1

ISSUE

Communication
Reform Today

Issue 1, October 2015

This situation is not helped by the

Ukrainian media which is distinctly

Through all this noise the government needs to be the clear voice of
distinction. Some call it a one voice
policy but it is much more than that,
it is about leadership. Governments
should lead the people not by dictate
but by public support and for that
communication is essential.
The great American PR guru Arthur
Page once coined the phrase The
public be informed and this has to
be the root of all government communication as it is the duty of all
democratic governments to keep the
people informed and, in the case of
Ukraine, that comes down to new
systems, training
and organisation. This is
where we
come in.

so

Why is

The fact that 91.7% of the population

want more information on the reform
programme just goes to prove that the
government communication system is
not working. Yes the Ministries all have
press departments, websites, social
network pages and teams of dedicate
young people pump out everything
they can, but at the end of the day the
people are simply not hearing what is
being said. Part of the problem is that
all the Ministries are saying different things at the same time and this
coupled with donor funded projects
and political parties that do the same,
results in an unintelligible cacophony
of sound that is virtually impossible for
the public to understand.

hostile and more supportive of the

political and business ambitions of
the owner rather than any form of
social responsibility.

communication

In the past Ukraine was controlled

by a one party system that could
only stay in power by being economic with news and information.
Today the government should be;
of the people, for the people and by the
people therefore it is essential that
government both listens to and acts
in the name and the interests of the
people. To do that the government
needs to have the systems and the
correctly trained personnel in place
to enable it. The problem is that today it doesnt.

important?

Welcome
to the first
edition of Communication Reform today,
the biweekly newsletter of the
Communication Reform Group at
the Cabinet of Ministers. In this regularly
publication we hope to be able to tell you the
reality of the communications systems of the
government, why they dont work particularly effectively at present and
what is going to be done
to make them more
efficient in the
future.

91,7%

nt more
ulation wa
of the pop
form
n on the re
informatio
e
programm

Comminication Reform Today, Issue 1, October 2016 | 2

The CRG was set up to assess the reality of what is currently in place. In order to find out the true scale and depth
of the problem the group has carried a
highly detailed human resources and
systems audit to get a clear picture of
the currently reality.

It is not a pretty sight in that whilst

there are a lot of dedicated people
working very hard the lack of a communications management system and
clear, policy based, messaging within
the government is resulting in massive
confusion with Ministries cancelling
each other out in the fight for media
time and space. This leaves the space
wide open for questionable politicians
with highly populist propaganda and
to gross manipulation by forces from
outside of the country. Clearly this is
not an acceptable position.
In the next issues of Communication
Reform Today I will report to you on
the results of the audit and our proposals to reform the entire system of
government communication and our
work on developing long term training standards and systems in conjunction with the National Academy
for Public Administration.

THE LAW

Comminication Reform Today, Issue 1, October 2016 | 3

AND

COMMUNICATION

All actions of the Ukrainian government need to have a detailed basis

in law. This is a throw back to the
former Napoleonic legal system
upon which Tsarist and Soviet law
were based. What our legal audit
has established that government
communication has never been fully
defined in law and therefore the
majority of government communication is at present technically illegal.
In fact the post of PR manager or
Communications manager do not
actually exist, therefore officially the
government has no PR staff at all.
The absence of a legal definition
also means that there can be no allocation of state funding for government communication. To put that
into perspective the UK government
communications budget is 300million a year whilst the Kremlin spends
$196 million and that is without the
propaganda budget.
The CRG legal unit is working to
write this missing pieces of the
legislation. The new laws will include
legally accepted glossary of definitions, the requirement for the government to both listen to the people
and keep them informed, it will set
ethical standards and minimum
standards of qualification for practitioners and senior civil servants so
that this and future governments
will have the ability to deliver their
democratic responsibility.

Comminication Reform Today, Issue 1, October 2016 | 4

When does freedom become

anarchy? As George Bernard Shaw
famously quoted: Liberty means
responsibility. That is why most men
fear it. Some will say that we have
freedom of the press in Ukraine,
but this is not true. We have
moved from a state controlled
press to one that is controlled by
oligarchs who use their access to
the public conscience for both the
political and their business ends.
At present their resistance to reform and to the government of the
day is reflected in their control of
the media. They are defacto censors and answerable to no one.
This is an abuse of power and one
that the government needs to
address. Most certainly the press
must have the right to report the
news freely, openly and without
fear or favour, but also the public must have the right to appeal
against unwarranted attacks and
libel in the media without having to resort to taking on the
oligarchs in the corrupt Ukrainian
court system.

Under the present system, the

press (read Oligarchs) can say
what ever they like, true, partly
true or completely false about
anybody without the risk of being
held to account. This is fundamentally wrong as all aspects of
freedom need to have checks and
balances or anarchy will prevail.
In Europe the press are required
to work to higher standards of
proof than courts of law whilst
in Ukraine there are no rules at
all. Clearly this is a situation that
needs to be addressed as it goes
right to the heart of freedom in
Ukraine and to our aspirant
European values.

Liberty
means
responsibility.
That is why most
men fear it.
George Bernard Shaw

Comminication Reform Today, Issue 1, October 2016 | 5

CRG is a team of 20 top professionals

in communication, training, research
and the law. All the senior members of
the team have considerable national
and international experience and are
rated as some of the best in Ukraine
and in Europe. This issues personality
is Sue Wolstenholme, our consultant
on the development of new training
programmes within the CRG.
Sue is a former President of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations; a
Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Public
Relations and was President of the
European PR Research and Education
Association for 2009/10. She was made
a fellow of the Chartered Institute of

Public Relations in 1998 for services

to developing the profession and was
awarded Chartered Practitioner Status in 2010. She is one of the UKs top
professionals in the teaching of public
relations strategy and practice, has
supervised at PhD level on the subject
for the University of Exeter and has run
projects to raise professional standards
for senior PR practitioners in Armenia,
China, Croatia, Egypt, Kenya, Kazakhstan, Oman, Qatar, Romania, Serbia,
Syria, Switzerland, the UAE, the UK and
now in Ukraine.

In the next issue we will

look at the results of the
audit in detail and what
steps we are recommending to the government to
build a workable system.