Every federal agency has an office—or at least a person—dedicated to communications. They operate under different names—strategic communications, media relations, public affairs, public information—but like their counterparts in the private and nonprofit sectors, government agencies have staff focused on disseminating information to the public and fielding press inquiries. The job requires quick reflexes to react to unfolding events, but also long-term planning skills to craft proactive strategic communications policies. Most such offices—in government and elsewhere—follow the “best practice” of designating a limited number of people to speak to the media on behalf of the organization, says Kenneth Baer, who was spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget during the Obama administration.

“You could be General Electric, the Defense Department, the Gates Foundation,” says Baer, now chief executive officer and founder of Crosscut Strategies, a Washington-based communications and public affairs firm. “I’m sure all of them have the same policy, which is, ‘We have a communications office, and they will facilitate our interactions with the media.’” In other words, no rogue employees sounding off on any given topic, please.

But the difference between the government and everyone else is that Uncle Sam has an obligation, a public trust, to be as transparent as possible except where national security concerns dictate otherwise. (How the government defines national security matters is another story.) And the press has a responsibility to hold the government accountable. Baer says working at OMB influenced his approach to transparency, and because of that, his tendency now is to call reporters back with answers. But, he says, “Most of my clients are private companies, and some believe, ‘We don’t owe anybody anything.’”

The objectives of a public affairs shop are determined by who is footing the bill, according to Dannielle Blumenthal, who works at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and writes a personal blog (her views are her own) on best practices in branding and communications. “The private sector PR expert is trying to help their client resuscitate and enhance their image,” Blumenthal wrote in a Sept. 17 blog post published by Government Executive. “The government public affairs expert is trying to help the taxpayer get the information they need and, more broadly, trying to help the government function effectively and efficiently.”

That’s the high-minded goal anyway, and public affairs staff at federal agencies can—and often do—meet it. But they also have an interest in making their agencies and bosses look good, and they certainly manage and repair reputations, just like their private sector brethren.

Take the Federal Emergency Management Agency, for instance. It’s been a decade since Hurricane Katrina savaged FEMA’s reputation, and the agency is still recovering. How a federal agency responds to disaster (literal or figurative) can enhance or damage its image and ultimately, its ability to carry out its mission. FEMA’s miserable all-around performance before, during and after the storm forced the agency to overhaul not only its management, but its communications philosophy.

“Since Hurricane Katrina, we have really done a 180 on how we deal with the media and how our employees deal with the media,” says Marty Bahamonde, FEMA’s director of disaster operations in the Office of External Affairs. “I can tell you that it’s a far less restrictive policy, and a far more transparent policy than we’ve ever had before.”

The current policy—adopted from the Coast Guard, according to Bahamonde—is that employees working a disaster can talk to the media freely about their jobs without getting approval from public affairs. “The caveat is, if the discussion gets into how that’s affecting policy, or any kind of high level issues beyond what their scope is,” says Bahamonde, then FEMA wants the employee to refer the reporter to the public affairs office and “we would get the appropriate subject matter expert to address those needs.”

That’s an improvement from a decade ago when FEMA employees on the ground during Katrina “would literally turn and try to avoid the media, knowing that they weren’t authorized to speak,” which didn’t help the agency or the public, Bahamonde acknowledges. To FEMA’s credit, after Katrina the agency created a program that allows journalists to embed with its urban search-and-rescue teams during disasters; it’s the same embed policy the Defense Department established with the news media during the Iraq War.

But outside of a crisis, any questions or interview requests, however minor, must first be coordinated through FEMA Public Affairs. I contacted a FEMA employee this past summer who worked in Louisiana during Katrina (and is stationed there now) to ask him about his memories and insights about the disaster a decade later. He wanted to talk to me, and dutifully contacted a public affairs official to arrange an interview. The request was batted back and forth among at least three different public affairs officials over three weeks. No one approved the interview despite my repeated efforts to schedule it.

Bahamonde is a 22-year FEMA veteran—the only agency staffer to ride out Katrina in New Orleans—and he knows how to get a message across. He testified before Congress in 2005, contradicting former FEMA Director Michael Brown’s claim that he didn’t know what was happening as Katrina unfolded. Bahamonde’s “disclosures add significantly to public knowledge of how much information Brown and FEMA officials had about the damage Katrina caused, and how soon they were aware of it,” said an Oct. 21, 2005, article in The Washington Post.

