2. The governance of public communication in Lebanon
This chapter reviews the governance and structures that apply to the public communication function in Lebanon against a range of approaches. It discusses the level of institutionalisation and the practices that could support a better execution of this function for whole-of-government policy objectives and for greater support of open government principles. It finally proposes recommendations for reforms that favour a shift towards more strategic use of communication.
In early 2020, Lebanon has undergone an important political transition following one of the largest waves of demonstrations in its post-civil war history. This was followed by another even greater socio-economic crisis that returned protesters to the streets in the summer of the same year, peaking after the tragic blast in August that led to the resignation of the newly-appointed government. More than anything else, citizens demonstrating throughout the country called for better governance and accountability, and for more participation in policy decisions. As a result, the country’s leadership is under urgent pressure to implement immediate reforms that address key governance issues, primarily corruption, and that instil a culture of open government.
Public communication is an asset in this process. A constructive dialogue and the provision of timely and relevant information to citizens is necessary to navigate this turbulent period for Lebanon and support a new administration’s actions. Previous governments had placed less emphasis on this and few formal steps have been taken to address this public function or to set out a vision for developing effective communication between the state and its citizens. At the same time, recent efforts to restructure the administration and ambitions to pursue a package of open government policies have created the impetus for changes to how public entities interact with society.
The current wave of structural and administrative modernisation, originally propelled by the CEDRE Vision for Stabilization, Growth and Employment and intensified by the demonstrations after the 2020 Beirut explosion offers a valuable opportunity to introduce reforms for better public communication. As this chapter illustrates, weak institutionalisation underlies several other challenges to developing this function. With the necessary political will, this problem can be addressed in the context of the wider administrative reform drive. The following sections thus analyse the communications governance and structures in place, with an eye to short- and long-term interventions to improve them.
Governance models of public communication
The present institutional structures and communication capabilities in Lebanon can be better understood when viewed against two models of governance for public communication that are found in the public and private sector alike and described below. These models build on the analysis developed by Sanders and Canel (2013[1]) in their analysis of 15 countries’ government communications. Both models are defined by the nature of the objectives set, the position communications occupy within the organisation, and the resources allocated to it. Governance models are also defined by the work and mandate of both communication departments and individual staff, how they interact with policy makers and other government institutions, how they co-ordinate communication efforts or address crisis communication. These criteria are part of the first pillar on the governance of the policy catalysts for effective public communication under the OECD analytical framework described in the previous chapter.
On the one hand, organisations can adopt a tactical model of communications, which is often oriented towards the pursuit of short- or medium-term goals that are modest in their scope. This model is based on the employment of tactics, such as posting on social media or issuing press releases, to communicate on a subject without this activity being intended to serve a purpose beyond widening the reach of a piece of information at that given time. Tactical communications are often ad hoc, dispersed, and with minimal to no internal co-ordination. Consequently, communication under this model is at best an auxiliary function to a given organisation’s core activities.
On the other hand, a strategic model of communications revolves around the achievement of an organisation’s core objectives, whether the implementation of a policy or the uptake of public service, in a sustained way. It typically involves a desired change in behaviour or perceptions from specific stakeholders. A more sophisticated model, strategic communications require insights-driven planning and internal co-ordination behind the implementation of tactics. This is often delivered through a well-resourced office in which leadership sits at the decision-making levels of the organisation.
A structure that follows a strategic model of communication has defined functions that facilitate an organised and integrated activity undertaken by skilled and knowledgeable professionals who occupy positions at every level of the organisational chart and whose responsibilities and tasks are clearly defined to meet stated objectives. Such institutional set-ups encompass mechanisms to efficiently co-ordinate all communication efforts while assessing their effectiveness in terms of measurable outcomes. Importantly, these teams or units benefit from a clear mandate from the top and are under pressure to deliver against it.
In practice, these two models exist along a spectrum where different elements vary from purely tactical to highly strategic. Table 2.1 below provides an overview of the range that governance structures for public communication can take.
