23rd October 2015
London, UK
Approximately 50% of users 18 or under. Real-time images and videos that disappear once viewed. Messages that only allow 37 characters of text. At first glance Snapchats vital statistics do not appear the ideal fit as tool to communicate the nuances of diplomacy but its relentless growth encouraged some further examination. Like the channel itself […]
Read more on Here today, gone tomorrow… But see you again soon | Reply (2)
19th October 2015
London, UK
It’s not every day an opportunity comes along to grab one of the best digital communications jobs in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office – and here it is! We’re looking to recruit an enthusiastic and talented Senior Digital Campaigns Manager to manage and deliver some of the FCO’s priority digital campaigns. If you’re a digital […]
Read more on Make your mark on global government digital communications – join our team | Reply
12th October 2015
London, England
The Digital Transformation Unit regularly gets asked about training and best practice on digital diplomacy and digital transformation by other foreign ministries, in the UK and overseas. These opportunities allow us to exchange ideas and innovations, share lessons learnt and reflect on the impact and effectiveness of our work to date. Our most recent training […]
Read more on Talking digital diplomacy in Ukraine | Reply
28th September 2015
Skopje, North Macedonia
The UK Civil Service doesn’t have an official motto – but if it did, it would almost certainly be: “speak truth unto power”. It’s a maxim that’s in the blood of good civil servants, even if they know that it won’t make their lives any easier. The best politicians learn to cherish civil service advice […]
Read more on `Speak Truth Unto Power` | Reply (1)
28th May 2015
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Amongst the various reforms underway at the Vatican, one that has generated considerable interest is the reform of Holy See communications. There had for many years been criticism of a lack of coordination and high levels of duplication in Holy See communications. The last decade had also seen a number of avoidable communications errors that […]
Read more on ‘Excellence’ in Holy See communications | Reply
16th February 2015
London, UK
Lessons in configuring a service, running pilots and handling diversity in skills As we’ve developed our new consular appointment booking service we’ve encountered several challenges along the way, not least getting into the embassy in Madrid, and learnt many lessons which we can apply to future transformation work on legalisation and emergency travel documents. Parents […]
Read more on Consular appointments – the challenges and lessons learnt | Reply (1)
4th February 2015
London, UK
What we learnt about our appointments service during a visit to Madrid As the consular appointments alpha phase drew to a close, a visit to the Embassy in Madrid was a good opportunity for some face-to-face user testing, as well as a timely reminder of local conditions. First of all, the Google map pin for […]
Read more on Testing consular appointment booking in Madrid | Reply
30th January 2015
London, UK
How the appointments service was developed, the teams involved, and the first training iteration While developing our consular appointments service through alpha to beta, we’ve worked closely with our partner BookingBug to customise their Software-as-a-Service offering to our needs – both user needs and organisational needs. As the development was not in-house good communication was […]
Read more on Consular appointments – our approach to development and training | Reply
26th January 2015
London, UK
The pilot programme for our consular appointments booking service has been running as a public beta for a few weeks now, so it’s time to take stock of progress. Since my last post on the discovery phase for consular appointments, we have focused on building and iterating the product, training staff on how to manage […]
Read more on Consular appointments – from alpha to beta | Reply
12th January 2015
London, UK
In November, my colleague Kate Burnham blogged about our work to design a new digital training curriculum for the FCO. Since then, we’ve been busy running pilots – “beta” testing 11 modules, in 4 different formats, with over 140 people in over 25 countries (and demand was so high that we already have waiting lists […]
Read more on The digital curriculum: from vision to reality | Reply (3)
