Oliver Morley 29 September 2009 Brand review. Brand review terms of reference Review of all brands used for targeting wider government, business and general.

Oliver Morley29 September 2009

Brand review

Brand review terms of reference

• Review of all brands used for targeting wider government, business and general public for all activities outside of the records research - public and academic communities to clarify where there is overlap or misunderstanding between the brands.

• Development of the brand positioning for all audiences – what is common, what is different and agreement on how the brand is communicated to both government and public audiences.

Agenda

• Current Status• Challenges to change• Single Brand• Brand Family• Proposal

Current status - multiple brands

We use a multitude of brands, logos and names for our communications including:

Current status – what we say

• ‘The National Archives is a government department and an executive agency of the Ministry of Justice. It brings together the Public Record Office, Historical Manuscripts Commission, the Office of Public Sector Information and Her Majesty's Stationery Office….’ – nationalarchives.gov.uk

• ‘Operating from within the National Archives, the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) is at the heart of information policy…’ – opsi.gov.uk

• ‘Operating from within OPSI, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office (HMSO) continues to exist and fulfil its core activities…’ – opsi.gov.uk

• Genuine email signature: [Joe Bloggs]

Office of Public Sector Information

Her Majesty's Stationery Office

Office of the Queen's Printer for Scotland

The National Archives

Current status – staff views

Our current approach fragments our message and needs addressing

… [at] meetings I introduce myself as TNA

and others introduce themselves as OPSI

…the OPSI branding confuses people, they’re

not sure what the relationship is with TNA…

…they think they’re dealing with a number of different organisations, when in fact they are only dealing with

one.

The National Archives …

doesn’t quite reflect what we

are doing…sometimes we’re

embarrassed about our brand – so use others eg HM Government.

Results from staff survey, September 2009, 77 responses

One to One Interviews

Current status – public views

The National Archives is already associated with more than just historical records

I associate The National Archives with

OPSI with

Helping to manage UK government information 86% 62%

Re-use of public sector information 60% 57%

Regulation of public sector information 54% 52%

Preserving digital records from government 85% n/a

Providing leadership for local and private archives in UK 69% n/a

Being a source of information on a wide range of subjects 66% 31%

Results from external stakeholder survey, September 2009 - The National Archives, n = 247, OPSI, n = 227.

Current status - our presence online

• By volume, top 30 searches that lead to OPSI.gov.uk about legislation, #31 HMSO publications (Hitwise, July 2009)*

• ‘Reuse’, ‘public sector information’, ‘PSI’, ‘information management’ are not in the top 1000 search terms

• Current agreed plan in line with wider government policy:• Close OPSI.gov.uk, and replace with legislation.gov.uk• Migrate other material to The National Archives website

TNA

OPSI

*Excludes searches for OPSI as an organisation – as with all search, the top term is always the website name

Current status - multiple brands

Advantages• It maintains status quo• Allows specialist groups eg PSI

team or ARK to communicate to their audiences with no additional effort

• Easy to promote your ‘own’ brand

Disadvantages• Reinforces staff confusion and silo

mentality• Weakens our overall proposition

with government and public• Prevents us from giving the

message of leading in information management as a whole

• Cost of maintaining multiple brands is higher, but not substantial

What is our ambition for The National Archives brand?

Challenges – legal/statutory

• There is no legal risk in the use of one brand for presentational purposes

• Clear legal advice from the Ministry of Justice• ‘there is no reason why The National Archives branding cannot be used for all

presentational purposes’• ‘where administrative functions are being carried out, reference to The National

Archives is fine’• ‘provided The National Archives use the appropriate titles of the relevant

component part for legal purposes’

• As long as contracts are still signed by the correct statutory body, and we have a standard script under one letterhead, one brand is no issue

‘The National Archives, bringing together the Public Record Office, the Historical Manuscripts Commission, the Office of Public Sector Information’ etc.

Challenges – public sector information

• The PSI community is small (100-1000, depending on definition) BUT:• It is highly active in UK and Europe• It is well connected to government, with strong supporters• It directly supports our wider agenda of information re-use

• Any brand transition must:• Bring this important audience with us, one by one• Reinforce the independence of the regulator role when it

comes to The National Archives• Give direct evidence of increasing support for PSI

Challenges – Knowledge Council

• When originally set up, Head of Profession role was separated from The National Archives

• Now formally part of CEO role• The National Archives role is one of support to the

Knowledge Council• Now we can make this supporting role more explicit

Advising over 250 government entities on information and

records management

World-leading licensing programme for digitised content

Model for European PSI regulation

We process the 2nd largest number of FOI requests in

government with 98% in- time response

Challenges – presenting the full service offer

• We “split” our organisation into separate components and silos• In fact, we have a credible single offer around:

accessible use & re-use of government information for all

1.4 million unique users and reusers of

legislation every month

640,000 documents made accessible to the public

physically (more than any other national archive)

Over 110 million documents accessed

online

Approach

• Brand currently fragmented• Limited or no legal impediment to change• The National Archives could represent our full spectrum of

activities with investment, support, and our own ambition for the brand

Moving forward have two options:• Single brand – The National Archives• Single brand with family

Single brand - The National Archives

• Without effort to build brand, we will not give be able to one consistent message that is valid for all our stakeholders covering our full remit in information management

• It is unlikely to be credible as a single change as staff point out:

• However, with focus, we could achieve this in time

People do not recognise an organisation that talks about

archives in its name as having a remit/role upfront in anything

to do with the creation of information.

If you wanted a name for an organisation that covers the

whole breadth of The National Archives’ responsibilities you wouldn’ t call it The National

Archives.

Single brand with family - examples

Information Fair Trader Scheme

HMSO

Office of Public Sector Information

Legislationwith the National ArchivesL

NOT A FINAL LIST

nationalarchives.gov.uk

legislation.gov.uk

Only for use in the official regulatory capacity

For all information management, reuse and policy

Single brand with family - advantages

• Establishes linkage between The National Archives and its subsidiary entities

• Simpler to manage and reduces costs – one set of rules for everything we do

• Provides the opportunity to build single brand with clear messages to both government, information management professionals (including archivists) and the public

• Gives staff a migration path for the change ultimately to a single brand

Single brand with family – risks and mitigation

Risk Mitigation

Stakeholders’ perception that we are incurring unnecessary costs rebranding

Changes minimal to make – in fact, delay could incur costs in changes to family of websites

PSI bodies and their representatives (including EU) perceive UK government continuing to downgrade importance of PSI

APPSI regulate The National ArchivesIncrease investment, communications and marketing support for PSI.

Potential anxiety from small groups influential with our government stakeholders.

Use Knowledge Council to pro-actively support changesand pre-empt external bodies

Staff resistance Focused communications, in some cases at the individual level

Proposal

• Build The National Archives as a single brand and family to clearly establish us as the world leader in:• Information management• Archive management• Preservation• Advising on what to keep• Public sector information• Publishing – legislation• Public access to records for research

• Transition to single brand by 2011, with all products and services promoted under the one brand.

Proposal – action plan

31 Oct 2009• New brand designs complete• Identify and agree those treated as family brands• Commence stakeholder discussions especially on PSI (potentially earlier)• Develop staff discussions, titles/ narratives

31 Dec 2009• Refresh and further develop brand guidelines to reflect agreed changes• Develop full web-site branding and design for legislation.gov.uk• Start roll-out of guidelines

31 Mar 2010• Complete roll-out of guidelines, formally retire previous branding• Develop information management web pages for implementation on

nationalarchives.gov.uk• Implement PSI stakeholder management by March 2010