Structures and organisation of public communication in Lebanon
At present, Lebanese public institutions sit primarily on the tactical end of the spectrum in their governance of public communication. The majority of them have not yet put in place structures that permit the development and implementation of advanced communication strategies. Instead, there is a range of alternative actors who operate in the function but often lack adequate mandates, skills, and resources. According to OECD interviews, communications between the government and citizens have a prevalently political character and are often attached to individual officials and parties rather than to institutions. Indeed, in large part, close media and political advisors to ministers tend to be responsible for communications, as discussed further below.
Co-ordination and whole-of-government communication
Public communication in Lebanon is highly decentralised and no one entity is to date responsible for conducting this function for the government as a whole. In the absence of a central organ, there is no yet an established mechanism for each ministry, institution, and the Presidency of the Council of Ministers (PCM) to co-ordinate their activity in this area.
Authority and responsibility for communicating with and informing the public in the Lebanese government are distributed across a number of offices and is presently evolving. However, communication functions are being reorganised in light of a higher perceived need for ongoing dialogue with citizens. Formally, the primary communication functions have been the domain of the following actors:
The Presidency of the Council of Ministers, as the centre of government, is a primary source of official communication. The Prime Minister is officially vested with the authority to speak on behalf of the Government by Article 64 of Lebanon’s constitution (Lebanese Government, 1926[2]). Responses to the OECD survey reveal that in practice, the PCM performs this function through the work of temporary media and political advisors, as there is no designated office staffed by civil servants. Although the PCM is in principle in charge of whole-of-government communications, it does not have a co-ordinating role, nor does it set out an overarching strategy for the government.
The Minister of Information holds the formal role of spokesperson for the Council of Ministers, and is tasked with disseminating official statements on decisions taken by the Council. The Ministry of Information (MoI) also oversees state-owned media and has the authority, granted under Law 382/94 to mandate all media outlets to grant coverage to announcements and policies originating from the government. At the time of writing, the Ministry was exploring avenues for reform that could grant it a broader public communication mandate.
OMSAR has a mandate to co-ordinate administrative reforms across the government and serves as the point of contact for citizens’ enquiries relating to public administrative procedures. In practice, it is also acquiring a cross-government co-ordination function on a number of public sector modernisation activities or public services. For instance, OMSAR works on the standardisation of annual reports, as required by an implementation decree of the ATI Law, and publishes the evaluations of the work of all ministries (of which it is overseeing the automation process) OMSAR also works to build the capacity of the public sector to report and publish key performance indicators (KPIs) website. It similarly developed a standardised format for ministerial websites, which has been widely adopted and serves to harmonise the content and visual identity of government sites. Lastly, it acts as a repository of all government studies by publishing them on its website and communicating around this as part of a dedicated strategy. At the time of writing, OMSAR was exploring the possibility of establishing an inter-ministerial public communication network.
The National News Agency (NNA) is a state-owned news service that covers the activities of the whole administration, including through a press corps deployed to the PCM and presidential palace, as well as other ministries. It serves as a newswire by allowing any public entity to upload content and information to a distribution service that all Lebanese media subscribes to. The NNA is the official channel for the government to communicate any national security-related news.
In practice, none of these offices conducts or co-ordinates communication for the whole government. Indeed, at present Lebanon lacks a consolidated structure in its communications and each ministry looks after its own communication independently. The lack of co-ordination can often result in conflicting and inconsistent messaging being disseminated on subjects that cut across multiple institutions. It can also prevent the government from presenting a unified agenda and speaking with one voice.
The primary situations in which a measure of whole-of-government co-ordination exists are announcements of Council of Ministers decisions, which by law are issued from the Ministry of Information. In practice, according to stakeholder accounts during OECD fact-finding missions, each ministry tends to put out its own message, often providing a preferred narrative than the central government one. Co-ordination could help to optimise communications efforts across ministries and offices and contribute towards establishing a single voice for Lebanon’s government.