Bahamonde says new FEMA employees receive one week of media training, and employees who go off script aren’t punished, just reminded of the policy. If FEMA employees don’t talk to the media, it’s because they don’t want to, not because they are afraid of retaliation, he says.

“There are people who don’t like to speak to the media. They don’t like to be quoted, don’t want to be put on the spot, get nervous about it,” Bahamonde says.

Bahamonde has a point.

Seventy-two percent of respondents in a September Government Business Council survey agree that employees in their agency are reluctant to speak to the press in general. Why? Fifty-six percent cite a “belief that information may be misrepresented” by journalists as the primary reason. Other reasons include the belief that they wouldn’t be able to speak candidly (43 percent); fear of harming the agency’s reputation (36 percent); fear of political retribution (34 percent), or legal sanctions (33 percent). The survey conducted by GBC, Government Executive Media Group’s research arm, included 419 respondents from federal, state and local governments, and the military.

More than half (53 percent) of respondents say employees at their agency are “discouraged” from speaking to the media. But it’s unclear whether that’s based on perception or actual policy. John Burklow, associate director for communications and public liaison at the National Institutes of Health, says his shop encourages employees to talk to the press. “Director [Francis] Collins places a high priority [on talking to the media], and we follow his lead,” Burklow says.

Still, while many federal employees don’t think much of the press, they also don’t think too highly of their agencies’ communications shops, according to GBC’s findings.

The survey asked respondents to describe in written statements the “core objectives” of their agency’s public affairs office. The answers ranged from the neutral-positive “disseminate information” to the cynical “tout good news; put a favorable spin on bad news if necessary; make ill-conceived programs seem like a great idea,” to downright conspiratorial “lie, hide and cover up.” One respondent did list “transparency” as a core objective, but the word “spin” was mentioned much more frequently.

The bottom line is this: Lots of federal workers mistrust the media, who in turn are suspicious and occasionally resentful of the gatekeepers who sometimes sanitize information or withhold access to employees and officials. It’s not the best dynamic for government transparency. But sometimes there are good reasons, or at least legitimate arguments, for an organization’s well-orchestrated information rollout.

“When you’re entrusted with information that can move markets, move world events and affect the course of the country, it sounds heady—but you have to be very careful about what you say, and how you say it,” says Baer, pointing out that OMB speaks directly for the White House.

For government agencies, calibrating the flow and access to information to create the transparency equivalent of Goldilocks’ perfect porridge is tricky. Too much, and no one will ever be candid in a meeting; too little, and you risk a backlash from the public and the media who believe you’ve got something to hide. Journalists toil under tight deadlines, and want to talk to people who will give them accurate, insightful information. Restrictions are frustrating and contribute to incomplete—and sometimes inaccurate—reporting.

“What’s becoming much more common is for PIOs [public information officers] to sit in and participate in the interview” with an employee or other official, which inhibits candor, says Carolyn Carlson, associate professor at Kennesaw State University’s School of Communication and Media, and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Freedom of Information Committee.

SPJ and the Union of Concerned Scientists have conducted four surveys in recent years asking science, health and environmental journalists about the challenges they face obtaining information from government agencies and gaining access to federal employees with expertise in those subject areas. Fifty-seven percent of the respondents in a 2015 joint survey say they do not believe the public receives all the information it needs because of the barriers agencies have constructed. Those include requiring pre-approval from public affairs officials for interview requests with federal employees, excessive monitoring of interviews by communications staff, and a tendency to avoid “tough questions.” Some journalists say they believe a few flacks play favorites based on where they work when it comes to granting access.

Speaking from experience, it’s not just the science agencies that engage in these tactics. I’ve never interviewed an official from the Office of Personnel Management—an agency that deals with lots of complicated topics including federal employees’ retirement and health plans—without a flack monitoring it, or asking for questions in advance. Most of the time, OPM’s public affairs staff won’t even go on the record. The press office policy is to provide information, however pedestrian, “on background” and attributable only to a “spokesperson.” I contacted OPM twice for this story and did not receive a response.

The Veterans Affairs Department, whom I also contacted for this story, responded to my request, but declined to participate. The VA has tried to be more proactive about working with the media since the scandal over data manipulation and excessive wait times for veterans seeking health care erupted in 2014, and I thought the department could add some insight to my story. While the VA press shop spends a lot of time touting its initiatives and progress on various issues, it also regularly provides data ranging from disability claims to suicide statistics to the press, as well as explanations of technical VA policies. In one of the more theatrical displays of transparency in Washington, Secretary Bob McDonald famously gave out his cellphone number during a press conference last year.

