Last Updated: 03-Apr-2008

Corporate strategy

April 2008 - March 2011

Vision

Helping to meet the communication and information needs of government and the public.

Mission

GCIS’ mission is to provide leadership in government communication and ensure that the public is informed of government’s implementation of its mandate.

Strategic Objective

The overarching strategic objective of GCIS is to enhance the government communication system and its operations in ways that contribute to the process of further consolidating our democracy and taking the country onto a higher growth and development path.

GCIS Approach

This objective will be achieved by retaining the following elements in our strategic approach:

1. Providing leadership in government communication and ensuring better performance by the communication system

GCIS must take responsibility for ensuring government is communicating interactively with the public and for the communication of government’s vision and approaches to broad areas. GCIS needs to be at the forefront of analysis of the communication environment so that it can identify initiatives to be taken in enhancing the work of government and responding effectively when required.

2. Building a framework of communication partnerships informed by an encompassing vision around common development objectives

GCIS must take overall responsibility for promoting partnership among all communicators, inside and outside of government, in articulating a shared vision and value system for a caring society and in broadening access to the means of receiving and imparting information. This includes improving relations with the media and with communicators in parastatal bodies and the private sector, including in international marketing efforts.

3. Promoting awareness of the opportunities that democracy has brought and how to access them

GCIS will need to intensify the provision of basic information to the public about the rights of citizens and how to take advantage of government’s socio-economic programmes as well as about the general process of policy development and implementation. Attention will be paid to further improve the accessibility of our products and the effectiveness of distribution strategies in reaching all citizens.

4. Promoting awareness of the institutions and programmes of continental and regional integration and development

Given the critical role of the regional environment and the development of our continent, GCIS should encourage and collaborate with other departments across government and society to enhance public awareness of developments in the region and on the continent and promote engagement with regional and continental institutions and programmes. Attention should be paid to support efforts to profile the benefits of African development to both our country and continent.

5. Communication research and information / a more effective, efficient and well-informed GCIS

The government communication system as a whole needs to base its work on soundly researched approaches. GCIS will continue to play a key role in identifying areas of communication research as well as receiving relevant research reports from other sectors. Furthermore, intimate knowledge of government’s policies, programmes and implementation is essential to further enhance communication. There is therefore a need to package information on government’s Programme of Action (PoA).

Key Issues

In pursuing the elements of this approach, while giving ongoing attention to a range of actions, GCIS will pay special attention to certain critical communication initiatives, which should catalyse a general enhancement of the communication system and its operation.

1. Providing leadership to government communication and better communication performance by the State

Special attention to:

• Strengthening and integrating the government communication system, by consolidating co-ordination forums such as the government communication forums
• Enhancing analysis of the communication environment within which GCIS operates
• Improving the monitoring of government communication to enable proactive communication on the work of government and extend and strengthen communication partnerships outside government in pursuance of a value system for social cohesion central to a caring society.

Ongoing attention to:

• Better integration of communication across government, budgeting for communication, and in understanding policies and the PoA
• Continue to develop capacity of provincial and local government communication
• More effective internal communication in government, including communication to enhance the understanding of policies to promote more effective implementation of programmes and service delivery
• More effective tools of interaction with the public, improving the quality of our products, enhancing existing platforms and introducing new ones and improving relations with the media
• Ensuring that the Imbizo approach of interactive governance takes root throughout government
• Better assessment of the impact of our communication, including peer assessment by communicators and the public
• Sustaining the GCIS Peer Review Process to ensure that in the medium term a uniform standard of excellence is achieved among heads of communication (HoCs)
• An active GCIS role in advising communication components on their development requirements and in ensuring that government communication capacity matches the needs
• GCIS assistance in content development, branding and quality control over critical information products, including government websites
• Working with the IMC, GCIS must continue to play a greater role in co-ordinating government’s efforts and enhancing the communication capacity of critical South African missions and including them in the government communication system
• Recognising excellence in government communication through the Government Communicators’ Awards
• Ensuring wider use of BuaNews.

2. Building a framework of communication partnerships

Special attention to:

• •Working towards an active partnership among the country’s communicators.

