Your mission, should you choose to accept it…
…is highly ambitious, if not impossible, Mr or Ms imminent Director of Digital Engagement.
Your job description – indeed this new job – is unquestionably the most exciting thing I’ve read and digitally engaged with since the last unbelievably exciting thing, in that it says:
Within six months the Head of Digital Engagement will have developed a strategy and implementation plan and be able to show concrete signs of momentum in executing the plan.
Within a year the Head of Digital engagement should be able to point to two departments whose use of digital engagement are recognised in the digital community as being world class.
Within two years the use of world class digital engagement techniques should be embedded in the normal work of Government.
So no pressure then. It’s truly a cracking job ad, targeting the challenges faced by government’s digital pioneers with a laser-like precision. And it looks like you’ll be one of us too, in that you will:
Work closely with web teams to ensure that digital communications are making the most effective and efficient use of hardware and software.
Act as head of profession for civil servants working on digital engagement.
Be acknowledged by [your] peer group to be a leader in this field [with] a CV that creates instant credibility and confidence with Ministers, senior officials and digital communicators in Whitehall.
With that in mind I wonder who you will be, where you will come from and whether I might even know you already. Some even suggest it’s a done deal.
A few of my elders and betters have had a punt at guessing but I’d be certain to get it wrong, so I’ll watch and wait, and have a go at shaping your role courtesy of Steph.
Finally – with regret that I failed to write about them separately – worth noting that this is but the last in a long list (in a very short time) of catalysts for an explosion in government digital engagement.
The fuse is well and truly lit. Now stand back.
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Comments
[...] Williams with a refreshing take on the new Digital Engagment Tsar’s job description: “So no pressure then. It’s truly [...]
Tell me why not? This ‘stuff’ is not in the MSM. why not? why just be oppositional? why ‘lose’?
I have more than one reason to dislike the Daily Mail. But there’s also more then one reason to bother.
think on.
Hi Paul, my instinct with a major challenge to change the way people do things is to put early (and by it’s nature limited) effort into the people who are most likely to support what you are doing. Later, with more of a head of steam and better evidence, it becomes time to seek to shift the attitude of the cynics or resolute nay sayers.
Er, yeh. but twitter is used by all. including mail journos. such is PR. gov PRists should be on this. er, let’s wait and see. but s’cuse my pessimism (prove me wrong).
Of course government should be using these tools. However that doesn’t mean that the first thing this new head of Digital Engagement should do is try and stop the Mail writing knocking pieces about either govt policy or govt use of social media. They can use their time much more productively by ‘engaging’ with people who will help progress what they want to achieve.
Or have I got the wrong end of your stick here?
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Hello, I'm Neil Williams. I'm a government web geek, a dad, a husband, a grower of veg, a keeper of hens and a lapsed comedy writer, roughly in that order. 
Love the idea. It is an ambitious job and needs someone with qualities so far beyond simply ambition!