But a Sept. 25 email exchange with Walinda West, deputy director of media relations, illustrates how public affairs officials can be dismissive of a simple request for information. I told her what I was looking for, saying “I would like to include VA in the story, since the dept. has made an effort in the last few years to be more open and engage the press. I would hate to have to say you all didn’t talk to me for a transparency in gov’t story! Thanks.” I’ve worked with West before, and generally have found her to be helpful.

West’s reply: “LOL! You are hysterical. We will decline, but you can talk about all your wonderful encounters with VA, how we are the best agency in the federal government and that when you decide to come back to work for the feds (and you will), this will be your first stop. : )”

James Hutton, the VA’s director of media relations and West’s boss, was copied on the email. For clarification, West’s comment about returning to work for the feds is a reference to when I worked at the Housing and Urban Development Department between 1998 and 2000.

Aside from being unhelpful, it was also a bizarre reply to a genuine request for information. Despite grousing from reporters, 64 percent of the SPJ survey’s respondents say they have a “positive working relationship” with some PIOs who help connect them with the right agency employees. Seventy-one percent of respondents say they have at least some good relationships with subject-matter experts at agencies who provide them with important information. Scribes also praise PIOs for their valuable dissemination of information during crises, through agency websites, social media accounts and interviews. And PIOs, at least according to the SPJ survey, view their job as facilitating, not hindering, communication between the press and employees.

Journalists depend more than ever on PIOs, says Carlson, a former reporter for the Associated Press, because they have more work and less time. But reporters “are still concerned with having all the information that they get being filtered by people trying to control the message.”

While scribes and flacks dance their transparency pas de deux, federal employees often are left on the perimeter, wondering whether they should jump in or hang back.

Baer says he “absolutely relied on” the career staff at OMB, “some of the most able, knowledgeable and talented individuals I’d ever encountered,” to do interviews with the media and explain complicated government budget data. “Some people are comfortable, some people aren’t very comfortable,” Baer says, when it comes to federal employees talking to the press. “But generally speaking, they really appreciated it, and I think they liked it. They felt that it was part of their service, to help explain it to the public. And also, they would hate if the issue they cared about was misunderstood.”

Jeri Buchholz, former chief human capital officer at NASA, talked to the press often during her tenure there because of the agency’s fairly liberal media policy. NASA provides media training to help scientists discuss their work in layman’s terms, and does not require reporters to go through the press office or submit questions in advance, adopting the philosophy that every employee can be a spokesperson for the agency. Buchholz, now a strategic business development adviser with FMP Consulting, worked at several agencies throughout her long government career. During her time at NASA, social media exploded, and that changed the rules of the communication game, she says.

“I know that other federal agencies were very slow to adopt social media, and were really reluctant to have their employees go out and be speaking about their work publicly. But truthfully, you can’t really regulate or control that anymore,” says Buchholz. “You can pretend like you can, but you can’t, really. So if the genie is out of the bottle, perhaps you should just give the genie talking points.”

Public affairs staff also are a resource for employees willing to speak to the media but who want an ally on hand to help them navigate the dance. Reporters might view flacks as pesky chaperones, but some feds appreciate their presence.

“It makes people really nervous [talking to the press],” says Buchholz, who had her own official Twitter feed at NASA. “The level of risk that they are willing to assume is nonexistent or low, and I think some people probably have had bad experiences, and so they’re like, ‘You know what? This just isn’t worth it.’ ” But avoiding risk also means missing out on opportunities “to tell great stories” about the government and its accomplishments, Buchholz argues. “You do have to assume some risk, it really could go wrong on a lot of different levels,” she says of chatting with journalists. “But I think the benefits far outweigh those risks.”

Faith, trust, cooperation: Transparency relies on all of them to thrive. “When PIOs, scientists, and journalists work together, everyone benefits,” concluded the SPJ/Union of Concerned Scientists in an August report on its survey findings. “Journalists have their questions answered; write accurate, fact-based stories; and meet their deadlines. Scientists get to share their knowledge with the public. Agencies and policymakers gain credibility and trust. And the public obtains information about issues that affect their lives and communities.”

Easier said than done.