A powerful image can make a point and make you stop and look. In years gone by, image libraries were maintained by most councils. As the cuts bit they often went. Now the Local Government Association has a solution for the sector.
Read morewhy you need to get involved with #ourday
The #OurDay initiative aims to paint a picture of what local government does. And with key decisions on spending coming up there's never been a better reason to get involved. And there are tools to help you, too.
On Wednesday, councils across the country will be taking part in #OurDay, the fourth annual tweetathon to highlight the huge range of work that goes on all day, every day in local government. Last year, over 8,000 accounts tweeted 16,500 posts to more than three million people in 24 hours – and with #OurDay 2015 taking place just one week before the Chancellor’s Spending Review, we want this year’s event to be even bigger. We need to make sure that people know just how much local government does, making people’s lives better through everything from day-to-day tasks right up to life-changing interventions.
shut up about the digital divide
'The future is already here,' one commentator once said. 'It's just unevenly distributed.' But in a challenging post about the digital divide one view is that surely much of the debate is now over?
I turn on the news this morning to hear that HMRC are going to be closing 137 offices and opening new regional centres.
How did I react to that? I said 'oh ok,' to myself and carried on eating my breakfast.
How did the BBC react? With an interview posing a number of questions, followed by the big hitter – but what about all those older people that can’t use the internet?
Seriously, can we all just get a grip?
digital councils - new advice and tips for local government
We've worked with the Local Government Association to produce guidance on how to use social media more effectively. There's advice for organisations, elected members and staff. It's transferrable stuff and it's brilliant...
For many social media is now an everyday part of their lives; something as natural as a phone call or a face-to-face conversation. Twitter, Facebook and the many other digital tools available are now employed to conduct a plethora of tasks: from complaining to utility companies to sharing ideas; from ordering shopping to building networks.
download and blog: unpacking purdah: what do pre-election publicity restrictions mean in practice?
In a set period before an election tight restrictions come into force on what comms teams in the public sector can and can't do. The Local Government Association have written a rather fab guide from a local government perspective. Follow the link in the blog to the download.
The countdown for local and national elections has started and communications teams in councils around the country are working out what this means for them. In response to requests for guidance, we recently produced a short guide to the publicity restrictions during the run-up to an election. Nearly 5,000 downloads later, even I’ve been surprised by the level of interest.
The term ‘purdah’ has come into popular use in both central and local government to describe the time immediately before elections and referendums when, amongst other things, particular care must be taken in the way communications teams operate.
it's time to fightback... I'm not scared
A discussion took place on Twitter shaped by predictions of worse to come for local government. But should we be downcast? Or fight back? Here the director of comms at the LGA urges for the fightback.
Local government is doing some remarkable things. If any major business continued to deliver services against a budget reduction of 40 per cent it would be rightly lauded as heroic.
Well, that’s exactly what local government has done.
At the same time, our reputation remains high and we are trusted by our residents to do the right thing. However, the scale of the financial challenges often means that we, in local government, are never able to pause for a moment to reflect on the scale of our achievements.
why trust is an asset organisations neglect at their peril
Just recently, one comms2point0 post asked us all to stop navel gazing and look to the stars instead. As part of this the writer cautioned readers to be wary of any new 'trust' campaign and the Building Trust campaign in particular. One of the authors of that report now responds by arguing that trust is perhaps one of the most important assets we have got to get us to the stars.
by Neil Wholey
Steve Chu in his comms2point0 post here has set a challenge which I totally agree with that we must “make the case for communications to be at the centre of our organisations’ thinking”. One of Steve’s points is my number one priority to “show that communications can be a frontline resource, either by reducing the costs of service provision, improving frontline efficiency, or targeting declining resources more effectively... prove your £20,000 campaign has saved your organisation £1 million.”
a case study on rewiring national debate
How can you seek to influence debate on a national level? A campaign by the Local Government Assoiciation has done just that at a time when cuts totalling 43 per cent will be coming down the track. Through a video and other collatoral the phrase 'rewiring' has entered the vocabulary.
For those working in the public sector, funding has been the dominant issue for the last few years and for local government this has been more acutely felt than most. By the end of this parliament local government will have seen cuts totalling 43 per cent.
get your marks, get set, local government goes social
As social media week looms, the Local Government Association - the LGA - have posed a few questions. They want local government to get more social. During the week and maybe in the future too. Care to join in...?
by Michelle Rea, Sian Morgan, Liz Copeland and Kristian Hibberd
Over the last few weeks the LGA’s Communications team has been putting its collective head together on how we could use Social Media Week to further stimulate the use of social media by councillors, council officers and official council accounts.
Our thinking was that if local government made enough noise about all the great stuff being achieved by embracing the channel, the collective voice would prove powerfully persuasive to opponents, sceptics and the uninitiated.
We are keen to demonstrate through practical examples from the sector that using social media in a coordinated and sensible way can help enhance the reputation of local government, improve engagement with different elements of the community and drive efficiency.
