General assembly of the new public communication

General assembly of the new public communication

Perugia, 16 October 2020 - 6^th edition of the annual event organised by PAsocial, dedicated to digital public communication and information.

“We must ask ourselves what kind of administration we want in the future. Today the Public Administration needs a fundamental shift, even if many steps forward have been made, accelerated by the pandemic, from bureaucratic communication to one as close as possible to the citizen. The PA has the task of innovating on all fronts, including that of communication, of the way it relates to the citizen and in which it can tell the positive examples within the PA. This is the only way it can be the springboard for the country”. With these words, the Minister for Public Administration Fabiana Dadone set the scene at the sixth edition of the General Assembly of the new public communication.

Which is to say, the importance of institutional communication, and the need for it to be entrusted to professionals who are specialised, trained and able to better manage the image of the public administration and dialogue with citizens.

The Mayor of Perugia, Andrea Romizi, stressed in his welcome speech that “in recent years, the Italian public administration has been urged to develop a culture of greater transparency and openness towards the outside world, abandoning the self-referentiality that has often characterised and characterises the functioning of public bodies. The opportunity offered by web 2.0,” continued Romizi, “has allowed public administrations to use new, fundamental channels of communication such as social media to reinvent the relationship with the citizen in a different perspective of information sharing. From the relations between public bodies and citizens, mediated by professionals, ‘value flows’ are created, trust is created, the citizen is put at the centre and listened to, so that the perception of the PA from without is modified”.

Creating an ecosystem of relationships makes it possible to integrate a new vision and knowledge of PA, to represent change in the field of communication and public information, not only in form but above all in substance.

This was followed by the Chancellor of the University of Perugia, Maurizio Oliviero, who invited communications professionals to seek a balance between efficiency and the great speed of innovation and qualitatively adequate and verified communication. “In fact, great technological innovation has not always been accompanied by an adequate culture of communications,” the Rector noted. “We strongly perceive the need for communication, for openness, for greater efficiency, on the part of citizens, but today we are still in a phase of transition, in which sometimes the quality of information is sacrificed to speed. Communications professionals within public administrations have a great responsibility and this new segment of professionalism should be given a precise and appropriate role”.

Francesco Giorgino, Director of the Master in Political, Institutional Communication and Marketing at the Luiss School of Government, also addressed the General Assembly, mentioning the concept of a platform society or a connected society that develops around public values.

Before the start of the work, the coordinator of PA Social Umbria, Simona Cortona, who organised the event together with Laura Marozzi from the University and Simona Panzolini of Perugia's hospital, also welcomed the participants, highlighting their common and shared work. “I never expected to have to organise this meeting in the situation in which we find ourselves,” she said. “But I want to stress that, in this chaos, all of us at PA Social throughout Italy have been united, we have communicated to the citizens, we have been on the front line, listened, teamed up, together with the politicians and managers of our institutions”.

The Minister for Education, Lucia Azzolina, spoke by video link.

The work was then started by PA Social President Francesco di Costanzo, who reiterated the fundamental need for public administrations to be able to manage interaction and dialogue with citizens. “It is job that requires great professionalism and competence and an organisation different from the one we have today,” he explained. “The health emergency, however, has created opportunities from the point of view of the use of digital technology that we have an obligation to make the most of.”

Among the most important issues addressed during the General Assembly is that of the digital breakthrough for public communication and information, which has its crux in the proposed reform of Law 150/2000, presented last 16 May to Minister Dadone by the ministerial working group led by Sergio Talamo. Mr Talamo himself stressed that it is not a question of disregarding Law 150, which is recognised as a milestone in public communication. “Rather,” he pointed out, “twenty years have passed since that law, an era incomparable to the present one. Digital today is not a choice but an obligation if we really want to talk to citizens and make laws enter into everyday life, made up of services. The starting point,” concluded Talamo, “is a change not of rules but of mentality. Law 151 is an indoor place where people work for the outside world, where they have the old tools of journalism but also all the new arrows in the quiver of communications to talk to citizens.”

Confirming the progress made in recent years, the research of the National Observatory on digital communication presented by the director Livio Gigliuto and Enrico Giannotti, general director of Cedat85, told attendees that today, 78% of the sample analysed (made up of more than 300 public administrations) have a person exclusively dedicated to the use of social media and the relationship with users, which means about 9,500 people, communications experts, who carry out this profession with great attention. There is a 60% growth in the presence of the PA on social media and one PA out of 2 responds to the citizen in real time, creating a continuous relationship with the community. In summary: it is nice to be on social, but with what objective?

This was followed by the talks by Pier Carlo Sommo, Adjunct Professor of Public Communication at the University of Turin, and Alessandra Migliozzi, head of the Ministry of Education's press office, who reiterated the urgent need to speed up a new law capable of regulating the use of the new instruments. Gianluca Garro, Head of Communications at Casa Italia - Presidency of the Council of Ministers, called attention to the need for coordination among the various communication actors. Francesco Nicodemo, communications expert, focused on the concept of responsibility and how much communication within the PA presupposes a relationship of maximum responsibility with the recipients. Stefania Iannizzotto, social media manager of Accademia della Crusca, expressly mentioned the recent agreement with the Ministry for a linguistic simplification of PA communication.

According to Annalisa D'Errico, Head of Communications of Unioncamere Piemonte, a good communication requires a large toolbox where the language must be precise, surgical, analytical without creating distance with the citizen. A psychological approach is important for a successful dialogue. Roberto Piccinini of AIRF focused on simplification, so that PA’s internet sites are as easy to use as social media.

Sviluppumbria starts a new path dedicated to digital public communication and information by participating in the 2020 edition of the General Assembly of the new public communication.