Strasbourg, 26 octobre 2012 CDLR(2012)18
Item A7 of the agenda
EUROPEAN COMMITTEE ON LOCAL AND REGIONAL DEMOCRACY
(CDLR)
INTERGOVERNMENTAL WORK ON DEMOCRATIC
LOCAL GOVERNANCE - COMMUNICATIONS
For information
Secretariat Memorandum
prepared by the
Directorate of Democratic Governance, Culture and Diversity
Democracy, Institution-Building and Governance Department
 |
Introduction
Communication has become an important part of the work of the CDLR. The impetus for its importance derives from Minister Kiviniemi’s report on “How to enhance the work of the Council of Europe in the field of local and regional democracy?” and the declaration by European Ministers responsible for Local and Regional Government, meeting in Utrecht on 16 and 17 November 2009 for the 16th Session of their Conference, that “the work of the Council of Europe in the field of local and regional democracy deserves to be better known and an active communication policy should be developed in order to maximize its impact on member States and civil society” (Utrecht Declaration, II.A, 5.).
Using the “To do list” as a reference (Appendix I to document CDLR(2010)6), please see below (items 1. – 5.) for the “to do list” items which have been implemented to date or are currently being implemented.
Please use the latter document as a reference since its appendices are not reproduced here.
1. Communication activities 2012-2013
The items below refer to events and activities organised since the last CDLR meeting in April 2012. For the highlights from September 2011 to April 2012, please refer to document CDLR(2012)11.
CDLR on Twitter
[TO DO LIST ITEM: 6; DEADLINE: ongoing]
The @coe_cdlr twitter account has, at the time of writing, 238 followers. These comprise a mixture of NGOs specialising in local democracy (and in particular our partners CEMR and the Assembly of European Regions), local authorities from around Europe, CEOs of local authorities, academics specialising in local democracy, mayors, local government internet newspapers, local newspapers, as well as the Secretary General of the Council of Europe.
Several retweets were recorded, notably on the entry into force of the Additional Protocol to the ECLSG on the right to participate in the affairs of the local authority, and the need for one more ratification before entry into force of the Protocol to the Madrid Outline Convention. Several people add our links to their “favourite” links.
It would be useful if Communication correspondents or, in the absence of a correspondent, CDLR members could retweet our messages to their own followers, or, in the absence of a personal twitter account, whether they could ask their Ministry / local authority association to retweet our messages – this would ensure a greater publicity for CDLR and Centre of Expertise’s activities via Twitter. This is particularly important when the activity in question concerns their member State.
Distribution of the report: Local Government in Critical Times: Policies for Crisis, Recovery and a Sustainable Future”
[TO DO LIST ITEM: 6 and 12; DEADLINE: 31 December 2012]
The report was officially launched at the March Congress session, with speeches made by the CDLR Chair, Paul Rowsell, the President of the Congress, Keith Whitmore and the editor of the report, Ken Davey, Emeritus Professor, International Development Department, School of Public Policy, University of Birmingham.
A press conference was organised shortly after its publication, with the members of the press for Spain and Italy attending. This resulted in an article in the Spanish on-line newspaper “ABC” – a national daily newspaper and the third largest general-interest newspaper in Spain.
The book was sent to the Permanent Representatives to the Council of Europe, with an accompanying letter from the then Director of the Directorate, Robert Palmer, as well as to Dexia, the OSI, the OECD, local authority associations, a variety of economists, and academics. It was also distributed at the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly sessions and the CEMR general assembly held in Cadiz, Spain, 26-28 September.
Best Practice Programme, Regeneration of Coastal Towns
[TO DO LIST ITEM: 6, DEADLINE: 1 April]
This was promoted jointly by the Congress and the CDLR Secretariat, through the website, Twitter, Communication Correspondents Network, and contact lists. There were 48 participants, including from outside Europe (coastal municipalities in Israel).
Video to promote the Strategy in five languages
[TO DO LIST ITEM: 6 and 16; DEADLINE: 31 December 2012]
Work began in March to produce a video to promote the 12 principles of the Strategy, in English, French, Ukrainian, German, Italian and Russian. This work should be finished by the end of the year. The company producing the video is the company that produced the video on the European Convention on Human Rights[1], and the video is of a similar genre –a short video capturing the essence of the 12 principles of good governance, set to funky music.
Brochure on the Strategy for Innovation and Good Governance
[TO DO LIST ITEM: 6 and 16; DEADLINE: 31 January 2013]
Work is currently underway to update the brochure, and bring it in line with the new video to promote the 12 principles, to ensure a consistency in the Strategy promotion material. The Ukrainian version of this brochure is already available.
Brochure on the Centre of Expertise for Local Government Reform
[TO DO LIST ITEM: 6 and 16; DEADLINE: 31 January 2013]
The text of the Centre of Expertise brochure has been updated. The new brochure will be produced in January 2013, on the 2013 budget.
Flyer on the Centre of Expertise for Local Government Reform
[TO DO LIST ITEM: 6 and 16; DEADLINE: 31 January 2013]
A flyer has been drafted on the Centre of Expertise for Local Government Reform, taking a more snapshot view of the Centre’s activities, and relating some of its more recent success stories. This too will be produced in the new year. It was already available as an A4 information sheet during the Congress session in October.
The catalogue of CDLR and Centre of Expertise publications
[TO DO LIST ITEM: 6 and 16; DEADLINE: ongoing]
At the most recent Congress session, there was a notable increase in demand for the catalogue listing all CDLR and Centre of Expertise publications and legal instruments (first produced for the Ministerial Conference in Utrecht). This is in stark contrast to previous occasions, when demand for this catalogue was almost non-existent.
