Effective communication, the road to transparency and accountability

The Kosovo Local Government Institute (KLGI) and the INFOKOMUNA portal launched the municipal information bulletin “Mujori i Komunave” (Municipal Monthly). This is the first issue of the bulletin, which covers the chronology of events and activities over the 30 days of September 2016. Municipal public relations officials also gave presentations at this event.

Besides being a way of reflecting the work of municipalities, “Mujori i Komunave” also serves as a form of exchanging experience and as a means for municipalities to raise issues with and advocate to government institutions and other actors engaged and operating in, or together with, the local level.

At the same time, the event also presented some of the findings identified during the work on the bulletin and on the INFOKOMUNA portal. These data show that, despite continuous progress, municipalities still face challenges in reporting and communicating with the public.

There is a range of problems, starting with a lack of staff capacity and technical and logistical aspects. Public relations offices are caught between the growing pressure for continuous information and communication and the real possibilities of offering the public easy and inclusive access.

This stems from a serious problem with their standardisation and dynamism in relation to new communication trends. Another particular aspect is the use of social networks, especially “facebook”, as the most widespread means of communication, while the information offices themselves do not fully have this form of communication within their mandate.

As a consequence of all this, some municipalities have begun to look for new channels of communication by duplicating websites. On social networks there is still an ad hoc approach that depends solely on the goodwill of these offices, without any platform or guidelines for their use.

Therefore, the KLGI Institute and the INFOKOMUNA portal, through the project “An effort towards sustainable and functional local governance”, in coordination with municipalities and sectoral ministries, will draft a guide for standardisation and effective communication.

It will also increase the professional and coordination capacities of public relations offices in relation to other local actors. This will be based on regional practice and international trends in communication, transparency and accountability.

“This grant is funded by the Democratic Society Promotion (DSP) project – funded by the Swiss Cooperation Office in Kosovo (SCO-K) and the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DANIDA) and managed by the Kosovar Civil Society Foundation (KCSF)”.