To the extent that it occurs, official co-ordination remains challenging, as OECD interviews have revealed that the protocols for communicating between ministries remain lengthy, paper-based procedures that civil servants seek to avoid. These get supplanted in practice with informal interactions, often enabled by new technologies such as instant messaging. Despite this emerging practice, co-ordination interactions are still infrequent according to stakeholder accounts.
Despite the absence of an official mechanism, some co-ordination does take place between ministries and agencies. According to a survey conducted by the OECD across seven ministries and offices and the PCM, half of respondents said they co-ordinated at least occasionally with other ministries and agencies on internal, digital, and crisis communication and on campaigns, and six of the eight respondents said they co-ordinated on media announcements occasionally or frequently. On the other hand, this is rarely or never the case among respondents when it comes to communication strategies, audience insights and evaluation (this is also related to the fact that such activities are seldom performed).
Some of this co-ordination occurs through informal channels such as WhatsApp groups of officials. For instance, such a group has been set up between digital communication officers across the government and in the summer of 2020, they had begun meeting about once per week. Similarly, OMSAR has begun over the past year to establish a government-wide network of communicators as a peer group to share expertise and support, and to explore opportunities for collaborating. This initiative has been kicked off with a number of meetings in 2019 and 2020 with support from the OECD.
Informal mechanisms are useful alternatives in the absence of formal co-ordination, and can serve to test formats that can be eventually institutionalised. In the short term, it is therefore important to encourage those officials who take the initiative to expand areas of cross-government co-ordination and increase its frequency. However, effective co-ordination ultimately depends on attributing leadership and responsibility to one entity that can ensure it serves shared objectives and is durable. For this reason, reforms of public communication in Lebanon could look to designate an office with a mandate for whole-of-government communication, for instance, based on Italy’s approach illustrated in Box 2.1.
In response to these issues, the previous administration had explored the option to develop an inter-ministerial committee on communications under the auspices of a UK-funded programme for communications capability-building. OMSAR is presently pursuing its creation under the new government. Consolidating these efforts in the short term will permit rapid improvements towards establishing common baseline standards, but any process of whole-of-government co-ordination will ultimately benefit from greater institutionalisation of the public communication function.
In Italy, the Department for Information and Publishing (Dipartimento per l’Informazione e l’Editoria, DIE) is the office of the PCM in charge of whole-of-government communication. On top of conducting public communication for the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Department acts as a central co-ordinator of all administrations’ activities through a yearly Communication Plan. Based on strategic guidelines developed centrally, every ministry, agency or national-level administration is responsible for providing their own annual Communication Programme, in order for the DIE to combine it into the whole-of-government Communication Plan. Each administration then implements its own programme through their respective public communication units, with guidance and co-ordination from the DIE.
The structure in charge of communication within the DIE is the Service for Institutional Communication, made up of 17 full-time individuals including the Director of the Office and the Manager of the Unit.
Source: Information provided to the OECD by the DIE as part of its response to the OECD (2020), Understanding Public Communication Survey.
Mandates, structures and resources
The governance and structures in place for communication across Lebanese ministries and institutions are considerably uneven, which accounts for a diverse landscape for this function in the country. However, one significant aspect of governance that is common across the spectrum is that communications in Lebanon remain considerably political in nature and linked to the individuals in charge rather than to the institutions. This aspect is especially challenging to the notion of communication as a public service and in the public interest, which is distinct from political communication. Overall, these challenges relate to the low level of institutionalisation and the absence of a strong mandate for this function.
