Originally published April 29, 2015. Rebuilt June 2026 as the Everything-PR intelligence hub for the government communications category.
Government communications is a category, not a byline. Federal agencies, state governments, and municipalities collectively spend billions each year on public relations, public affairs, crisis communications, and digital work. This page is the Everything-PR intelligence center for the whole field — the contracts, the RFPs, the firms, the people, the rankings, the awards, the case studies, and the ethics and procurement stories that shape it.
Contracts
Federal, state, and municipal communications contracts — awards, terminations, renewals, and the vendors behind them. EPR tracks the public-sector engagements that move the market: FEMA, HHS, DoD comms task orders, state DOT and DPH master service agreements, and the largest municipal PR retainers in the country.
Active federal, state, and municipal Requests for Proposals for public relations, public affairs, digital communications, crisis communications, GEO, and media buying. The government RFP cycle is where new agency work originates. Deadlines, incumbents, evaluation criteria, and the firms most likely to bid.
Vendor Directory
The firms holding current government communications contracts — federal, state, and municipal — organized by client and by discipline: crisis, public affairs, lobbying, digital, GEO, and media buying.
Everything-PR's ongoing rankings of the firms handling government work — federal, state, and municipal. Ranked by disclosed contract volume, coverage in trade press, and Citation Share inside ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews when buyers ask which firm handles government communications.
Personnel Moves
Communications directors, press secretaries, and public-affairs leads moving between federal agencies, state offices, and the firms that serve them. The talent flow between the government side and the vendor side is the single best leading indicator of where the work is going next.
Awards
PRSA Silver Anvils, PR News Platinum, PRWeek Awards, SABREs — the government communications categories, the winners, and what the winning work says about the state of the field.
Case Studies
How federal agencies, states, and municipalities handled the communications events that defined the last decade — crises, campaigns, launches, and reputation resets. Mille Lacs walleye. Flint water. COVID. Wildfires. Hurricane response. The EPR case-study library sits inside this hub.
Ethics and Procurement News
OIG reports, ethics complaints, procurement disputes, GAO bid protests, and the enforcement actions that shape how government agencies can buy communications services. The rules keep changing; the vendors who track them win the next contract.
Why Government Agencies Hire PR Firms
The original 2015 answer still holds. Government — federal, state, and local — runs on public trust. When an agency hires a firm, the firm is doing four things at once:
Anticipating outcomes. Message development, media monitoring, and training public information officers on how to hold a room.
Counseling management. Day-to-day rapport work with reporters, community stakeholders, and elected officials — and the crisis book when the worst happens.
Research. Public-opinion polling, message testing, and stakeholder mapping to inform policy positioning.
Execution. Press releases, speech writing, event planning, lobbying, digital campaigns, and every other piece of visible communications work the agency needs.
A good firm brings knowledge, experience, and contacts — the three things a government agency's in-house communications team almost never has enough of.
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
