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Perplexing council speak such as 'rebaselining' banned in LGA guide (Daily Telegraph)
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GovSpeak: Gobbled Up in Gobbledygook (Washington Post)
Just some of the headlines from the 'positive' national press coverage for local government generated last week by none other than that friend, champion and staunch supporter of Town Halls, the Local Government Association.
The LGA published, to much fanfare, a list of 200 words and phrases which should be 'banned from 'council lingo', it said, featuring such gems of jargon as 'holistic governance', 'contestability', 're-baselining' and 'predictors of beaconicity'.
Underlining there was an apparently serious message to all this, LGA Chairman Cllr Margaret Eaton thundered: 'Councils have a duty, not only to provide value for money to local people, but also to tell people what they get for the tax they pay. People would be furious if they have no idea of what services their cash is paying for and how they should get to use them.'
Warning of dire consequences, she added: 'Unless information is given to people to explain what help they can get during a recession then it could well lead to more people ending up homeless or bankrupt.'
PSF readers blessed with good memories will notice similarities between this 'new' LGA banned word list and the one it published just over a year before - most memorable for causing a huge stink over on the IDeA Knowledge website. (At least LGA can't be accused of not recycling). The need to repeat this, as our very own Jack Pickard points on on his blog can only one to the conclusion that councils don't take notice of the LGA.
Worst still, despite the strong inference given by the LGA, there's no evidence of any council ever using any these 'banned' words to communicate with the public. 'Predictors of Beaconicity' is in fact a central government term which came from this DCLG research report. (Read Jack's piece here for a marvellous expose of why the LGA's 'banned word list' is so misleading – do not click here if of an easily-offended sensibility.)
With all this in mind, we punted this question onto the Twitterverse:
And, like lightning, the following replies shot back:
Then we chanced across this curious document – the LGA's Media Strategy, whose stated objective is 'to enhance the reputation of local government'. Showing how it will go about this aim, this document tells us this is all about LGA and councils 'constantly hammering home some key core messages' and that 'these messages will illustrate a narrative' (whatever that means). We asked its author, Edward Walsh, Head of the LGA Comms Office whether its misleading 'banned words' list was consistent with its Media Strategy. We got this reply:
Which, as we pointed out, seemed rather out of kilter with the way the LGA pitched the 'story' to the press, as in '200 WORDS THAT SHOULD BE BANNED FROM COUNCIL LINGO - LGA.'
Incidentally, this episode comes just as LGA annual subscription notices start landing on councils' doormats. In these belt-tightening times, a number of local authorities understandingly appear to be 'querying' the value-for-money and benefit gained from this not inconsiderable sum (£36,000 pa for a London Borough) with noises being made about some LAs even withdrawing their membership. So perhaps not the most auspicious timing for the LGA to start tarring every council with the bad communications brush.
Finally we leave the last word to John Bownas, for this veritable thing of beauty sums this all up perfectly:
200 banned words - the full unedited report
'Are we going to apply this across-the-piece and if so will the decision be actioned by a suitable advocate?
Are our partner agencies to be included, and what about the ambassador scheme?
Maybe we should adopt an area based or area focused approach and give some degree of autonomous control to managers.
Our baseline position is one of having a strong beacon record, but some more benchmarking of best practice might be needed as well as some blue sky thinking to create a Bottom-Up culture change.
In order to achieve success in our CAA we will have to demonstrate a can do culture.
Our capabilities and capacity to change our use of language may be limited, so capacity building will be essential.
Cascading this message must be a priority for senior managers.
The changes are cautiously welcomed by the communications team, but the challenge for embedding this into our daily routine is not to be underestimated.
Each manager will have to champion this plain English campaign, and citizen empowerment is at the heart of the vision, as our clients must fully understand our messages to that they can be engaged in truly cohesive communities.
Cohesiveness is a genuinely positive outcome that an be achieved through our collaboration in stripping this awkward language from our formal vocabulary.
When commissioning any reports or marketing materials we must therefore concentrate on the ways that use of plain language can improve community engagement.
It may be useful to draw up a Compact with our partner agencies to ensure that they are equally committed and that there is no conditionality to our ambition in this regard.
A consensual agreement is vital to guarantee proper ownership of this commitment, as we cannot allow contestability to surface as a stumbling bock.
Contextual analysis of some of the core developments in communicating our core message, Core principles and core values demonstrates coterminosity in a range of coterminous linguistic concepts.
Cross-cutting reviews of our literature and cross-fertilisation of ideas should be high priorities for all service managers responsible for customer contact and communication.
Democratic legitimacy comes from high levels of informed participation, and our democratic mandate is strengthened if our dialogue with customers is one of full and mutual understanding.
The direction of travel has to be one that allows more people to be engaged in this fashion because it is evident that minority influence distorts spending priorities and can even lead to double devolution.
Downstream from this report we can achieve at least one early Win by identifying edge-fit instances of poor practice that can have this new approach embedded fundamentally into day-to-day working practices.
Empowerment of communities will clearly flow from clearer communication, and our success will strengthen our position as a key enabler.
