Office of Strategic Communications (OSC)

OSC is broken up into four program offices:

1. Media Affairs -- Media affairs leads out the agency’s effort to assist the media and the public in understanding the important work performed by GSA as it assists other agencies. Media Affairs provides guidance and support to client teams to achieve both the client’s goals and their customer’s goal. This support includes providing media liaison services for the client, including assisting with vetting media requests, setting up interviews, responding to and clearing media inquiries, and speaking on behalf of the agency; providing media pitching services to the client to assist in the third party publication of GSA content, speakers, and events; planning, coordinating, and executing public and/or media events for the client, including press events, community meetings, etc.; and providing social media and media consultation and analytical services, including collecting and analyzing news clips and news clip data, creating reports on public perception of client issues, reviewing and approving social media account requests for new users, explaining social media use to GSA offices, etc. The team maintains the GSA Newsroom, the gsa.gov blog, and official social media sites.
2. Digital Communications -- Digital Communications manages the operation of gsa.gov, GSA InSite, the GSA blog, and the GovDelivery digital subscription service, and supports OSC’s client teams in a variety of ways to assist them in helping their clients accomplish their business objectives. These include providing new digital communication products or functions to clients, including webpages, online forms, systems, user guides, workflows, microsites, etc.; administering digital communication tools for clients, including web analytics, reports, dashboards, usability assessments, search engine optimization tool operations, etc.; providing technical consultation and quality assurance services, including troubleshooting or bug fixes, providing training on certain web tools, providing web-related hardware and software planning services, providing mobile accessibility and 508 compliance consulting, etc.; and managing the contracts for and provision of govdelivery and certain other digital communications services. Digital Communications is responsible for the policies, standards, guidelines and supporting governance activities for the OSC managed digital presence.
3. Visual Communications -- Visual Communications manages GSA’s Visual Information (VI) policy and supports OSC’s client teams in several ways to assist them in helping their client teams accomplish their business objectives. These include providing them VI products and consulting services, including videos, graphics, layouts, still photos, stock media, etc.; providing them with event coverage and associated services for both documentation and live-streaming purposes, including still photos and video and operation of the public address system; and providing them with printing services, including for posters, non-standard sized documents, certificates, etc.
4. Client Teams -- Client teams serve as in-house communication agencies, working directly with GSA services and staff offices. Client teams provide communication services, including communication plan development, public speaking support, media relations, crisis communication, and public outreach; provide, improve, and distribute strategic communication products, including speeches, messages from senior leaders, newsletters, presentations, fact sheets, press releases, social media and blog posts, articles, correspondence, website content, etc.; provide communication research and evaluation services to better understand audiences’ existing attitudes and behaviors and the changes needed to fulfill clients’ goals, including through tracking media coverage and communication campaign metrics; and provide event planning, coordination, and execution services for agency events including ribbon cuttings and groundbreakings, town halls, distinguished visitor trips, senior leadership visits, employee events, and customer-focused events.