Ongoing attention to:

• Better interaction with communication practitioners in state-owned enterprises and the private sector, and a new mindset and paradigm in government to relate to sectoral partners in both policy and communication processes
• Articulating and communicating a shared and unifying vision for the decade to 2014, informed by the last year in the five-year mandate of government and with a common understanding of challenges and achievements
• Consolidating partnerships in Thusong Service Centres, working closely with community development workers (CDWs) and local government
• Ensuring that all government communicators, across departments and spheres, work in partnership informed by the common vision
• Helping transform the media and advertising industry and through the MDDA helping to establish and sustain community and small commercial media
• Building partnership with the media, in particular key partners such as the public broadcaster; implementing recommendations of the Cabinet/South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) meeting of 2007 August; and sustaining such interaction
• Encouraging the replication of communication partnerships at provincial and local level.

3. Promoting awareness of the opportunities that democracy has brought and how to access them

Special attention to:

• A sustained government-wide campaign on opportunities that have emerged with democracy (across all clusters, not just economic), building on the campaign on economic opportunities.

Ongoing attention to:

• Ensuring awareness among intended beneficiaries of the opportunities for socio-economic development that government programmes offer and how to access them
• Effective assessment of the reach of our communication and the quality of products, including attention to accessibility and language
• Strengthening unmediated communication, including through radio, izimbizo, development communication and Vuk’uzenzele
• Integrated communication through CDWs, Thusong Service Centres and the Internet
• Better research into public information needs
• Combining communication in support of Second-Economy interventions with communication to promote job-creating growth of the First Economy
• Enhancing relations between GCIS and the Policy Co-ordination and Advisory Services (PCAS) unit in The Presidency to achieve better understanding of the implementation of AsgiSA and the impact of government’s PoA.

4. Promoting awareness of the institutions and programmes of continental and regional integration and development

Special attention to:

• Sustained profiling of the benefits of African development to South Africa and the rest of the continent.

Ongoing attention to:

• Promoting better working relations between government communication structures to drive communication around the regional integration, including free trade and strengthening our role in the International Relations, Peace and Security Cluster
• Promoting popular/stakeholder participation in continental/regional institutions
• Popularising the vision of a shared destiny for the country, region and continent and linking national interest to mutual development.

5. Communication research and information/ a more effective, efficient and well-informed GCIS

Special attention to:

• Improving application of research in the work of GCIS and government communication as a whole, and continued institutionalisation of project management in GCIS, both in service delivery and in the development of the organisation.

Ongoing attention to:

• Various forms of research to identify public communication needs, and the impact of government communication on the public and within the media
• Ensuring the adoption of standard methodologies across government, and improving integration of the research agenda
• Developing a set of core competencies which its communicators must possess
• Better and fuller use by GCIS of information and communications technologies (ICTs), both in the management of the organisation and in communication in general
• Using all measures, including development plans and clear target-setting, to enhance staff performance and the attainment of excellence
• Greater integration of work by the different components within GCIS
• Instilling in GCIS the culture of learning from our experiences.

Key campaigns for 2008/09

Theme one: Governance and Administration

Focus issues:

• Improving the state machinery’s effectiveness to meet the people’s needs
• Batho Pele
• Anti-Corruption Campaign
• Strengthening internal communication within the Public Service.

Theme two: International Relations, Peace and Security

Focus issues:

• South Africa’s role as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council
• The deepening of communication on regional integration in the African Union (AU) and Southern African Development Community (SADC)
• Focussed communication support to international trade agreements such as the Economic Partnership Agreement and World Trade Organisation (WTO) Doha agreement.

Theme three: Economic, Investment and Employment

Focus issues:

• Communication on the sectoral implementation of the Industrial Policy Action Plan
• Infrastructure investment and development
• Profile the achievements of the Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition (Jipsa) and the progress on intervention under AsgiSA
• Second-Economy communication, including a mass campaign on economic opportunities.

Theme four: Justice, Crime Prevention and Security

Focus issues:

• Review of the criminal justice system
• Anti-crime Campaign, intensifying partnerships for implementation
• 365 Days Programme, National Action Plan against Gender Violence and 16 Days of Activism.

Theme five: Social Sector

Focus issues:

• War on poverty, ensuring those who have to benefit from government’s programmes do so
• National social security
• Communication around comprehensive infrastructure programmes
• National Orders and national commemorative days.

Theme six: Transversal campaigns

• Imbizo
• Communication on the implementation of the National Strategic Plan for HIV and AIDS
• 2010 FIFA World CupTM
• SoNA
• Healthy Life Style, including Safer Holidays Campaign.

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