The cost to produce a new brand for Canberra Health Services (CHS) to address a potential “brand identity crisis” has been revealed as at least $1.5million, in heavily redacted documents obtained by the Canberra Liberals under Freedom of Information (FoI).

$800,000 is for the Melbourne design studio and up to $850,000 for dedicated staff, who are also supported by an extended in-house CHS Brand Team.

The $800,000 is for coming up with brand designs, a “tone of voice,” defining “who we are, what we stand for,” and for developing fictional stakeholder “personas,” brand performance metrics and a rebrand strategy.

A 40 page Brand Project Program Plan 2022-24, developed by CHS’ Strategic Communication and Engagement Team goes into every conceivable aspect of the rebrand project, including stakeholder identification, mapping and analysis.

Perhaps unsurprisingly we learn from this document that “all the rebranding documents are saved in CHS Strategic Communication and Engagement intranet – ‘Utopia’.”

Shadow Health Minister, Leanne Castley, said the FoI documents showed the rebrand relied on the muddle-headed assumption that lack of clear branding is impacting CHS’ becoming a leading specialist provider and that a rebrand will improve the perceived quality of its services.

“Canberra’s public health system used to be a world leader because it offered the best health services. This is what the Government should be focussing on. There’s little point having a new brand if services don’t improve,” Ms Castley said.

“Where is this Government’s mind at? $1.6m would pay for 60 hip replacements, 400 cataract operations or 600 MRIs.”

Even the official briefs to the Health and Mental Health Ministers concede that, “there may be concerns from the public and stakeholders on their perception of the value of the brand project in delivering benefit to consumers.”

And on that, CHS’ draft ‘Utopia’ document rates dozens of stakeholders from 1 to 10 depending on combined levels of influence on and interest in the rebrand project. Incredibly “Union” is given a rating of 3 on par with the sharps provider – not slated to be engaged or informed, merely monitored.

Ms Castley said that despite some documents being released under FoI, hundreds of pages had been redacted on grounds this would prejudice trade secrets of an agency or person, presumably Binocular Studio, and prejudice the competitive commercial activities of an agency, presumably CHS.

“While some redactions of personal information and the like are acceptable, others appear over-zealous redactions of criticisms of CHS.

“I will therefore be asking the ACT Ombudsman to review aspects of this FoI decision,” Ms Castley concluded.