Whenever a government crisis arises, analysts and political commentators point out flaws in government communication. This was the case with the crises of rising bread prices, rising fuel prices, transport and even the insurgency in Cabo Delgado. More recently, it was the case of the floods in Maputo Province and now the strike by doctors and health workers, which once again put government communication under public scrutiny, claiming that government communication is deficient.
On the STV Information Night Program (20.08.2023) Moisés Mabumba and Samuel Simango, speaking about the Doctors and Health Workers’ Strike, highlight the Government’s weak communication skills as one of the main factors that has contributed to the extreme positions between the parties and the worsening of the CRISIS.
The successive crises that the Government has been going through in recent times raise the need to reflect on the role and contribution of communication in governance, if we take into account that it is not possible to dissociate communication from government action, since successful governance is one that places the citizen at the center of its action.
The Government’s Communication deficiencies cannot be sustained by a principle of incompetence or inability of government managers to manage their communication processes. There are several strategic and operational factors that have contributed to poor GOVERNMENT communication , with a negative impact on its ability to establish relationships, resolve conflicts and protect its reputation.
I do not intend to engage in a theoretical discussion about the concept of Public or Government Communication, but to understand what factors make Government Communication deficient and seen as one of the weakest links in Governance whenever crises occur.
THE ROLE AND VALUE OF COMMUNICATION IN ORGANIZATIONS
An important and fundamental point for understanding the role of communication and its importance for organizations is that they must first be understood as an inherent part of the nature of organizations, as they are formed by people who communicate and relate to each other and who, through interactive processes, make the functional system viable for their survival and fulfillment of organizational objectives in a context of diversity and complex transactions.
Although we understand that communication is essential for organizations, many, particularly in Mozambique, continue to face significant challenges in terms of its implementation. The biggest constraint to the success of communication in public and government institutions in Mozambique has to do with the role and position assigned to it.
In the early 1990s, on the way to the 21st century, communication was no longer seen as just a tactical management tool and began to be considered a strategic area in organizations. Thus, in the current context, we cannot think of communication except in a strategically planned way, based on corporate values and focused on achieving the organizations’ business objectives. In the case of the public sector, the central idea is the same.
Unfortunately, many organizations and managers of organizations have not yet realized the importance and role that communication should play in their organizations. In many organizations, especially government organizations, communication still plays a marginal role, without any strategic value. In other words, communication is seen by many of our organizations and their managers as an area that merely provides support, expenses, production of materials (t-shirts, caps), press relations, organization of corporate parties, Women’s Day, Labor Day, among others. This reductionist view of the role and function of communication and public relations in institutions constitutes in itself a major obstacle to the growth of organizations.
Successful organizations think about communication in a strategic and organized way. If in the past we thought that the success of organizations resulted only from the proper management of financial and material resources, today, the success of organizations depends much more on the quality of the relationships they establish, whether internally or externally.
Thinking strategically about communication means planning and organizing the communication process at the organizational level. It means seeking long-term results and the best actions to ensure the fulfillment of the organization’s strategic objectives. Thinking strategically about communication at the organizational level means positioning the function within the context of the organization, giving it direct access to the administrative system, allowing it (communication) to advise the company’s management, assessing its objectives and making recommendations on how the area can contribute to these objectives; contributing to the analysis of companies’ business plans, identifying problems and opportunities for the communication area and establishing programs to minimize undesirable situations and maximize positive situations; anticipating, from a communication point of view, situations that may have a negative impact on the organization and, above all, developing the function in a planned and integrated manner with the other areas of the organization.
From a governance perspective, think strategically about communication, which must accompany all governance processes, through a process of planning and organizing its activities so that governments can engage in dialogue with their different audiences.
It also means that governance plans such as the PES – Social Economic Plan or the Government’s Five-Year Program, must define communication as a strategic tool for their implementation and success.
In a quick analysis of the Government’s Five-Year Program 2020-2024, in Pillar II: Promoting Good Governance and Decentralization, good governance is defined as “ Good governance refers to mechanisms, processes and institutions through which citizens and social groups articulate interests, exercise their rights, fulfill their obligations and mediate their differences. Good governance aims to ensure transparency and participation of all, provide effectiveness and efficiency in the provision of services to the public ”. To this end, it recommends in point (V) of the strategic objectives, to ensure the consolidation of good governance and decentralization, that the Government “ensure quality media and information services”.
If the government’s priority is to promote good governance and decentralization, then, from a communications perspective, its strategic objective should be geared towards designing and developing a communications policy and strategy that will help to ensure the consolidation of good governance and decentralization. Furthermore, the government’s communications policy and strategy should also be geared towards ensuring compliance with the government’s Five-Year Plan.
