Changing the Process for Strategic Communications Management at HHS

Background:  As communication science has evolved to leverage digital channels to reach our American citizens with relevancy in the moment, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs (ASPA) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has implemented a process innovation that has dramatically improved the way we plan, implement, and evaluate our communications.

Program background:  Measuring impact and correcting a campaign mid-course has always been difficult for marketing professionals and especially challenging for health communicators who have broad, long range program goals.  This challenge of evaluation has implications beyond knowing whether an investment in communications achieved the goals of the program; it impacts the design and approval of communications products as teams struggle to find common ground for what defines impact beyond individual opinion. To meet this challenge, ASPA designed a strategic communication planning (SCP) process to be used across the department that provides a common methodology and language for the entire communications product lifecycle.  Captured in an online tool, the SCP guides teams through the planning process, manages review and feedback across functions, and provides best practice approaches for measuring impact.  

Evaluation Methods and Results:  Adopting a new process is never easy, especially one that touches so many professionals across a wide range of disciplines and organizations.  To achieve deep and lasting cultural change, ASPA employed evidence-based principles of both organizational change and communications science. The new process is highly innovative in at least three aspects: (1) it focuses attention on outcomes achieved with a communication product rather than how it is created; (2) it promotes involvement of a wider range of institutional partners in the planning process; and (3) it employs an online technology platform for coordinating the process. ASPA took a co-creative approach to the new process design, ensuring both buy-in and a well-designed fit to the way program teams and public affairs offices worked.  As a result, adoption by our communications professionals has been high, with over 500 participants after a year of use.  Just as telling is the communication products that have been eliminated as a result of the process, a reduction of more than 50% in projects that require ASPA review, as teams used data to focus on the products with the most impact.  And because collaboration across Agencies is expected, the SCP raised the bar for everyone, providing a common language of impact to be formed that guides the entire lifecycle of HHS communications products.  

Conclusions:  For HHS, it is crucial that we present one face to the American public.  This ensures we remain a credible, reliable source of knowledge and expertise.  While the tendency is to focus on the things we can immediately influence, it was important that we reach for broader change to achieve that “One HHS” face across digital channels.  Our new process was science based, making logical sense to our colleagues.  But we also took small steps towards implementation instead of expecting change to happen all at once, providing not just buy-in but true leadership from these key stakeholders to make the change stick.

Implications for research and/or practice:  N/A