Estimated Annual Value

What it means:
The dollar value of staff time recovered through faster drafting, review, revision, approval, and social media preparation.

How it’s calculated:
Staff Hours Recovered × Fully loaded hourly labor rate

Why it matters:
This provides a conservative financial justification based only on labor efficiency. It does not yet account for the additional operational value of clearer public instructions, fewer errors, faster releases, or improved public trust.

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Staff Hours Recovered

What it means:
The number of hours returned to your team by reducing manual drafting, principles-based review, revision, coordination, and follow-up work.

How it’s calculated:
Current monthly public information workload × Estimated efficiency gain × 12

Or, more specifically:

Drafting/review hours saved + social media hours saved + approval hours saved + rework hours saved + follow-up hours saved

Why it matters:
These are hours that can be redirected to higher-value public information work, including media coordination, stakeholder engagement, rumor control, accessibility improvements, and incident support.

 

Total Annual Public Information Workload

What it means:
The total number of staff hours currently spent producing, reviewing, revising, approving, and adapting public information products over the course of a year.

How it’s calculated:
Monthly release volume × Average time per release × 12

This can include:

Drafting time + principles review time + revision time + social media drafting time + approval support time + rework time + clarification/follow-up time

Why it matters:
This establishes the full staffing footprint of your public information process. It creates the baseline from which time savings, labor savings, and operational improvements are measured.

 

Equivalent Public Information Capacity

What it means:
The amount of additional staff capacity gained through efficiency improvements, expressed in operational terms rather than just dollars.

How it’s calculated:
Staff Hours Recovered ÷ Annual productive hours per staff member

A common planning estimate is:

Staff Hours Recovered ÷ 2,080 hours

Why it matters:
This reframes the value in terms leadership can immediately understand: how much additional public information capacity the organization gains without increasing headcount.

👉 This is often one of the most compelling metrics for leadership.

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Approval and Release Time Reduced

What it means:
The amount of time removed from the public information process by identifying issues earlier, reducing revision cycles, and helping releases move more quickly from draft to approval.

How it’s calculated:
Releases requiring review × Current approval time × Estimated approval-time reduction

Why it matters:
This captures the operational impact of faster public communication. In emergency management, speed matters because public information should be timely, accurate, and actionable, with updates released as understanding evolves.

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Late-Stage Rework Reduced

What it means:
The staff time saved by reducing errors or issues discovered late in the review process.

How it’s calculated:
Late-stage issues per month × Time to correct each issue × People involved × Estimated rework reduction × 12

Why it matters:
Late-stage errors are costly because they often require multiple people to stop work, correct the release, re-route it, and sometimes restart approval. Reducing rework improves speed, accuracy, professionalism, and confidence in the release process.

 

Social Media Preparation Time Saved

What it means:
The time saved when converting an approved release into social media posts, platform-specific messages, alerts, or other public-facing updates.

How it’s calculated:
Releases per month × Social posts per release × Time per post × Estimated social media efficiency gain × 12

Why it matters:
Public information rarely ends with a press release. Faster adaptation helps agencies communicate through multiple channels and reach the whole community, rather than relying only on traditional media.

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Public Clarification Time Reduced

What it means:
The time saved by reducing preventable follow-up questions caused by unclear, incomplete, or insufficiently actionable releases.

How it’s calculated:
Preventable follow-up questions per month × Average response time × Estimated reduction × 12

Why it matters:
Clearer releases reduce avoidable calls, emails, media follow-ups, and public confusion. This also supports proactive communication and rumor control by helping close information gaps before they become larger problems.

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Operational Quality Improvement

What it means:
The non-financial value gained from releases that better align with public information principles, including accuracy, transparency, accessibility, coordination, attribution, and professionalism.

How it’s calculated:
This is usually expressed as a qualitative value statement or score, rather than a dollar figure.

Possible indicators include:

Timeliness, accuracy, actionability, transparency, privacy protection, accessibility, whole-community reach, message coordination, rumor control, accountability, and professionalism.

Why it matters:
Some of the most important benefits of public information work are operational and reputational, not just financial. A stronger review process helps agencies release information that informs, empowers, and protects the public.