In my experience, our government uses one document to coordinate every communication about an operation. It’s called a Tick Tock.
You can imagine, in a major event of international significance, there are many equities. The US Government will need to communicate to many people and agencies in specific ways in order to ensure we continue or bolster our relationships.
As a young(er) PAO, I helped draft a Tick Tock and had no idea what it was. I’ve drafted many since then. Maybe this MaxDis post will help the next person in the same situation.
I’ve never seen any doctrine, SOP or protocol describing this document. I’ve only found through experience, that the National Security Council and White House, and by extension, many of us, use a Tick Tock to coordinate interagency, US government comms.
What is it? It’s a long document (probably about 20 pages) resembling PAG. It’s marked Top-Secret, not sure why except that it resides on the TS systems our leaders in DC use.
What’s in it?
- It contains the usual stuff in PAG – public announcements, Q/A and themes. Think of Q/A holistically, rather than a series of questions where we say “we’ll have to refer you to the State Department for that,” the answers to those questions are actually there, approved by State.
- The Tick Tock will have the timing, method, and language designees will use to inform Congress, specific by members and committees.
- We will have approved language and methods to inform other governments, “At H+9 US EMB Niger will inform the President of Niger and say [this].”
- The FBI will have notifications they need to make to US citizens.
- What commercial entities need to be informed? and how?
- There are plenty of sensitive comms in the document used to treat sensitive relationships.
- And much more!
What has it done for me?
The first Tick Tock opened my eyes to a much broader picture of communication. I was always focused on the public announcement and the Q/A exchange with the Pentagon Press, there is so much more communication that goes into this.
My communication vision is bigger. Now, before operations, I have PAG in hand but I am also recommending to my bosses when we inform everyone else – the interagency, families and higher headquarters. It’s communication – why don’t I take the lead on this? I do.
I learned the value of a draft. It’s not ‘my place’ to do this. Yes, my small team and I have drafted a 20-page interagency coordinating document with little idea of the exact right things to say. Maybe it was 40% right but gave everyone a starting point and more importantly, the draft drove action (communication planning) across the US Government.
Tick Toc? Tick Tock? Tic Toc? Tik Toc? No one could even tell me how this thing is correctly titled. So I told them, it’s Tick Tock and now that it’s here, you can google it.
Courtesy Photo by Defense Imagery Management Operations Center
