Launching the government’s new communications plan, which sets out an estimated total comms spend for 2014-15 of £289m, Aiken said an advert inviting people to apply for the 100 information officer (IO) and assistant information officer (AIO) posts went live yesterday, to recruit a “new generation of communicators” skilled in digital technologies.
The new staff will be recruited by an assessment centre established by the Cabinet Office, then deployed to departments. In future, the recruitment of IOs and AIOs will have to be proposed by a group of comms directors, and signed off by a new government communications board chaired by Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude.
Aiken also told his audience that now “anyone who works in government communications is required to do at least four pieces of professional development every year” in order to be “eligible for promotion or a sideways move”.
His new strategy brings together more than 200 individual communications priorities from across government, rationalising them under three key terms: ‘economic confidence’, ‘fairness and aspiration’, and ‘Britain in the World’.
Asked by CSW whether his efforts to strengthen the corporate management of the communications profession have met any resistance, Aiken said: “We’ve tried to take people with us on this, and this has been properly collectively put together. Because we have done it together, I think it is working – but we are on a journey.”