Communication
with the people is a Western democratic ideal.
It was never part of the Soviet system or its legacy therefore there is
virtually no system or budget for the type of machine necessary for the
government to communicate in the way many in the west would imagine.
There
is no state budget allocation for communication and one cannot be created
without returning the whole budget to Parliament for reconsideration which would
stop all International Monetary Fund and other donor funding. There
were funds allocated to each ministry to run their PR departments but
practically all but salaries were stripped out to fund the war effort along
with the purchase of new cars, computers and all but economy class air travel.
The
total budget for the Ministry of Information Policy for this financial year is £120,000 and that includes salaries for 20 people. Some ministries have received modest donor
contributions to buy items like FM radio transmitters to use in eastern Ukraine and fund public information programs on specific topics such as
energy efficiency and displaced people, but that’s all.
To
put this into perspective the Kremlin communications budget is alleged to be in
the region of £160 million excluding television and their propaganda machine, whilst
the UK government budget is £300m a year employing a communications staff of 2,960. The same is true for most western
governments.
Furthermore
there are precious few fully trained staff.
The Prime Minister’s office has a communications team of 4 whilst British
Prime Minister David Cameron has a team of over 40 in his office and a Cabinet
team of 400, the majority of which are highly trained and highly paid professionals.
Whilst
each Ukrainian Ministry may have a PR staff of 2 or 3 the majority are civil
servants appointed to the job. The
entire communications staff of the government is in reality around 100, 50 of
which are seconded to the ministry of defence and of those that are left less
than 10 have had any modern proactive communications training.
There
are many other factors that also need to be considered. First, the traditional mentality of
government in this part of the world is focused on process whilst the western government
focus is on result. In the past the target
of all communication was control and the maintenance of the system. Communication like education was simply an
element of the propaganda system.
Ask
a Ukrainian government official what they have achieved in the reform programme
and they will extol a litany of laws, rules and directives of which they are
rightfully proud. Ask them about what
that means for the people and you will quite likely get a blank stare. This is not because they don’t know the answer,
it is because they are so wholly focused on developing the process that few
easily think in terms of outcome.
This
process focus is then reflected in the information the communications teams are
instructed to deliver. At present the
post of government PR manager is not high enough to enable them to question the
orders of the Minister who in themselves have had little communications
training.
The
Ukrainian public in the past knew not to demand questions on the process of
government thus today they are wholly focused on how government policy and the
law will affect their lives. The result is a classic mismatch where the
government is speaking one language whilst the public are waiting for
another.
The
media in the West may be critical but it does generally work in the public
interest.
Here the majority of the media
is owned by organisations and individuals of the old order that have a vested
interest and virtually unlimited funding to ensure that the government and the
reform programme fail. Some editors have
issued specific instructions not to publish any material submitted by the
President’s or Prime Minister’s press offices and to treat all government
information as a source of negative news.
Short of nationalising the media this is simply a reality we have to
live with.
Journalists,
who are paid on the basis of material published, have little choice but to
either follow the editor’s line or change professions thus the majority of
information that is published is being censored by the media owners and that
includes TV. Serious politicians with a
real message to offer have simply stopped taking part in programmes like
‘Shusta Live’ as they are little more than a coliseum style circus designed to
entertain the masses with a platform of populism.
Sadly
when there is a vacuum of plausible information, programmes such as these and
the negative diatribe that emanates from the media fills the void and the
result is one very confused and disoriented population. Those TV channels and publications that are
critically supportive of the concept of reform sadly have very low audience ratings
when compared to the major channels.
Now
for the good news… The government now understands why their communications
efforts have not been bearing fruit and change is at hand.
The
British and American governments are funding a major reform of the communications
system of the entire Governmental machine based on international models. This includes international standard
retraining for all government communicators including Ministers, Deputy
Ministers, senior civil servants and PR teams.
This retraining will be mandatory and will be backed by new legislation.
The
British government is funding a new ‘Communications Reform Group’ within the
Cabinet of Ministers made up of professionals from the Ukrainian communications
industry who will not only provide meaningful advice to Ministers on how to
improve audience uptake but will also audit the entire communications system to
understand what resources are available and how the system currently operates. At the same time parts of the team will be
looking at new communications legislation and another is working with the
former President of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations in London to
design completely new university level training programmes.
This
reform is going to take time to bear fruit however the programme will radically
alter the whole approach to government communication, enshrine legally binding
systems to ensure that no future government can slip back into the old ways and
provide a basis for the government to include communication into future State
budgets as part of the government’s democratic obligation.
Plans
are also in hand for a major communications drive, despite there being no
budget. This programme, scheduled to
start on the 1st of September, will seek to communicate using the
thousands of points where the government and the public touch such as Oschad
Bank, the Post offices, the railways, television and the internet.
Will
the campaign be enough? That will depend
on how those who care about the future of the nation get behind it.
Martin Nunn is chief executive officer of Whites Communication.