GOVERNMENT COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENT
In Mozambique, the management of government communications is the responsibility of the Mozambique Information Office (GABINFO). Subordinate to the Prime Minister’s Office, this entity oversees all state bodies and public communications bodies, provides advice to the executive on specific issues in the area of communications, promoting, among other things, the dissemination of and access to information on government activities. GABINFO is also responsible for registering and licensing media outlets.
If we look closely at GABINFO’s responsibilities, we can easily see that we are dealing with an organization whose genesis is the management of the relationship between the Government and the Media, focusing on a “ public information” model , characterized as journalistic, which disseminates relatively objective information through the media in general and specific means of communication.
There is no investment in proactive and permanent relationships with strategic audiences. More importantly, we lack a strategic vision and guidelines for government communication to ensure compliance with the objectives and governance program.
GABINFO needs to once and for all assume a strategic role in the Management of Government Communications and serve to anticipate and mitigate crisis situations, manage relationships and not just communicate or campaign about the Government’s achievements. As long as the focus of the government communication process is based on the unidirectional communication model, crises will continue to occur and the quality of the Government’s response will remain low, as it will always be reactive.
Like GABINFO, most public and/or government institutions focus their communication processes on managing relationships with the press. Our leaders are concerned with what is said about them and their institutions in the media and not with building relationships with their main stakeholders.
This model prioritizes more “tactical” communication actions; the actions have a reactive nature and essentially aim to protect executives against attacks from the press, produce Reports, Newsletters, Advertising Spots, Press Releases, among other unidirectional communication instruments, to the detriment of strategic and bidirectional thinking, as recommended.
However, the current scenario characterized by social, economic and technological impacts that generate tensions, requires the adoption of new communication postures at the organizational level. Its role ceases to be merely reactive and unidirectional and becomes strategic and oriented towards a huge diversity of audiences, demonstrating the relevance of communication and the need for its management.
Because the current model does not effectively meet the needs of governance, for Government communication to be effective and excellent, GABINFO must broaden its scope of action, leaving aside the logic of press office, and incorporating into its work a logic of “communication” that focuses on:
- Advise the Government, assessing its global objectives and making recommendations on how the communications area can contribute to achieving these objectives;
- Contribute to the analysis of the Government’s Five-Year Plan and the PES, identifying problems and opportunities for the communications area, establishing programs to minimize negative impacts and maximize positive impacts or situations.
- Anticipate and manage crisis situations that may have an impact on the Government’s reputation;
- Develop your activity in a planned manner and always integrated with other areas of governance. In other words, place communication as a means to achieve strategic objectives and not as an end in itself.
It is important to rethink the role of GABINFO, giving it greater operational, technical and human capacity so that it can effectively become the government’s communications agency. We need a broad discussion about the type of communication we want at government level, to look at the quality and training of the communication actors or makers, to look at the challenges the country faces today and understand what the role of communication is and should be. Above all, we need to find a communication model that is suited to the new paradigm of governance: decentralization.
THE PROFILE OF COMMUNICATION PROFESSIONALS
No less important than giving due value to communication and public relations in organizations, the profile of professionals and their skills play an equally important role in the success of communication at the organizational level. Professional competence and initiative are also extremely important for communication excellence, since the communication professional must be the one who makes possible the permanent coexistence between innovation and routine, evolution and regression, stability and instability, regeneration and inertia (Gonçalves, 2013: pp. 65-66).
According to Margarida Kunsch, Public Relations deals directly with the organization and its audiences “promoting and managing relationships and often mediating conflicts, using communication strategies and programs, according to different situations in the social and corporate environment”.
From this perspective, Kunsch (1997) identifies the public relations professional as the most suitable person to carry out this task, since his/her field of action is directed towards the analysis of the organization’s plans, identifying problems and opportunities.
It is important that public relations professionals are able to insert government communication into a productive process, with the implementation of innovative and effective communication programs, with a view to a cordial understanding between the political class and the target audiences, thus placing public relations as the engine of the entire communication machine at the organizational level, as its practices imprint institutional dynamism, functioning as the main indicator of the positioning that any organization should have in terms of image and ideology, at a time when political disputes for power are increasingly fierce.
However, in Mozambique, perhaps because of the unidirectional communication model and also guided by the functional profile of GABINFO, a good part of the communication managers of government institutions are actually journalists, and not public relations managers with a broad vision of organizational and corporate communication processes aimed at building relationships between the organization and its audiences. This does not mean that journalists cannot work in organizational communication. It is necessary to properly frame the role of journalists and journalism within the communication structure of an organization, so as not to create deviations in the focus of action of such structures.