Engagement with many vulnerable groups in particular is damaged by poor or unclear use of language, and we have already made a firm commitment to engaging users so as to enhance the benefit that they obtain from our services.
The evidence base for making this commitment is a large one, and if we take the lead then we may become an exemplar authority in the field of plain English.
External challenge To our decision making will also be reduced if we can facilitate fast-track understanding of our core values and motivations.
There will also be less risk of flex in our strategic vision if our intentions are clearly communicated in this fashion.
Our financial flexibilities and freedoms are in no way affected by this move, and having a solid framework for enhancing customer understanding could provide the fulcrum we need to lever in additional service functionality and even new funding streams.
The gateway review for this plain language campaign will assess progress and give us the justification for going forward to develop more good practice and improved governance guidelines that will provide a truly holistic approach.
Holistic governance will mean that the project board can take the time to engage in a full and meaningful horizon scanning exercise that should identify even more improvement levers and means of incentivising staff to work on developing solid and realistic income streams.
Indicators of success will include the number of instances where staff begin to use their own initiative to expand their innovative capacity and where this can be positively demonstrated to the various inspectorates who will assess our interdepartmental Interface capacity.
The first iteration of this joined up approach will be to strengthen joint workingbetween our communications team and the managers responsible for a lot of the current bad practice in respect of poor use of language.
LAAs will feature the need to introduce a level playing field that can provide the foundation upon which we can lever in even more co-operation from our partners.
Leverage of the mandate that we can obtain from more engaged Localities will minimise the lowlights that might otherwise have adverse impact on our ability to deliver on our MAAs.
Mainstreaming this use of clear language is to some extent dependent upon management capacity, however meaningful consultation and meaningful dialogue unquestionably require mechanisms that deliver a menu of options and that can lead to effective multi-agency and multidisciplinary co-operation.
Municipalities have increasingly adopted this network model as a means of normalising outcomes rather than simply focusing on output measures.
Outsourced options do exist for rationalising our communications function, however the overarching need to shift the language paradigm across the organisation means that we should try to deliver our goal within the parameter of current organisational structures.
Participatory budgeting is increasingly high on our agenda, and although partnership working will deliver this goal and it is one of our current strengths, our partnerships will be made even more effective if our communication has a greater degree of clarity.
Pathfinder status is something we may be able to achieve if we can successfully come through peer challenge process that will be facilitated through the communications performance network that is due to e established shortly.
Place shaping is yet another of our key target areas that will benefit from linguistic exactitude, and some of the pooled budgets and pooled resources that we have accumulated through this workstream will be able to be directed to assist with funding the initiative as a result.
The pooled risk of working in partnership to improve our communications standards is judged to be almost zero.
Analysis of our diverse populace shows the huge potentialities that exist for practitioners Who fully engage with this programme of improvement.
Predictors of Beaconicity that have been identified to date are highly encouraging and only some of our preventative services need prioritization for priority attention.
Proactive and process driven methodologies will allow us to procure optimum solutions where in-house capacity is lacking.
Responsible procurement can be one of the best ways to Promulgate best practice across the organisation.
Proportionality does however need to be exercised and a robust protocol will protect our provider vehicles.
The quantum by which we measure our success will initially be the number of quick hit and quick win instances that can be identified.
Rationalisation of communications functions will entail some rebaselining and a reconfigured approach to resource allocation.
In the meantime, associated revenue streams that are identified as being risk based will have to show that they have robust options to allow costs to be scaled-back.
Scoping for the project has been carried out sector wise to ensure that a broad seedbed of ideas are incorporated into the overall plan and that self-aggrandizement is minimised.
Service users must be our shared priority and secondary shell developments will simply be used to signpost those customers towards clear information.
Single conversations that minimise avoidable service enquiries mean that single point of contact processes must be maximised across the organisation situational leadership where our key personnel are able to adapt to change will minimise slippage on the programme and a series of social contracts that set out our service level promises will lead to a reduction in social exclusion.
On a geographic analysis of our spatial contexts the critical stakeholder organisations will be those who can most readily contribute to a fundamental step change in our strategic position and our strategic priorities will be streamlined down to their sub-regional elements.
Subsidiarity will be a driving force as we decentralise communication roles to deliver sustainable practices that can in turn support and nurture sustainable communities.
A symposium is planned for later in the year that will look for synergies in our shared communication functions and the systematics analysis of our organisational diversity will create a new Taxonomy that will have been tested for soundness ased upon thematic elements created through encouraging thinking outside of the box, particularly from our Third Sector partners.
The resulting toolkit will give us messages that can be cascaded via a top-down Trajectory, with the first tranche likely to cover our transactional and transformational language where there is particular need to deliver transparency for staff.
Upstream from here we expect to see an upward trend In officers’ ability to utilise value-added language that promotes our vision and allows further visionary thought processes to thrive.
We fully welcome the contribution that this communication initiative will bring to the general wellbeing of our communities and we believe that the current high levels of worklessness will be reduced by he huge amount of extra time that is going to be needed to weed all of this inappropriate language from our vast reams of existing literature.
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