Political Staff and Sausage Making

Another round of political emails released and people get another look at the culture behind the political curtain.  You may like what you see or you may not, but the reality is that we just keep seeing more of it.

This presents an interesting conundrum for political planners who often discuss partisan planning through emails with staff, sometimes in crass, cynical terms.  For their part, staff will ask and entertain questions that suggest a lack of clarity around their positions, overall responsibilities and even the content of their roles.

As it's clear FOIs aren't going to go away and attempts to permanently muzzle staff aren't going to work, you'd think the logical option would be to turn these public intrusions into the emails of the nation's politics into wins by ensuring training, protocols, clarity of role and communication and professionalism at every turn.  That would be the smart thing to do.

So, instead, look for a decrease in official email account use and the odd shocking revelation that staff have been told to use text and other alternative forms of communication to carry on business as usual.