We're recruiting for a digital engagement manager at the moment. It's an internal recruitment exercise - the job is only available to current civil servants. The role is described in full on the Civil Service Jobs site (login required).
Extract:
As Digital Engagement Manager, you will be responsible for delivering high profile digital engagement channels and campaigns for the Department. You will work with policy and communications colleagues to exploit opportunities to use internet culture to help deliver the objectives of the Department. You will be a strategic communicator, able to apply digital engagement tools and techniques to complex issues.
You will be a digital practitioner, personally creating, editing and publishing web content and evaluating the impact. You will have day-to-day responsibility for our social media channels, with a remit to look wider and innovate using existing and emerging tools and channels, and to improve our ability to understand and act on online conversations.
You will also develop our relationships with existing online communities, helping us to listen to, reach and influence people in online communities, wherever they are. You will be an evangelist for digital engagement within the Department; helping colleagues to understand the value of digital communications and feel confident using some of the tools themselves.
Whenever you advertise roles like this, it forces you to think about what is actually required of digital communications in government, both now and in the future. So before posting this advert, we paused to think about how alphagov and the Government Digital Service might affect such roles.
We also stopped to think about which skills to insist on. A few years ago writing the skills bit of a job advert for a digital comms role would have been straightforward (Essential: Writing for the web, CMS/Dreamweaver experience, photo editing; Desirable: interest in policy, HTML, understanding of HCI principles). But it's less straightforward now, particularly for a digital engagement job like this, which involves almost no responsibility for website content management.
For roles like this we need people who are comfortable using the tools of digital engagement, with evidence (personal or professional) of practical use of social media. Experience operating a government CMS is less relevant than experience organising an event through Facebook. But roles like this aren't really about the tools, they are about people. We need people in our team who can personally engage and influence (sometimes reluctant) policy colleagues on their own terms, and sell the practical benefits of digital engagement.
If that sounds like you, you should apply.