Hiring PR agency Burson-Marsteller might have cost the Major General Lars Johan Sølvberg, Chief of Staff for the Norwegian Army a new job, VG reports today. He was up for the job as military attaché in Washington D.C., but when it was known he had hired external advisors for a report about the army, the defence leadership changed their minds.
I’m a bit surprised that they considered it a waste of taxpayers’ money to hire an external advisor. If you for some reason don’t have the internal resources or for internal political reasons want an outsider to produce a report, it must be ok. But if the agency has done a poor job, that’s another matter and something you should critize, but not by default rule out the possibility to hire external professionals. Now this is a more doubtful way of spending tax money on PR firms.