Communications Team Lead: Digital Collaboration Division

Chief - Communications, Storytelling & Marketing
DIGITAL FIRST TEAM, OTTAWA HOME OFFICE

Seeking a creative communications lead for an agile start-up team that is developing an open, accessible digital workspace with partners in Canada and around the world.

We are seeking a self-starter to shape this role in a fast-growing team. As the division develops an open and accessible digital workspace with a network of partners, the Chief’s role is to develop and implement a communications, storytelling and marketing strategy. The Chief will lead a team of three in a start-up environment to create delightful, inspiring approaches and tools to help people tell the story of the Digital Workspace as it develops.

Who are we?

The Digital Collaboration Division of the Treasury Board Secretariat is a team of passionate public servants that helps the Government of Canada and its partners work together, in the open, to create a better world. How? By developing an accessible digital workspace as an open source software project – with open standards, open source software, and light-weight partnerships to help us get it right.

As the Chief, Communications, Storytelling & Marketing, you will:

• Create storytelling vehicles, including an interactive online presence that helps institutional and individual partners communicate about the workspace, get involved to build with us, and use the existing tools.
• Lead a team of communication and multimedia officers in the development of key communication materials to develop a cohesive narrative.
• Tell the story of the team's progress as we go, to inspire and explain how we work, our mission vision and values.
• Transition to a new, more inclusive brand that can continue to evolve.
• Join, and grow, a network of professionals actively experimenting to make Canada’s public service more open, accessible, and high performing.

We’re looking for a Chief who is:

• Lively and open Ready to inspire with communications strategies and plans, make them live, and adapt as the project unfolds.
• Future-friendly A communications leader who has a vision for what could be, someone who is actively looking to change the status quo.
• Human-first An open, authentic and human leader who can and will trust this unique communications team, be transparent and connected, and create space for the whole team to shine and make their contributions reverberate for users and colleagues.
• Ready to build (and build open) A communications leader who is ready to release products and ideas fast, iteratively, and in the open.
• Flexible and creative Working with team members and partners around the world, and across-sectors, ready to embrace experimentation with the way we work.
• A storyteller at heart Here to put the stories, and the people who live them and tell them, at the centre of their work.

You'll need to have:

• A university degree in media studies, public relations, communications, journalism, marketing, translation, public relations or a related field (or equivalent experience).
• Proven leadership in creating, starting-up, executing and continuously adapting communications strategies and plans.
• Proven leadership and management skills, including delivering on results and supporting a team to perform.
• Familiarity with a variety of communications options and approaches, including digital approaches.
• Excellent people skills to interact with colleagues across sectors, partners in cross-functional teams, and users.
• A desire to continually learn, experiment with and develop new methods.
• A willingness to help teammates, share knowledge and experience with them, and learn from them.
• Consummate communications skills in both French and English.

It's a bonus if you have:

• Experience working across sectors and working in coalitions and networks.
• Experience with agile development processes, user experience design, social enterprise, social innovation and/or government transformation initiatives.
• Knowledge of the GCTools (GCconnex, GCcollab, GCpedia).
• Some quirks. This team is quirky.

We are a digital first team with members across Canada, and partners around the world. Our home office is currently located in downtown Ottawa, Ontario.

If you are interested in joining our dynamic team of individuals, and working on awesome projects that will help shift the culture of the Government of Canada towards a collaborative and connected ecosystem, send your cover letter and résumé to: Heather Laird. Please note that this is a rolling intake process.

We welcome candidates from all backgrounds and experiences, and look forward to learning more about you.

More About Us

Still reading? Awesome!

Our Vision

To inspire governments, partners and citizens to actively collaborate in solving challenges and taking advantage of opportunities that improve the world.

Our Mission

To build an open accessible digital workspace with transparent, ethical practices, and enable networks to thrive and collaborate with this workspace.

Core Values

• Initiate action, lead by example, and be proud of your work.
• Create fun, simple and inclusive experiences.
• Work in the open.
• Empower communities. Enable and co-create solutions.
• Serve our users and their needs, not ourselves.
• Explore new ideas and technology. Actively experiment.
• Always be learning. Check facts. Don’t assume.

What is the open, accessible digital workspace?

• A public commons for the digital age
• A suite of interconnected tools that are open, accessible, free to use and free of advertising, forever.
• Ways to contribute to new and existing open source software projects that help raise the bar for everyone.
• An ecosystem of tools and partners creating together in real time – way more power than any one enterprise.

More about the Digital Collaboration team

We are actually a network of many teams – across the Government of Canada, the Government of the Netherlands, the Centre for Social Innovation, and more. The core stewardship team is hosted by the Government of Canada. While we are in a start-up phase and expect this to evolve, right now the team-of-many-talents is organized around these core functions:

• Technical Development
• User Experience and Design
• Communications, Marketing, Storytelling
• Strategic Partnerships, Enterprise and Network Development
• Data Analysis
• Policy

We work with and for our users to make ways of working across governments and other partners better.

A Bit About Culture

We are living and growing a dynamic culture with people from across sectors and experiences. It's the make-it-happen attitude of a start-up... the ingenuity of a social enterprise..the heart of an inspired public service...the flexibility and curiosity of a network.

What Matters?

• Curiosity and questioning what has been done before.
• Humble listening, reaching out and working together – we can’t do it alone.
• Friendliness and embracing the weird.
• Action bias, and learning as we go.
• A healthy dose of freedom to problem solve in creative ways, and flexibility to integrate passions and ideas into the larger whole of our projects.
• Bricolage (blending many ideas and approaches including agile development, community organizing, network weaving, systems thinking and others to get great results).
• #Digitalfirst – work how and where you need to, to get your work done and have a great experience doing it.

Oh yes, and the Digital Standards.

Some Team Attributes

• Passionate about changing workspaces, technology and innovation
• Creative and collaborative, thrive on taking new directions
• Interested in shaping the changing nature of workspaces worldwide
• Happy in a fast-paced and ever-changing environment
• Linked-up and self-directed