Understanding perspective and government-citizen communication

For those of us who have spent long hard years in public service as citizen activists, it is sometimes hard to understand how government really functions. I don’t mean who reports to whom, but rather why governments act the way they do, and who really makes a given decision, and how they are reached. At times, government appears monolithic. If they move in a given direction, it is intentional, willful, the act of a single purpose. This is how conspiracy theories are born. In more practical terms, this is how governments and public agencies develop reputations or perceptions in the culture.

Inside of the agency, however, is chaos. Why? As a veteran public servant explained to me towards the end of my experience, there are always high demands for attention because public agencies can’t control the flow of demand — if a citizen wants some information they have to provide it. It’s not like the private sector, where demand can be managed by raising prices, or by simply refusing business. As a result, in any given public task, the goal is to aim for the center of the bull’s eye, but you’re “just happy if you manage to hit the paper the target is printed on” and then you move on to address the next public request. Result? Internal chaos. Project and task juggling, interdepartmental friction, personnel issues, varying levels of individual and team productivity, and so on and so forth.

I’ve created a model of this: I call it the Inner-Outer Standpoint Model of Government Communication:

In the center is the public agency with a smooth consistent skin. Inside this skin is one inner group, the staff members of the public agency, with little squiggly blue lines representing the chaotic communicative actions taking place inside the agency. Outside the skin are three outer groups: the electeds, the citizens & stakeholders, and the public advisory groups. Each communicates with the staff and with each other.

I originally devised this model purely to explain the differing perspectives of those who inhabit the government space daily — staff — and those tho do not. In creating it, however, I noticed a few other interesting dynamics that the model illustrates as well:

How might we improve this situation? Calming the internal communications to a less chaotic pattern will help, but the internal complexity and external appearance of power and simplicity are part of the essential nature of public agencies. The best answer may lie in thinning or even removing that “government skin.” True transparency may prove the key, more than just additional public advisory bodies or making documents public records, but a complete pro-am style blurring of lines between staff and citizens. Short of that, communications officers and public outreach specialist will need to work hard to find ways to bring common perspectives on key issues between the inner and outer parties.