In this GovComms episode your host, CEO and Founder of contentgroup, David Pembroke chats with Stephanie Speck, the Executive Director and Chief Comms Officer for the Department of Education & Training, Victoria.

The pair begin by discussing the topic of truth. How to encourage someone to speak the truth, why you should speak the truth and why your external perspective as a communications professional is valuable.

Stephanie shares where her journey began... in Papua New Guinea. She explains that "people are people are people anywhere in the world", that you are able to love all people, and that once you see the humanity in every person you meet, this is something that's very easy to do. This outlook on the world started her journey towards wanting to fix problems and issues she felt were unfair, inequitable or got in the way of people exercising their human rights.

David and Stephanie also touch on the battle between expediency and resilience.

"I think that really undervalues the strategic power of comms. Comms, if its about changing things, is a management tool. You use it to understand where your problems are... so you can move to a tactical perspective on where you want to be. " - Stephanie Speck.

Discussed in this Episode:

- Changing the narrative through engaging with your audience online
- Why you cant have a strategy without content anymore
- You don’t need to know everything but you need to know people who does.

EP#126 Never backing away from the truth

This weeks episode of GovComms welcomes, Melanie Gibbons Communications Advisor at Elm Communications.

Melanie has over eighteen years’ experience in communications across government, not-for-profit and the private sector in Australia and the United Kingdom. Before moving into consultancy, Melanie worked in the Commonwealth Government for over a decade. 

Your host, CEO and Founder of contentgroup, David Pembroke opens by asking Melanie how she found moving from working in government to the private sector; "I decided to... have a bit of a break from being a public servant. I never thought of myself as a very good public servant. I always tried to break the processes and break the mould a little bit, but now I've actually found that is a really good grounding for going back and working into government because I understand procurement, I understand the hierarchy. I understand what's like working with the minister's office."

Melanie shares her insight that going back to basics may be the next thing for government. She explains that "we've gotten quite caught up in social media and creativity and video production and animation and delivering all the big shiny things, which I think are amazing. But what we know is that trust in government has decreased and continues to decrease." In order to tackle this decline for citizens trust in government, Melanie suggests 'going back to those basic strategy skills, stopping and thinking about who your audience is, worrying less about the grand production that you could put on and going, "Well, where are my audience and what are they reading? What do they need to know and what's the information they need?".

Melanie's discussion with David closes with the topic of Human-centred design and how it is the at the core of good communication planning.

Discussed in this episode:
- Top tips to maximise trust in citizens
- The core of good communication
- Where to find good communicators

Ep # 127 Back to Basics

This weeks GovComms podcast welcomes a special guest, the Open Government Partnerships CEO, Sanjay Pradhan.

Sanjay joined the OGP in May of 2016. Before reaching the OGP, Sanjay served as the World Bank’s Vice President for Leadership, Learning and Innovation and the Vice President of the World Bank Institute, and the Director for Governance. 

Host, CEO and Founder of contentgroup, David Pembroke, chats with Sanjay about the mission of the OGP and its role in tackling governance challenges faced by ordinary citizens. Using three examples from Nigeria, Ukraine and Costa Rica, Sanjay breaks down the impact of the OGP in the real world. The pair explore the true impact OGP has in making governments more transparent, more participatory, more inclusive, and more accountable

"When you think of democracy, you think of the ballot box, citizens cast their vote, but all these problems existed beyond the vote. They continue to not get these services. So OGP is a way to indeed focus on the ballot box, but also beyond the ballot box empowering citizens to shape and oversee their government every year, every day, not just once in a few years when we cast our precious vote. "

The pair also discuss how digital technology has influenced transparency of governments.

Sanjay discusses how OGP can counter the rise of authoritarianism by tackling both domestic and external drivers.

Be sure to tune in to the Next GovComms release for Part two of our discussion with Sanjay. 

Discussed in this episode:

- Building Citizens trust
- Inclusion of Marginalised groups
- Taking democracy Beyond the Ballot box.

EP#128 Part one: Democracy Beyond the Ballot Box

In this weeks episode, we bring you part two of our interview with the CEO of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), Sanjay Pradhan.

The current war in Ukraine, Sanjay explains, is providing a window of opportunity for democracies to ban together and challenge authoritarianism.

"I believe in galvanising action, I believe in galvanising coalitions ...to get to the root of the problem. One route is a stronger Western alliance, or a democratic alliance as you said, but another route must be to really empower citizens and make real reforms " - Sanjay Pradhan

Sanjay chats with CEO and Founder of contentgroup, David Pembroke, about the importance of holding social media platforms accountable. He shares his thoughts on the use and misuse of information and how information can be used to polarise citizens.

The pair touch on why citizens need a voice in policy and how comms can be used as a positive medium for citizen engagement. Being citizen centric involves a three way communication consisting of government to citizens, citizens to government and governments to respond and provide feedback directly to the citizens.

Finally, Sanjay and David discuss Open Government Week coming up between the 16th and 20th of May. The event is a giant festival for open government across the globe. Inviting government, civil society and other reformers, the event harvests an opportunity to start co-creating reforms that can really make a difference. For more information head to: https://www.opengovpartnership.org/events/open-gov-week-2022/ 

Discussed in this episode:
- The war in Ukraine's impact on democracy
- The importance of government communications
- Putting citizens back in the heart of government

EP#129 Part Two: Being Citizen Centric

"We often think of performance in a pejorative way, as though that's a bad thing. The thing about performance is that if it is genuine and a reflection of the message that you genuinely feel and want to communicate, then the performance component of that is just the way in which you manage to achieve that task most effectively." - Richard Morecroft

In this episode of GovComms we are joined by Former principal news presenter for ABC Television, Richard Morecroft. Speaking of where his love for broadcasting began Richard shares that "I was just fascinated by the whole gamut of being able to potentially be a broadcaster, be an ABC announcer, which is what I wanted to be and eventually auditioned to be and was fortunate to get a job to be."

Host, CEO and Founder of contentgroup, David Pembroke, breaks down with Richard the key components of making a good communicator; "A communicator who wants to do the best possible job needs to understand what they look like, what they sound like, how they come across, and that understanding, being able to look at themselves and to make a professional, genuine assessment is a hugely important skill."

The pair touch on how technology has paved a new path for government communications and Richard exclaims his optimism for this new age. However the discussion also explores the challenges faced by communicators such as reduced audience attention span, reduced event significance and the difficulty of breaking through the huge amount of information available online.

Discussed in this episode: 

- The importance of genuine, honest communication
- Presentation skills every communicator needs
- Why one needs to check the motivation, purpose and message of their material.

To contact Richard Morecroft: richard.morecroft@hotmail.com

EP #130 Good Professional Communication is a Performance

Through conversation with industry greats, experts and innovators from around the world, GovComms delivers the latest insights and best practice in government communication. We provide the resources to help you, the government and public sector, communicate policies, services and regulations with impact. A podcast by contentgroup, leaders in government communication.