Karen Tan takes on deputy chief of government communications role

Karen Tan (pictured) has been appointed as deputy chief of government communications (development) and concurrently senior director (transformation). Her role started on 1 March.Drawing on her considerable experience in govt comms, such as marcoms, digital comms, content production, crisis comms, branding and media relations, she will help build new capabilities among all government communications officers. She will oversee the management of the Information- PRO network. In her concurrent role as senior director (transformation), she is also tasked to develop the government communications roadmap effort and oversee the information planning office.Tan, was last senior director at MCI, and has over the years built a reputation for herself helping to aid the transformation in government communications. In 2017, she led a new marketing office created by Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI) which looked at the overall branding of Singapore. The office was also created to level up government communication approaches and amplify messaging to better inform, engage and influence members of the public. She also looked over MCI’s soft launch of the Gov.sg Facebook Messenger Bot, as part of its efforts to leverage on new technologies and platforms to reach out to citizens.Tan also spent over 10 years with MOH and handled crisis communications for the government during the SARS period in Singapore. She also was a communications advisor to the World Health Organisation’s International Health Regulations Emergency Committee on disease outbreaks. She also serves as an informal communicators advisor to the director-general of WHO in the communications advisory group, and provides guidance on messaging and risk communications.