Elected officials will only stay elected if their staff communicate with each other.

Let's face it, being an elected official is a tough job. In order to accomplish what the people who voted for you want you to do and perhaps get reelected, you are going to have to accomplish a lot of different things. What's interesting about this is that you will not be able to do this by yourself. As they like to say, it's going to take a village. Or rather your entire office staff working together to make things happen. However, that's not going to happen if they aren't communicating with each other. What can you do to make this happen?

Why Communication In An Elected Official's Office Is So Hard To Do

The most important thing to realize about how an elected official's office works is that there are a lot of people involved! It all starts with the Chief of Staff -- ultimately the ring leader and the person who is ultimately responsible for making sure that things get done and get done on time. Next there may be a deputy Chief of Staff and they are there to provide an extra set of hands for the Chief of Staff. Arguably the most important person in the office is the scheduler. Where the elected official is going to go next is controlled by the scheduler and so everyone in the office needs to exchange information with this person.

The list just gets longer the closer that you look at a typical elected official's office. There will be someone who is in charge of longer term projects that are going on back home. There may be a complete legislative team that will be tracking everything that is going on that the elected official will be expected to be on top of and voting on. Just to round things out there will be someone who is in charge of communications (press releases, social media, etc.), IT, etc.

With all of these people working in an elected official's office, you can see how communication become critical. However, often times the needed communication does not happen. There are a wide variety of reasons for this, but in the end it comes down to three main causes: time, mode, and personality. None of us ever has enough time and in a busy office environment with so much to do, taking the time to keep everyone updated on what they need to know often never happens. Additionally, we all communicate best in different ways: some of us need to hear an update, others need to see it. If we don't get information in the format that we need it, then more often than not we'll ignore it. Finally, we are all different people and sometimes we just don't really like each other and when this happens we won't take the time to go talk to the people who have information that we really do need.

How To Make It Easy For Everyone To Communicate With each Other

I'd like to be able to tell you that I've got a magic wand that you can just wave and all of a sudden everyone in the office will have fantastic communication skills. That just won't happen. Instead, you are going to need the right tools to solve this problem. If your elected official has decided to use GSL Solutions' HillTop service, then you already have the solution to your communication problem close at hand.

The HillTop service provides both modern responsive public websites for elected officials as well as providing a separate private Intranet that support staff can use. For example, using the private Intranet, the scheduler can create their own set of web pages and fill them with useful information that will let everyone know where the elected official will be and what he or she will be doing at all times..

Most elected official's teams today currently store their treasure trove of data on multiple disparate systems. These can include one system for press releases, another for scheduling and reservations, and yet another for ongoing projects and vendor tracking. When GSL Solutions’ HillTop service is being used,the private Intranet can be used to create a single set of web pages where all of this data can now be stored in one place. This will allow staff members to all go to one place to get the information that they need. Note that all of the data that is stored on the private Intranet will only be available to staff employees.

What All Of This Means For You

An elected official has been put in office to do the will of the people who elected him or her. However, there is so much that has to be done that in order to be successful, the elected official is going to have to rely on a team of professionals to help make sure that everything that has to be done gets done. That team needs to do a good job of communicating with each other in order to be able to get their work done and it turns out that for a number of different reasons, that can be harder to do than you might think.

If the elected official has selected GSL Solution's HillTop service to create and maintain their official website then they already have a tool that will help to improve how the support team communicates. In addition to creating modern responsive websites, HillTop provides a separate private Intranet that staff can use. This private Intranet allows staff to create web pages that contain the information that other staff members need. No longer will it be necessary to consult various different systems in order to locate needed information, now it can all be stored on HillTop's private Intranet.

Good communication is the cornerstone of a well-run elected official's office. The larger the office is, the harder it is to ensure that everyone is providing the information that others need. GSL Solutions' HillTop service can provide an office staff with the private intranet that they need in order to smoothly store and communicate all of the critical information that is needed on a daily basis. The next time that you are considering creating a new website or upgrading your existing website, consider using GSL Solutions' HillTop service to solve the staff's communication problems!

- Dr. Jim Anderson HillTop - Political Web Sites That Get The Vote!™

Question For You: How often do you think that each person on the offic team needs to talk with each person in the office in order to be effective?

GSL Solutions' HillTop service provides politicians with a way to get voters more involved with the political process. HillTop has been designed by politicians, for politicians in order to provide easy-to-use tools that make updating a political website with current and topical information easy to do. The website becomes a powerful communication tool between the politician and the voters. More information can be found at: www.HillTopCMS.com.

Tags: public Internet, private intranet, communication, posts, pages, websites, consolidation, political web site, campaign, voters, reelected, issues