How do we ensure that implementation and delivery are given a central place in good policy advice? How can we build communications into the policy development process.

1. Getting the
operational voice into
policy design:
the communications lens

2. “How do we ensure that implementation
and delivery are given a central place
in good policy advice?”
 Get input
 Test your design
 Get credit for the work
 Persuade your audience to use product
 Make it better

3. How do we... (cont’d)
 How will this play?
 What are the optics?
 Is this coherent with the last 9 things
we did or said?
 If we said it differently, could we accomplish the
same thing more effectively?

4. “People of merit are too often overlooked
or denied opportunities because of…
discrimination. The people of Ontario recognize
that when objective standards govern
employment opportunities, Ontario will
have a workforce that is truly representative
of its society.”
– Preamble to the Employment Equity Act, 1993

5. Identify the audience
 Who is the policy trying to affect/reach?
 Are there special communications needs – 3rd
language, or EasyRead – you should use?
 What are the sensitivities for the audiences?
 Who are the movers, shakers and influencers?
 Can we get them on board?
 Who has written on this issue lately?

6. Consult them
Engage with a sample of your
target market
Use established key messages,
backgrounders, FAQs to respond
Use what you hear to tune your
messages

7. Test a draft:
Rinse, lather and repeat
Plain language, clear writing, objectives
and impacts spelled out are REQUIRED
Be clear so people can actually
understand the issues in play
Don’t get hung-up on nuance
Leave the nuance for the regulations;
get the preamble right, first

8. Get supporters on board
Get organization-level supporters
ready to support
Positive stories told well can reduce
or eliminate pushback
Go broad – into the regions and
affected communities

9. Launch well
This is your best media hit opportunity
Avoid press conferences; media
availability is better for clean messages
Find some real people with real stories
to tell

10. Outreach
Get out and sell the product
Have an outreach plan with a staged rollout
to communities and locations
Get ready to train the trainers
Use your social media strategies
Keep finding new champions
Don’t be afraid to tell the story AGAIN

11. “The reason why certainty of meaning must be paramount is clear
enough. [Government] documents impose obligations and confer
rights and neither the parties to them nor the draftsmen of them
have the last word in deciding exactly what those rights and
obligations are. That can only be settled in a Court of Law on the
words of the document. If anyone is to be held irrevocably to
meaning what he says, he must be very careful to say what he
means. And words are an imperfect instrument for expressing
complicated concepts with certainty; only mathematics can be
sure of doing that.”
– Sir Ernest Gowers, Plain Words