Success Stories
National Guard follows proactive path to share messages with larger audience
Situation
The National Guard Bureau’s (NGB) vision is to be “Always Ready, Always There.” The underlying theme is one of consistency and reliability. National Guard members and their friends and family hold NGB to a high standard - period. NGB is held accountable for the safety of this nation, and the lives of each Guard member. This level of safety for members and comfort for families is reliant on NGB being transparent: providing accurate and timely communication, and enabling two-way channels of communication.
Solutions
In February 2009, the National Guard Bureau launched a digital communication solution, provided by GovDelivery, as an efficient and cost-effective way to deliver its official publication On Guard to Guard members, friends and family.
This communication solution grew from simply moving the delivery of On Guard from a printed publication to online delivery, to offering nearly 20 unique subscription topics to all interested stakeholders. NGB made a point to utilize all of GovDelivery’s capabilities in improving government-to-citizen communication. NGB launched the GovDelivery Network allowing stakeholders to sign up for updates from multiple sources the first time they register as a subscriber. NGB has dramatically increased its reach by collaborating with 36 network partners, including the U.S. Department of Defense and Homeland Security, Military Health System, and Wisconsin Department of Military Affairs.
Results
In December 2009, the United States National Guard Bureau was recognized as an Excellence in Communications Award recipient. This award was presented to Harrison for proactively communicating through multiple communication channels to reach the largest possible audience. At the time of the award presentation, NGB had established a large audience of more than 340,000 email update subscribers, reached more than 124,000 unique visitors through a dynamic news widget, and communicated its mission and message to 22,000 blog viewers.