At the level of ministries and public institutions, organisational charts reveal the wide discrepancy whereby some have dedicated communications offices while in others this function is covered by single staff. Figure 2.1 shows that half (4) of the sample of institutions participating in the OECD survey have a dedicated department or unit whereas a minority (3) have a single officer and one has no staff. Even where they are present, these structures are not consolidated as they depend mostly on temporary staff who are appointed by ministers and senior officials as consultants or advisors. With any change in leadership, there is a parallel change in the number and organisation of communications staff according to the preferences of the incoming administration. Besides changing the size and responsibilities of the previous structure in a given ministry, this also accounts for high turnover, discontinuity in communication activities, and the loss of institutional knowledge.
Mostly, the officers working on communication are often not civil servants but rather political appointees and consultants that tend to change with each government or reshuffle (see Figure 2.2). Consequently, communicators are embedded in different parts of the institution depending on the ministry, often within the offices of the minister. According to OECD interviews conducted, in the case that a communication team is already embedded within a ministry, these appointed communicators can be sometimes reluctant to work with the existing staff. Politically appointed advisors in each ministry have become prominent actors in shaping political communication, by curating public statements, social media profiles, and appearances by the ministers they work for. This system implies that communication in these cases serves the political priorities of the minister rather than the long-term or policy-oriented goals of the institutions.
A common exception to this pattern relates to certain donors who provide dedicated funding and staff to give visibility to the projects they finance, which has driven some recruitment of communications professionals. In turn, these new staff’s mandates have grown to encompass more of the institution’s communications needs. Alternative arrangements also include the examples of ministries whose communication work is assigned to information technology (IT) and e-services personnel.
The predominance of politically-driven communication structures is visible in Lebanon’s Presidency and the PCM. There, these functions are supervised or conducted by advisors to the government’s leadership although a number of civil services or donor-sponsored staff are also present to manage some areas of this function. The Lebanese Presidency’s Directorate-General features a Media Bureau that consists of two divisions: one looking after print, broadcast and digital media that provides daily summaries and analysis of news, and another co-ordinating publishing that prepares draft press releases and external-facing communications. This bureau works under the supervision of the media advisor of the President, typically a politically appointed role. By contrast, the organisational structure of the Directorate General of the PCM does not include a dedicated unit for media and communication, however up to five staff typically curate media relations and digital communication. They are part of the team that each Prime Minister brings on board to work under the supervision of a politically appointed media advisor.
Across line ministries and other government offices scarce resources and weak structures make for a less strategic and more ad hoc use of communication. OMSAR, as one of the entities with a more established public communication function, relies on a full-time staff member thanks to assistance from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It has developed a communications strategy for internal and external stakeholders, which includes an annual newsletter, project-based campaigns, and social media content. However, its response to the OECD survey indicates that the Office has no dedicated budget for communications and the above work relies on donor funds, including the European Union.
What this overview illustrates is that a relative absence of legal structures and institutionalisation for communication functions have resulted in a fragmented and low-capacity system. These constraints mean that communication in Lebanon is primarily one-way dissemination of information, and is often subject to political considerations.
Hierarchy of decision making and delegation of responsibilities is one area in which this is manifest. Minsters themselves are often the only official spokespeople and their sign-off is required for most activities. This can create inefficiencies and bottlenecks, especially in large and dispersed institutions. For instance, the Institute of Finance is an autonomous agency under the oversight of the Ministry of Finance, yet it still needs pre-approval from the Minister for all its media outreach as revealed through the OECD interviews The downside of such rigid and hierarchical structures is that when media enquiries are not addressed in a timely manner, other sources, often less authoritative, can shape the narrative in lieu of government voices. Establishing efficient protocols and diffusing responsibilities is therefore an important element of making communications more strategic.
The professionalisation of this function, another prerequisite for strategic communication, similarly suffers under the present system. Since few specialists are recruited in government, the work of the officers in place is broadly limited to simpler, tactical activities. Indeed, only a minority (3) of the eight surveyed institutions reported developing communications strategies internally.
