Bringing digital strategy to life for a regulator

The Competition and Markets Authority identified hard-to-reach staff groups, across a range of grades, from Directors to team administrators. It wanted staff to ‘think digital’, both in their daily tasks and when planning major projects. The agency has traditionally been quite cautious about digital and held a limited budget.

To make the most sustainable impact and to help overcome the cautious nature of the organisation, we delivered:

  • Training for 15 Digital Pioneers, to help them develop skills and tools to support colleagues
  • Coaching for policy teams, to kickstart 5 pilot projects that would put digital engagement at the heart of their plans
  • We hosted digital surgeries for busy team administrators, to identify free online tools that would help make their day-to-day work easier
  • We produced a ‘digital blueprint’ for the senior team. This was designed to give them enough knowledge and confidence in what good digital projects should look like, to ensure that proposals were assessed and signed off quickly

Digital pilot projects included engagement with student communities and blogging on third party websites, rather than relying on their audience to complete forms on their website.

Their Digital Pioneers hold staff surgeries and teach social media to colleagues, helping to build and maintain enthusiasm.

Best of all, one attendee at our social media surgery described the experience as life changing (!), after using Doodle Polls and IFTTT for the first time.

Project Outcomes

The outputs of the project ranged from strategy documents to hands-on skills development; immersion sessions to supported coaching of pioneers and pilot projects. The outcomes were equally diverse.

For instance, one project started using outreach with online communities to help extend reach and get input to a campaign:

  • it saw 10,000 visits to our CMA’s materials
  • the shortcut link was embedded in several websites and continued to generate click throughs over a long period
  • on Twitter, the new-style press release and visual tweet got 28,000 impressions each – about 10x what CMA would normally expect – with comparable levels of engagement and click through

 

How could we help you?

Talk to us informally about how we approach this kind of work, ballpark budgets and timescales – or just to help you refine your brief: email [email protected]