Sharjah: 14 new government communication units to be established

Sharjah: Fourteen governmental communication units will be established by the end of this year in Sharjah governmental departments that have the greatest effect on the public, the Sharjah Media Centre (SMC)announced here yesterday.

The announcement was made during a press conference that discussed the final recommendation and outcome of the second edition of the Government Communication Forum 2013 (GCF) that took place from February 24 to 25 this year.

Establishing governmental units in Sharjah governmental departments in order to ease communication with the media and consequently the public were among the key recommendations that the SMC has already started working on.

“Establishing governmental communication units were also among the recommendations that we had last year and we have already started implementing them on 14 of the most important governmental departments in hopes of covering all 49 departments in the near future,” Shaikh Sultan Bin Ahmad Al Qasimi, Chairman of SMC, said.

Shaikh Sultan stated that training has already started for all 14 communication units in order to facilitate governmental communication with the media and the public.

“We already started working on these units and the improvements in communication are already evident as some of the departments we started working with were among the ones that suffered from ineffective communication with the media,” Shaikh Sultan said.

Turning GCF into an “International Government Communication Forum” was among the leading recommendations made by most participants due to the great achievement in international presence and the international topics discussed at GCF.

“Through GCF we found that most governmental communication tools are the same in all countries so in the next forum we will work on turning it into an international one by working on a bigger international scale and by focusing on international practices and speakers.”

Adopting transparency in dealing with various communication issues especially with the media and providing the media with different suitable governmental communication platforms were also among the recommendations discussed at the conference.

Other recommendations included adopting GCF as a platform for change in the concept of governmental communication in Sharjah in specific and the UAE in general. The government was also recommended in taking a proactive role in communication and in facilitating access to information that interests the public and media.

“The Sharjah Media Centre will immediately work on implementing these recommendations in order to develop governmental communication effectively and gain trust among the public,” Shaikh Sultan added.