EP#145 Personalising Government Communications

"Doing that allows us to be more personalised with our communications. And that's definitely the future for us in government communications, you know? Making it more personalised. To be honest, the less we communicate the better. Because people are so busy these days, they don't want to hear from you with emails every day, or how many emails do you get every day in your inbox? It's so frustrating and we understand that. We get that feedback from customers.." - Angela Kamper

A new GovComms season begins with Angela Kamper. Angela is the Executive Director for Brand Digital and Communications at the New South Wales Department of Customer Service.

Host, David Pembroke, chats with Angela about how her previous career in journalism has helped her in her role at the Department of Customer Service.

"Sometimes people are a bit skeptical of journalism, so when you first start in government, people have been burnt perhaps, in the past or story hasn't been told the way they want it wanted it to be told. So when you come in as a journalist, you need to kind of sell yourself a little bit in the beginning, and start really focusing on building those internal relationships and showing how your storytelling can help them to get the right message across in a better way, so people can listen and engage with content." - Angela Kamper

The pair discuss how the view of Government communications has changed throughout the years.

"In the past, people would often go to comms in a crisis. But now they've realised that, well, we actually have to engage the community before we make a decision. So we are playing a different role now, and we are really demonstrating that when you engage the community, you get a much better policy outcome, or programme outcome" - Angela Kamper

Finally, David and Angela share some of the key aspects of the Department of Customer Service that make it a global leader in citizen-centric communications.

Discussed in this episode:

• Personalising Government Communications
• The benefits of a Journalist background
• The inner workings of the Department of Customer Service
  

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  Transcript available for this episode here: EP#145 Personalising Government Communications with Angela Kamper