The Unwritten Rules for Engaging Government

Governments have formal processes, rules, and institutions. But anyone who has spent much time working in or around government also knows that there are plenty of unwritten conventions about how things actually get done, including how organizations effectively engage with ministers and their offices. For people outside of government, political offices, or professional advocacy, many of those conventions can be surprisingly opaque. Not knowing them can also mean inadvertently undermining your own advocacy efforts. FutureBridge, which provides training on engaging with and working alongside government, has published a particularly useful series of posts that helps demystify some of this. They cover the unwritten rules of meeting with ministers, understanding the role(s) of exempt political staff in ministerial offices, how governments and political staff actually approach policy development, and some of the fundamentals of effective advocacy. As I read through them, I found myself…