Good cooperation between the media and public administration bodies is of great importance for the success of the public administration reform in Serbia, this is the conclusion of the final training for representatives of national and local media organized by the EU for Visibility and Communication of Public Administration Reform (PAR) project together with the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-government (MPALSG) from 23 to 25 December in Vrdnik.
The main goal of this training was to round off the cooperation between journalists and the MPALSG on the improvement of media reporting on the PAR process and results through a recapitulation of the most important areas and topics related to public administration reform in Serbia covered in the trainings organized in the previous period. This cooperation is extremely important for the success of PAR, because it enables citizens and the economy to be familiar with its most important achievements, to better understand them in order to use them more successfully in everyday life and business.
In addition to the recapitulation of the most important PAR-related areas and topics, representatives of the media, MPALSG and project experts worked together in groups to practice preparing media stories on assigned topics. Each group then presented the prepared media stories, after which they were analysed in order to find the adequate ways to present specific topics. This type of work in groups enables better understanding between journalists and MPALSG representatives and contributes to the establishment of better cooperation with the aim of citizens and the economy being better informed about PAR and the novelties it brings.
In an open conversation, representatives of the media and MPALSG presented their observations on the cooperation between public administration bodies and the media. There were talks about both good and bad aspects of this cooperation. It became apparent that there was often a lack of understanding between the media and PA bodies, and that PAR-related topics were therefore not always adequately presented and explained.
The final session of this training was devoted to the discussion of future cooperation between the media and MPALSG. The representatives of the media shared what has been most useful so far and what can still be improved from their point of view, and the representatives of MPALSG promised that they will endeavour to make future cooperation better, because both of them are actually on the joint task of better communicating the changes brought about by PAR to citizens and the economy. This will be one of the most important tasks of the Working Group for planning and coordination of communication in connection with PAR, which was formed at the initiative of MPALSG in 2022, and which consists of representatives of member institutions of the Council for Public Administration Reform.
During the training, both parties emphasized the extremely positive role of the PAR Visibility and Communication project in bringing media and public administration closer together and establishing better understanding, direct communication and cooperation in order to improve media reporting on public administration reform.