Strasbourg, 21 March 2013 CDLR(2013)1
Item 4 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
Democratic Institutions and Governance Department
 |
Introduction
Communication has become an important part of the work of the CDLR following Minister Kiviniemi’s report on “How to enhance the work of the Council of Europe in the field of local and regional democracy?” presented to the 16th session of the Council of Europe Conference of Ministers responsible for Local and Regional Government in Utrecht on 16 and 17 November 2009. The Ministers declared 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 November 2012 - March 2013
The items below refer to events and activities organised since the last CDLR meeting in November 2012. For the highlights from April 2012 to November 2012, please refer to document CDLR(2012)18.
CDLR on Twitter
[TO DO LIST ITEM: 6; DEADLINE: ongoing]
The @coe_cdlr twitter account has, at the time of writing, 262 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 in the first part of 2013, notably on:
i) the news on the state of ratification of the ECLSG and on France’s ratification of Protocol No. 3. Both news items were retweeted by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development of Latvia. These retweets were forwarded to approximately 2386 followers, in response to the CDLR Secretariat’s request;
ii) the video promoting the 12 principles of good governance of the Strategy – retweeted to over 1000 followers;
iii) the Centre of Expertise’s participation in the Global Conference for Locally elected Women, organised at the initiative of Ms Anne Hidalgo, first deputy mayor of Paris and chair of the Committee on Gender Equality of United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), the worldwide organisation of local government – retweeted to over 1000 followers. These latter tweets sent out by the Secretariat did not concern CDLR or Centre of Expertise activities directly, but were nonetheless useful as a visibility raising exercise.
The Secretariat would like to reiterate the usefulness of Communication correspondents’ or, in the absence of a correspondent, CDLR members’ retweeting messages to their own followers. It would also be helpful if the Ministry / local authority association could retweet messages emanating from CDLR secretariat, at the request of the CDLR member or the CDLR Communication Correspondent – this would ensure a greater publicity for the CDLR and Centre of Expertise’s activities via Twitter.
Video to promote the Strategy in five languages
[TO DO LIST ITEM: 6 and 16]
Work on the video to promote the 12 principles of the Strategy, in English, French, Ukrainian, German, Italian and Russian was finalised mid-January 2013. The video was sent out to the CDLR members and CDLR Communication correspondents and promoted on twitter, where it was retweeted (see above). A hardcopy version of the video will soon be available for CDLR members.
It was first played in public at the meeting of the Steering Committee of the Programme to support local and regional democracy in Ukraine (4 February 2013) where it was well received by the participants, and will be played at the CDLR and Centre of Expertise’s stand at the Spring session of the Congress (19-21 March).
The youtube version of the video has, to date, over 400 views and has been praised and shared by an American public policy consultancy firm.
The catalogue of CDLR and Centre of Expertise publications
[TO DO LIST ITEM: 6 and 16; DEADLINE: ongoing]
At the last 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. The catalogue has been updated and printed for the Spring 2013 Congress session. In future, publications should be made in tablet-friendly format. 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
Brochure on the Strategy for Innovation and Good Governance
[TO DO LIST ITEM: 6 and 16; DEADLINE: November 2013]
The brochure should be updated and brought into line with the new video to promote the 12 principles in time for the 2013 World Forum for Democracy 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: June 2013]
The text of the Centre of Expertise brochure has been updated. The new brochure, with information on the different toolkits, will be put together in April 2013.
Flyer on the Centre of Expertise for Local Government Reform
[TO DO LIST ITEM: 6 and 16; DEADLINE: June 2013]
A flyer has been drafted on the Centre of Expertise for Local Government Reform, offering a snapshot view of the Centre’s activities, and highlighting some of its more recent success stories. An A4 information sheet version was available during the Congress session in October. It should be produced as a flyer towards June 2013.
3. Website
[TO DO LIST ITEM: 11; DEADLINE: ongoing]
The Local and Regional Democracy website remains the main means of communication for the CDLR, in conjunction with the website’s exposure on twitter. The news page is updated on a regular basis, and tweets are sent out as appropriate.
The Secretariat is still awaiting further instructions with regard to migration to the Council of Europe’s new website application “Liferay” which will eventually be extended to all Council of Europe departments.
The Secretariat added Google analytics to the website’s main pages to facilitate evaluation of traffic to the local democracy website. Since 1 January 2013, the site has had nearly 2300 visitors; of those visitors 1,166 returned to the website. The English homepage has the highest number of visitors, followed by the pages on the Strategy, the Centre of Expertise and the European Label of Governance Excellence.
4. Publications of the CDLR
[TO DO LIST ITEM: 7; DEADLINE: ongoing]
In 2013, the following reports have been published to date on the internet: the report for Greece on the Structure and Operation of Local and Regional Democracy, an updated edition of the Toolkit on Modern Leadership for Modern Local Government (to include a chapter on women and leadership and leadership and gender mainstreaming, as well as further training materials) and an updated edition of the Toolkit on Modern and Effective Human Resources Management (to include a chapter on gender and human resources).
Work continues on updating the Structure and Operation of Local and Regional Democracy which was completely overhauled in 2012 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 possible and relevant. The latest text includes two new sections on gender, prepared with the help of the two gender rapporteurs Edwin Lefebre and Gabriëlle Metz. Work is currently underway to incorporate the suggestions made by the Congress on the report, submitted at the last CDLR meeting.
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 and 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 a correspondent to the Communication Correspondents’ Network, where this has not already been done (ongoing request);
3. to inform the Secretariat of relevant Twitter addresses in member states’ connected to local and regional democracy, with a view to further promoting the work of the CDLR and the Centre through the coe_cdlr twitter account (ongoing request);
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 2013.
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.