About a year ago, I was approached by a communications auditing company conducting an evaluation on Rocky View County.
A consultant, with many years of experience, met with me and asked me a series of probing questions about my experiences with Rocky View. She took meticulous notes as I described what it was like dealing with members of council, staff and the County’s communications department.
She also asked me my view of how transparent Rocky View is and how I felt the community saw the County.
It was an interesting conversation and I was able to express a lot of my concerns, including the difficulty I sometimes had in accessing information and the way I, at times, felt bullied when dealing with Rocky View.
I have been publicly reprimanded during a council meeting for a previous story and privately berated in my dealings with the County. I have also had the opposite experience, being treated with respect and kindness.
As a reporter, I had an excellent working relationship with the County’s communication team and with the majority of the councillors and staff, whom I respect.
I was able to share all of this with the communications auditor, who at the time, assured me my interview was confidential. She also told me she and a colleague would be personally interviewing members of council, County staff, residents and stakeholders in the community.
It was all done as part of a communication evaluation and strategy development project to be used to support the communications element of the County’s corporate strategy.
When the project began, Rocky View’s goal was to complete the interviews by the middle of February 2012 and to have the evaluation completed by the fall of 2012.
In early March, six months after the expected release of the report, I began to question why the document hadn’t been released.
I emailed the communications department and was told by Manager Grant Kaiser until it was presented to council, it wasn’t public.
Frustrated with the delay, I requested the release of the report under the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act.
Several weeks later I received a letter, signed March 21, refusing my request.
The letter stated the “formal research and audit report is incomplete and if released could lead to misleading and inaccurate information.” The letter was signed County Manager Ted Gard, who reiterated the County intends to release the records at a public council meeting.
I later received a copy of the report from an inside source.
The Communications Audit and Strategy Final Report, as completed by Elaine Dixson, president of Key Concepts Ltd, and Glenna Cross, president of Cross Wise Communications Ltd., dated Sept. 28, 2012.
The report states 47 personal interviews were conducted, as well as employee and resident focus groups in creating the document. The consultants also prepared a three-year communications strategy based on their findings.
Overall, the report said the County has a long way to go to reach excellence in its communications and recommends a number of solutions.
It contains detailed information on how staff and residents view the County’s current communication protocol, its reputation (which the report says tends to the negative, at least for external stakeholders, including residents), and the interviewee’s view of council.
The report also includes a number of recommendations including establishing spokespersons for the reeve, County manager and other key personnel and developing a corporate management strategy to provide communications training and support for senior leaders.
For the most part, I believe the members of council and County staff are doing their best for the residents of the municipality.
That being said, I am quite certain the report was funded by taxpayers and should be public. Getting the information out there about Rocky View’s weaknesses just might be the quickest road to fixing the problems.
