Digital Communications Governance in the Public Sector: A Holistic Approach

What strategies are effective for digital communications governance in the public sector?

Organizations want the information they communicate on their digital channels to be relevant, up-to-date, and in a consistent tone of voice that matches with their values. When it comes to the public sector, citizens absolutely depend on the delivery of such accurate, clear information. Public sector organizations also frequently have to grapple with complex legal requirements around accessibility and compliance, to ensure their services are open to the broadest range of visitors possible. Digital Communications Governance (DCG) helps to ensure these needs are met consistently across complex web properties.

At its core, Digital Communications Governance is exactly what it sounds like: oversight and implementation of guidelines and procedures on what, how, and by whom information is communicated online.

Setting up this governance can be a daunting task, involving input from many people. Luckily, we at Palantir.net have worked with numerous public sector organizations on their digital transformation journeys. We’ve assembled our findings into a high-level guide to help you approach the fundamentals of digital communications governance.

We will cover:

• The evolution of digital governance and transformation
• Agile practices for communications governance
• Auditing and identifying stakeholders
• Documenting communications governance policies

For organizations within the public sector, such governance is critical for maintaining open and accessible communication between the public and their governing bodies. Yet implementing and maintaining modern digital communications practices can prove especially challenging for organizations who are reckoning with complicated hierarchies, digital infrastructure that isn’t up-to-date, and traditional working practices which are inflexible to change. We specialize in helping organizations meet these complex challenges — learn more about our services. 

Evolution of digital communications governance

Digitization has become a key area of development for public sector entities. Indeed, the OECD Digital Government Index indicates that nearly all governments around the world are taking efforts to establish the “foundations for a digital transformation of the public sector”. Many public sector entities are now legally obliged to carry out such modernization efforts — in the U.S., for example, the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act (IDEA) stipulates that all public sector entities begin making the necessary preparations for modernization.

IDEA guidelines relevant to communications include:

• Write content in plain, conversational language
• Make content compliant with the latest WCAG accessibility guidelines (accessible to screen readers, assistive technologies, etc.)
• Digitize services and forms
• Use web analytics and customer feedback to update services
• Optimize content for search engines

We’ve found that embracing modernization efforts around digital communications requires not just new software and communications policies — it often requires an entirely new approach to undertaking such work in the first place. 

Foundations of digital communications governance

Ideally, your organization will already have a broader governance structure, outlining working methodologies which you can adapt specifically to your communications needs. If not, our comprehensive guide to Digital Governance will provide a good overview. If you’re starting governance from scratch, we recommend starting with considering how such work will be carried out. 

Agile methodologies

When it comes to implementing effective governance, we follow agile principles. Agile began as a set of working practices that began in software development, but has since been applied to many different kinds of work and project management tasks.

Some of the key agile principles which are particularly useful for governance include:

• Prioritizing customer (or citizen) satisfaction
• Welcoming and adapting to change, even in the later stages of project
• Promoting sustainable progress (i.e., a continuous and sustained pace of work, rather than bursts of high-intensity activity)
• Using self-organizing teams to make key decisions, rather than a top-down, hierarchical approach
• Meeting at regular intervals throughout the project to reflect on progress and efficacy, and then adjusting future plans accordingly

Megan Hack, our Director of Delivery, recommends not focusing so much on agile as a term and a set of rules, but more on what it aims to achieve: "You're trying to thread a needle between offering a strong path forward, but also telling people to enact change where necessary. You're trying to balance genuinely looking for people's wisdom and input, and also giving them a place to put it."

Working this way leads to greater employee involvement, and allows teams to adapt plans as and when new information emerges. However, organizing around sustainable, repeatable intervals of short-term work rather than a fixed, long-term plan can be daunting for teams who are used to working within more traditional project management frameworks. If you need tailored assistance on how best to adopt more flexible working methods within your organization, we can help. 

Communications audit and identifying stakeholders

Once the “how” of your communications governance has been established, it’s time to set the scope. This involves creating a comprehensive overview of the different channels where digital communication is taking place. The overview should include any channel that conveys information from or on behalf of your organization to an external audience (i.e., constituents who visit your websites, receive emails from your organization, etc.).

This channel overview might include:

Websites, subsites, and landing pages
News portals and blogs
Publications which are distributed digitally (guides, leaflets, etc.)
Newsletters and emails
Social media channels

This list will provide you with the top-level categories that need to be covered within your communications governance framework. Once you have an overview of the communications channels, you can move from the “what” to the “who” — identifying the responsible stakeholders.

Establishing a digital communications governance committee

A Digital Communications Governance Committee is an advisory group to help inform policy and governance of your digital communication properties. They should meet at regular intervals to help determine and update your governance policies. This group should be assembled from employees who work across the different platforms identified in your audit, to capture the broadest range of information and input possible.

Someone should “own” every facet of your digital presence, and be ultimately accountable for adherence to all related policies and procedures. The owners are responsible for the relevant development and maintenance of their property, and for delegating any necessary tasks. The owners do not have to be committee members — but who owns what should be captured in your digital governance documentation. 

Documenting communications governance policies

Once committee membership and ownership have been established, it’s time to document the policies and procedures around your digital communications governance.

Exactly what this document will include will depend on your organization’s specific communications workflow and output — but some general areas you are likely to address include:

• What digital properties are covered by the governance framework
• The roles and access permissions of who will draft, edit, and publish comms materials
• Guidelines for content production (style guide, plain language guidelines, voice/tone guidelines, etc.)
• Procedures and responsibilities for editing and updating existing communications content — including emergency procedures and how they’re triggered
• What security and accessibility laws and guidelines must be complied with, and best practices for compliance
• Tools and platforms used for creating and publishing communications materials
• Guidelines for updating the governance documents and policies themselves

Visibility Within Your Organization

Just as important as the documentation itself is how such information is shared with the wider organization. Your governance documentation should be open and readily accessible to all employees within your communications workflows, and any relevant updates should also be communicated. Such documentation might take the form of an internal document, a publicly hosted webpage, a wiki, a design system, or a mix of the above. Regardless of its form, your documentation should be integrated into your existing communications workflows by having it hosted in the place where it’s most useful and visible to those who’ll be working with it. 

Change management

Having change management mechanisms in place will help your governance policies feel like “living documents”, and ensure they continue to be relevant to your working practices as your business’ technologies, needs, and circumstances change.

Some questions to consider:

• How are changes and amendments to your governance policies introduced?
• Can people outside of the Digital Communications Governance Committee request changes or additions?
• How are changes debated and decided?
• Will regular surveys or interviews be conducted, to support amendments?
• Will regular audits of compliance and regulatory guidelines take place, to support amendments?

It's worth paying particular attention to the interviewing and surveying facet of change management. "In my experience, if a committee is going to be deciding on something, they will do so with a calmer, more peaceful mind if we can say we reviewed this with the following groups, and we augmented it with their feedback," says Lily Berman, Palantir’s  Senior UX and Content Strategist. 

Takeaways: maintaining relevant and robust governance

The best digital communications governance strategies are more than a set of policies — they take into account how governance is carried out, who is accountable for it, and how such policies are documented and communicated. They also contain mechanisms for change management, ensuring that they remain relevant as your organization’s needs develop over time.

When it comes to handling digital communications governance in interconnected systems, partnering with a third party can help you to get the level of oversight and compliance you need. Palantir specializes in designing, building and sustaining complex digital solutions with high levels of accessibility and compliance—find out if our services are a good fit for your technical challenges.