Communication

Effective communication with the public, both in Britain and overseas, is key to delivering the FCO strategy. Over the past year, we have taken significant steps forward to improve the way we do this.

For this communication to be effective, it must be genuine engagement. More and more, we need to bring thinking and ideas from outside the FCO into our policy-making processes to create joint solutions, and to work with others to deliver these solutions. The FCO has always done this. But we need to do this more systematically and by using new tools and technology.

The biggest single change we have made has been to set up a unified Communication Directorate. The new Directorate is responsible for four key areas:

• developing of new theories and models of communication that help the FCO’s network to turn these into practice
• the FCO’s direct engagement with the public through the UK-based media, its own website, and our scholarship and fellowship programmes
• the relationships with the major FCO-funded public diplomacy partner organisations – the BBC World Service, the British Council, British Satellite News and Wilton Park and key stakeholders, and
• improving two-way communication with our own staff, and strengthening the links between UK and overseas posts.

Developing the model and supporting the network

The Public Diplomacy Board, chaired by the Minister for Europe, Jim Murphy, has continued to develop and test a more effective theory of public diplomacy. In particular, it has set up a series of pilot public diplomacy projects focused, respectively, on climate security, democracy and supporting UK business. These pilots have provided the opportunity for testing different aspects of public diplomacy work, including stakeholder analysis, evaluation techniques, joint working with the British Council and using more creative products.

The Director of Communication, Lucian Hudson, has led a corporate communication change programme – ‘Making Communication Mainstream’ – which is geared to supporting heads of mission and their policy and communication teams.

The Communication Directorate has developed new skills-based training courses for key communicators, including one specifically for heads of mission. And we have also developed a new strategic communication consultancy team to provide targeted support to the network on specific communication issues. In 2007/08 this team has been particularly active in supporting the FCO’s work on climate change.

The stakeholder engagement team has been reviewed and will continue to focus on providing a consistent approach to getting organisations involved in developing and delivering our policies. The team has developed frameworks and toolkits to help feed these principles into all areas of our work. This is a move away from its previous and traditional outreach activity.

We plan to draw together our learning from our work over the past couple of years into an FCO publication to be released later in 2008.

Direct communication

The FCO Press Office has been restructured to create a smaller, high-calibre team with an emphasis on developing innovative and productive relationships with our most important media contacts.

We have been reforming and improving our scholarship and fellowship work, to make sure that it creates the networks we need to deliver our key policy outcomes over the coming years.

We now have a smaller, better-organised scholarship programme that is focused on the leaders of tomorrow. In 2007 we carried out a substantial review of our Chevening Fellowship Programme, which we found was delivering well against its objectives. We have launched a new £0.5 million fund to build a stronger alumni (former students) network and have begun a consultation process to increase the level of engagement that British business and partners across Government have with our scholars and fellows.

The FCO completed its FCOWeb project, which replaced the old FCO website with a new one. The £20 million project, which remains on time and on budget, will provide a fast and resilient new system using leading-edge technology for all users. We have redesigned the structure and the ‘look and feel’ of all FCO websites and we have reviewed their content. The new system will be introduced between March and September 2008.

A key challenge for the FCO in the coming months and years will be to move from using the internet as a way of delivering information to using it as a forum for genuine discussion with the public in the UK and overseas. We have recruited a new head of digital engagement to take this work forward, and we will report on progress next year.

As part of our work to make better use of the internet, we have been experimenting this year with online social media, and have launched a series of new collaborative tools (at: https://blogs.fco.gov.uk, http://uk.youtube.com/ukforeignoffice and www.flickr.com/foreignoffice).

A blog is an online diary that other people can add their comments to. The FCO blogs have generated a great deal of interest. For example, the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, has posted regular text and video blogs on key foreign policy issues. Our Ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, has contributed several blogs a week, often with photographs and videos. A new entrant, Sarah Russell, began blogging before she started work at the FCO and kept a blog about her induction and first few weeks in the Office. Many other staff have contributed blogs during the year.

Public diplomacy partners

During 2007/08, the FCO worked closely with the key grant-in-aid-funded public diplomacy partners as they streamlined their operations and focused increasingly on high priority work.

The BBC World Service, which in 2007/08 received £255,043,000 in FCO funding, continued to reach record audiences across the globe (183 million recorded in 2006/07). It also strengthened its commitment to future media through increased interactive programming and online video content. It launched a 12-hour daily Arabic television service on 11 March 2008, which will increase to 24 hours a day in 2008/09. It is preparing to launch Persian television in 2008/09.

In 2007/08 the British Council received £194,162,000 in grant-in-aid funding and worked directly with 17.3 million people. It refocused its grant-in-aid resources in the regions and countries of highest priority to the UK, in particular the Middle East and Asia. It also redefined its strategic objectives, with a renewed focus on climate change, creative economy and dialogue with representatives from different cultures. In the 2007 comprehensive spending review the British Council received additional funding for the Reconnect element of its Intercultural Dialogue programme.

The FCO continued to work closely with Wilton Park, which has maintained its status as one of the world’s leading academically independent institutions for dialogue on major issues of international policy. In 2007/08 Wilton Park brought together foreign policy practitioners and experts from Britain and around the world for 47 conferences. These conferences covered a wide range of topics, including nuclear non-proliferation, tackling counter-insurgency, global migration, responding to disasters, Kosovo and engaging with Islamic youth.

The FCO-funded British Satellite News (BSN) has continued to provide high quality, independent daily TV news footage to over 500 overseas broadcasters, focusing on British engagement with the Arab and Islamic world, climate security and the promotion of UK science, technology and business. BSN is now also an important provider of broadband video for the FCO in both English and Arabic, contributing to the development of FCO online Web 2.0  platforms.

Internal communication

The internal communication team played a key role in realising and communicating the new strategic framework to staff across the FCO network, using the full range of its communication channels. Building on feedback received from staff in the effectiveness of corporate communication survey in January 2007, the team revamped and improved several key communication tools, including the in-house staff magazine, News+Views, and intranet, FCONet. Over the coming year, the team will focus on exploring new technology to convey messages in a more interactive and personalised manner.

Staff survey 2007

In December 2007 the FCO ran its annual feedback survey among its 16,000 staff. The survey asked for their views on their jobs, working environment and career progression and the results gave the FCO Board information about current levels of staff satisfaction.

The results, published in February 2008, were positive in many areas (and generally higher than the government average). Staff feel that they are doing something worthwhile and there is a great deal of pride in the organisation. There are also signs of improvement in those areas where the FCO has been weak in the past – notably on change and management. But we need to continue to improve in some important areas, such as providing job security and promotion opportunities.

The Board is acting on the results. The Director General, Change and Delivery, James Bevan, is leading the work to address the key concerns and tackle areas for improvement.