This could be indicative of the wider use of tablets (ipad, Samsung Galaxy, Kindle etc), and anecdotal evidence of the Congress Session would suggest that this is true. In future, publications should be made as tablet friendly as possible. The Council of Europe will soon be offering to produce documents in an e-pub format - a free and open e-book standard by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). Files have the extension .epub. This is also in line with the CoE’s paper-free culture.
2. Future communication projects
Human Rights
[TO DO LIST ITEM: 6; DEADLINE: ongoing]
It was agreed at the 46th CDLR meeting to include a human rights/human dimension focus in the activities on communication (see item 1 above).
Earlier this year, contact was established with the Unit managing the “Building a Europe for and with Children” project, DGI Human Rights and Rule of Law, initially with regard to disseminating the recent video produced by the Centre of Expertise for Local Government Reform (Once upon a time, local democracy – 2557 viewings at the time of writing[2]). It was further realised that the CDLR could contribute to their work programme by its participation in the (broadly defined) monitoring mechanism of the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse (the Lanzarote Convention) and its involvement in the Council of Europe "One in Five" campaign – a programme to stop sexual violence against children.
The CDLR participation in this activity, in addition to being very beneficial to children’s Human Rights in Europe, would be good for the CDLR from an internal communication point of view, helping to raise the visibility of the CDLR work within the Organisation, and with a high profile activity.
The CDLR should appoint itsrapporteur in this regard. Participation of the rapporteur in events such as the Committee of the Parties to the Lanzarote Convention would be paid for by the Council of Europe. For further information on this appointment, please see document CDLR(2012)10.
More brochures
[TO DO LIST ITEM: 6 and 16; DEADLINE: end of March 2013]
It is intended to produce further brochures for distribution on the activities of the Centre of Expertise. The next brochure to be drafted will focus on the Centre’s tools and toolkits.
Workshops
[TO DO LIST ITEM: 6; DEADLINE: date of the workshop]
The workshop to be hosted in 2013 in Belgium on low participation will be promoted via the local democracy website, the CoE website and twitter, and press releases will be sent to the Correspondents network for distribution. Please see the information on Twitter, under item 1., on the proliferation of tweets via personal or ministry/local authority association accounts. Other communication approaches, such as a press conference, will be organised depending on the target audiences identified and the potential interest the workshop may generate.
3. Website
[TO DO LIST ITEM: 11; DEADLINE: ongoing]
The Local and Regional Democracy website remains the main communication tool for the CDLR. The news page has been updated regularly, and some of the stories have been followed up by external bodies and the Council of Europe’s Directorate of Communication for twitter and podcasts.
In 2012, changes were made to the website to bring it in line with structural changes arising from the recent reform of the Council of Europe. This type of change will continue in 2013, as the Council of Europe’s new website application “Liferay” is extended to all Council of Europe departments.
The Secretariat has very recently added Google analytics to the website’s main pages. This application provides a comprehensive monthly overview of our website’s visitors, including information on the types of word searches carried out to find our website, geographical information (country and city), how long visitors remained on the pages, how many pages they looked at, etc. In the short time since it was added, we have had visits from around most of our member States, and additionally from Japan, the US, Botswana. Most of the visitors were people looking for information on European local democracy through Google word searches, as opposed to regular visitors having already bookmarked our homepage.
4. Publications of the CDLR
[TO DO LIST ITEM: 7; DEADLINE: ongoing]
In 2012, the following publications were finalised : Crossborder co-operation in Europe: a comprehensive overview, Toolkit on crossborder co-operation, Toolkit on leadership and the Toolkit on human resources.
Work on Greece’s report on the Structure and Operation of Local and Regional Democracy has been interrupted owing to insufficient funds for translating the report into French. The report will be resubmitted to translation as soon as extra funds are found (if possible), or at the beginning of the new budget year (January 2013).
The Structure and Operation of Local and Regional Democracy was completely overhauled. In drawing up the proposal, the Secretariat identified 3 primary goals: namely to reduce the amount of drafting by the member State, to reduce the amount of time spent on proof-reading, linguistic correction and translation by the Secretariat, and to make comparison of the different local authority systems easier, indeed possible, and relevant. The new report is being piloted in Belgium, Croatia, Hungary and United Kingdom.
5. Communication Network
[TO DO LIST ITEM: 6; DEADLINE: ongoing]
The network comprises the following member states: Azerbaijan, Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Switzerland, Turkey. While this membership ensures a fair coverage, further nominations from member States currently not represented would be welcome.
Action required
CDLR members are invited:
1. to take note of the information provided in the present document;
2. to nominate (ongoing request) a correspondent to the Communication Correspondents’ Network, where this has not already been done;
3. to send the Secretariat member states’ Twitter addresses connected to local and regional democracy (ongoing request), in view of the success of the coe_cdlr twitter account;
4. to continue actively contributing to the new communication policy in order to enhance the visibility of the Council of Europe’s work on local and regional democracy at national level by:
i) identifying appropriate communication activities;
ii) identifying appropriate follow-up in member states;
iii) drawing up communication plans by reference to the Communication checklist;
iv) flagging up important activities to make visible in 2012-13.
v) retweeting information, or asking their ministry / local authority association to retweet information.
vi) requesting that information on CDLR activities be added to the ministry / local authority association website.
[1] See the Youtube link for the video on the European Convention on Human Rights: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOcmUQTgjCw&feature=plcp&context=C335a35cUDOEgsToPDskI6W3znOYbNheSgWr1z38n3&noredirect=1
[2] Once upon a time, local democracy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TBOGhA9hdI