Scottish Government Communications

Fiona Wilson

Head of news

Communications Directorate

• Position the Scottish administration as a model of a communicating Government, delivering the Scottish Government’s Purpose by supporting everyone in the organisation to engage effectively with and influence audiences, helping Scots make informed choices and to understand the positive role of Government in their lives.

• We aim to be, and be seen to be, the top public sector, full service, ‘joined up’ communications team, providing expert advice and support; agile, responsive and creative, with the experience, skills and tools to innovate and lead in a challenging and rapidly changing environment.

Context

• Award Winning teams

• Our “Bosses”

• The Constitution

• International Reach

What most people think we do

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What we actually do

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Communications Directorate

Corporate Comms

Digital

International marketing

PR

Marketing

News

Comms

SPADs

Mkt agencies

Ministers

Media

Public

Policy

Stakeholders

NDPB’s

Scottish Government strategic objectives

SG Communications

• Around 90 staff across Marketing, PR, News, Digital, Corporate Comms and Support services

• News teams grouped around Ministerial portfolios eg Health – “virtual” teams with all disciplines

• Moving towards cross-cutting, flexible, issue based working eg Referendum

A Day in the Life of Communications

24 h

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e06.45 – Media Monitoring Team arrive

09.15 – Morning meeting

13.30 – Lunchtime news

18.00 – Evening News

17.30 – Duty Officer starts

10.30 – Scotland Tonight

11.00 – Newsnight Scotland

12.00 – FMQ’s (Thu)

11.00 – Daily Briefing for Parliamentary journalists

Typical Day – if it exists!

• Morning meeting - what are we doing, anything running that affects that/rebuttal

• Ministerial visits/press conferences

• Daily briefings to political journalists

• Forward Planning meetings

• Policy/Stakeholder discussions

• Recces, news releases, tweets, updating web, evaluation, social media monitoring

Continued……

• Foreign engagements/Trade missions• Produce film shows/Design an App• Present behaviour change evaluation to

Ministers• Staff events and stakeholder engagement• Evaluate tenders/Sign off campaigns with

Ministers• Develop new web pages with digital

agency

Key Relationships

• Policy Officials• Ministers• Special Advisers• Media• NDPB’s/Agencies

Knocked off course

• Sudden events or decisions

• Ash clouds• Extreme Weather• Terror attack

• Many things can trigger the opening of our Resilience Room - SGoRR

Questions?

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