The fifth meeting of the Inter-institutional Group for Public Relations/Group for Communication and Knowledge Management has been held on October 11, 2013 in Sarajevo. This group functions in a framework of the Strengthening Public Institutions in BIH Programme – SPI), which is being implemented by the German GIZ and which includes 9 institutions-beneficiaries from the level of the Council of Ministers of BiH. Members of the group are also representatives of the institutions-beneficiaries, who deal with communications.
One of the agenda items was related to presenting results of implemented analysis of websites of institutions-beneficiaries of the Programme and a short discussion on analysis of implementing the Guidelines on drafting and maintaining official websites of the Institutions of BiH, the document which sets the minimum standard and points out to the importance of the internet redaction, function of the web administrator, administration, redesign, budget language usage, etc. Mentioned analyses are being implemented as mutual group activities that are being based on measures from the Revised Action plan 1 of the PAR Strategy in the area of Institutional communication.
Members of the group have jointly presented a short overview of implemented study visit, which had an objective of getting closer to the best European practices of institutional communication, therefore they have reflected on the examples of good strategic communication and position of communication, resource distribution, focus on the results of successful communication, strengthening capacities for communication inside institutions, networking of professionals on mentioned field, code of conduct of civil servants who deal with communication, etc.
Preparation of workshop on the freedom of access to information, as one of the future mutual activities of this group, and whose objective is exchange of experiences and discussion on the field of applying the Law on Freedom of Access to Information, was one of the topics of this meeting. In relation to that, members of the group have been working on defining objectives and results of this workshop, as well as on determining date and location.
One of the conclusions of the meeting was related to the change of the group’s title, therefore the previous title “Inter-institutional Group for Public Relations” has been renamed into “Inter-institutional Group for Communication and Knowledge Management”. Confirmed has also been the mutual vision of this group in a sense of creating and sharing good practices in the area of communication in public administration as well as networking with all institutions and professionals in this field with the goal of developing capacities and strengthening profession. Communicating public administration reform and concrete achievements towards all the public remains one of this group’s priorities.
The meeting has been attended by representatives of GIZ and PARCO as well as representatives of the Statistics Agency of BiH, Public Procurement Agency of BiH, Directorate for European Integrations BiH, Civil Service Agency of BiH, Higher Education Agency of BiH, Agency for Pre-School, Elementary and High School Education of BiH and Central Bank of BiH.