central funding that pays for the existing service.)

And here are some more rhetorical questions:  Is this anything more than a media gimmick to give Clegg a soundbite for his conference speech?  What’s the betting that we will hear this wheeled out over the coming months as an example of how the Lib Dems are stamping their belief in fairness all over the Coalition? Is there any wonder that another speedy response to the riots concluded that lack of trust in politicians was a cause?  Could Ministers attend summer schools in practical policy making next year, instead of pandering to their conference audiences?  What do you think?

Tory leadership wrestles with “women’s issues”

Who the hell’s doing the Tories’ PR?

Having spent last night watching Hackney burning on TV and listening to police sirens screaming past on the road outside, I appreciate that there are more important issues at stake than David Cameron’s PR.  But, this blog is supposed to be about communications, so what the hell: 

Who on earth is in charge of Tory PR?  And why did they not have the PM on a plane back from Tuscany immediately after the first night of rioting in London? 

For once I have some sympathy for the politicians -  what on earth do we expect them to do when they get back?  As Shaun Bailey put it on Newsnight :

 ”This is the thing that the media have been most childish about.  Do you think that David Cameron’s going to go down there with a shield and deal with the kids in Tottenham and then run over to Hackney?  We have a mechanism.  This is a big sophisticated society.  The police are here … we have leaders.  We have a Deputy Prime Minister, a Deputy Mayor, we have all manner of people.  The point is this, they are not the people who will put this problem right.  This problem is in our communities and in our economy.  What are our young people going to do for a job?  … We have lost control of our young people and that is our responsibility not politicians’ ” 

But whether there’s a practical need for them to be here or not, the image projected by the absence of senior ministers is poisonous to the Tories because it suggests that either:

• they have no idea what to do and are hiding from the cameras so that they don’t reveal this to an anxious public;   or
• they don’t want to get into a row – about cuts to police and youth services, or about soaring youth unemployment, or about how (if?) the clean-up will be paid for;    or 
• they simply don’t care – poor communities destroying themselves in unfashionable parts of London don’t matter enough to interrupt a holiday.

I think it’s the last one that’s the one that’s most damaging.   Cameron, Boris, Osborne, privately educated, Bullingdon-clubbers and multi-millionaires to a man, they already look startingly out of touch with “real people”.  It’s all too easy to imagine that they couldn’t care less about what happens on Mare Street.

Cameron cares about his image – that’s why he was  so sensitive to criticism for not tipping a waitress that he went back to find her.  But his priorities are badly wrong.  He should have been  here, striding purposefully about in Tottenham, talking to residents with a furrowed brow, sympathising with distraught shop-keepers and homeowners and promising that help is on its way. 

Of course he’s back now, but it’s too late. In PR terms the damage is done.  The mood music is clear - they don’t care, they don’t act, we’re all in this together at the mercy of the mob,  they’re enjoying holidays in expensive private villas.  They’re the nasty party again.  Little by little the brand is being re-toxified.