Remaking a government communications community
How do you put into place a comprehensive and radically new communications program across an entire government? An interview over at PR Conversations provides details on how the Government of Tanzania has taken steps to implement a system-wide communications process - nuts and bolts, soup to nuts.
Tanzania’s previous government communications strategy was, how should be put it, prescriptive and parental? For example, take a look at the previous media relations policy (post-1970), detailed on page 105 and beyond of the MISA Media Advocacy Toolkit.
In the late 1990s, a fundamental change in political philosophy, government leaders and institutional approach to communications enabled Tanzania to begin restructuring the government’s communications function.
Gerhard Butschi and Mindi Kasiga made a presentation about the Tanzanian initiative at the recent World Public Relations Festival in Cape Town. Their powerpoint deck is available online.
Reviewing the interview and the deck, we can winnow down an extremely complicated process into some basic steps:
- Radical change in government ideology towards communicating with the public
- Strong direction from the Head of Government
- Empowered and centralized direction for change
- Third Party, NGO and international support for program
- Communications Audit by Burson-Marsteller
- Reinvigorated communications function in every Ministry
- Heads of Communication participation in management decisions
- Institutionalized best practices through common training and professional exchanges
- Common training across communication function, involving entire communications community
Granted, it is much easier to radically remake a communications community when you only have 50-odd communicators across the 26 ministries. Still, how many other governments have documents like the “Communications Strategy for the National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty” available online?
