On the 4th of March, 2010 the FOICA, together with the “Public Relation and Information Center” SNCO of the RA President’s Administration organized a workgroup discussion with the topic of “Assuring Publicity in the State Government System” for the heads of the departments of “Information and Public Affairs” of the RA Regional Administrations and the press secretaries of the Regional Governors.The deputy director of the “Public Relation and Information Center” SNCO of the RA President’s Administration Mary Harutyunyan talked about the work of the heads of the departments of “Information and Public Affairs” of the RA Regional Administrations and the press secretaries of the Regional Governors in the context of providing information.
Also, M. Harutyunyan introduced them to the “Joint Informational Board” developed by their SNCO. This is a joint system where all the ministries, Adjunct bodies to the RA Government, the Central Bank, and other state government bodies are included. It is planned to include all the Regional Administrations in this system, as well. The board is an active system; it assures everyday communication with the departments of “Public Affairs” and press secretaries of all the state bodies. The board consists of a number of sections, a part of which is open to all the registered members, and the other part is to be available only for the administrators. There are two more sections, too – “Upcoming Events” and “Press Releases” – which are to be available for journalists as well.
The participants to the discussion received the idea of a joint platform with great excitement. However, they also brought up a couple of issues which are directly related to the effectiveness of the system. Particularly, the board has a section called “Monitoring”, which suggests an everyday monitoring of different means of mass media. Whereas, the departments of “Public Affairs” of a number of Regional Administrations have no TV sets, means to subscribe for enough newspapers, and finally, they have not enough human resources. E.g., there is only one employee (the head of the department) in the department of “Public Affairs” of the Regional Administration of Vayots Dzor. As for the Regional Administration of Ararat, the head of the department of “Public Affairs” has a number of additional duties, which are not included in the job description of his post.
The deputy director of the “Public Relation and Information Center” SNCO of the RA President’s Administration Mary Harutyunya promised to discussed the mentioned problems with the RA Vice Prime Minister, RA Minister of Territorial Administration Armen Gevorgyan, and try to find possible solutions.
The event was realized by the financial support of the USAID Armenia, in the frames of the “Access to Information for Community Involvement” USAID funded project.