The main constraint in this respect is a lack of human resources (see Figure 2.3), which is also consistent with the survey finding that none of the respondents1 reported that their staff have communications training. Many of the advisors brought in across ministries yield from journalism and the media, and tend to approach their roles primarily in terms of media relations and reputation management for their superiors. Experience with strategy development, audience insights, and innovative approaches to campaigns is infrequent in Lebanon’s ministries and public institutions, but in several ministries where staff is present some core competencies of communication are quite established, as discussed in the following chapter. Neither the political advisors nor the IT staff that occasionally replace them receive training to cover the breadth of tasks that the job entails, according to the OECD survey and interviews conducted. As a consequence, several ministries miss the opportunity to communicate beyond the everyday engagements of senior government figures or develop a conversation with citizens on substantive policy issues.
With the positive finding that “perceptions of low-added value” and “of risk” are the least cited challenges to communication, and prevalent social media presence for many institutions, the obstacles remain primarily structural. This setting makes it difficult to transition to a more strategic approach, which requires instead a solid institutional foundation and a longer-term horizon. These relatively informal and variable structures of public communications, with the lack of fixed budgets and consistent capabilities, deter the stability and continuity of this function. The lack of institutionalisation equally means that less efficient practices and processes can emerge and persist.
In sum, transitioning towards a more strategic model of governance for Lebanon’s government communications will require legal and administrative reforms. With few exceptions, such as the Ministry of Environment’s organisational decree (2275/2009) and the previously mentioned official mandates, no legal framework or official administrative policies presently regulates this function within the public sector. Establishing formal mandates for public communicators and administrative protocols for their operations can therefore help ensure that progress can be consistent and sustainable over successive governments.
Lebanon is in the course of an extensive process of administrative reform, aimed at modernising the public sector and making it more efficient. Restructuring the administration could create impetus for the policy changes that public communication needs. Indeed, there is an opportunity to build the structures, staffing, and funding for this function into current reform packages without necessarily increasing public spending.
Public sector inefficiencies are a challenge for Lebanon’s continued development, and the proposed reforms are therefore a crucial and desirable step. The present economic crisis, set off by an unsustainable public debt and sluggish economic growth, makes it difficult to introduce new resources and spending. Given this context, pressures have intensified for Lebanon to introduce public sector reforms that limit the public deficit. A reorganisation of the public administration could therefore bring the necessary changes for a more structured public communication function.
The dialogue on the modernisation of Lebanon’s administration has been grounded in recent years in the CEDRE conference, which is being updated in light of developments to the country’s economic, social and political context. In April 2018, the “Conférence économique pour le développement par les réformes et avec les entreprises” (CEDRE) brought together international stakeholders in Paris to raise funds for the first six-year phase of Lebanon’s Capital Investment Program (CIP), designed to modernise the country's infrastructure. Unlike other international support frameworks, the CEDRE conference made funding conditional on the implementation of budgetary and sectoral reforms that Lebanon had committed to. At the time of writing, progress on these reforms is patchy and remains an obstacle to further support from international partners, with a growing pressure for implementation following the tragic blast at the Port of Beirut in August 2020.
These reforms are stated under the Vision for Stabilization, Growth, and Employment presented at CEDRE. The first step of its implementation saw the establishment in October 2017 of an inter-ministerial committee with a mandate to audit the entire public sector in Lebanon. The audit would assess existing roles and positions in public institutions, estimate the functional needs of each department, and determine gaps requiring new personnel (Government of Lebanon, 2018[3]). Since the subsequent government of Prime Minister Saad Hariri endorsed the effort for restructuring the public sector, OMSAR has been spearheading this mapping exercise with support from the Central Inspection Bureau and the Civil Service Board.2
The ongoing review of organisational charts is the first to be conducted for a majority of Lebanon’s public institutions, and offers a welcome opportunity for modernisation. Around the world, developments in information and communication technologies (ICTs) have brought about administrative restructuring and created pressures for public institutions to be more agile and citizen-centric. This has had profound effects especially in the organisation of communication functions, with a growing trend of specialisation and digitalisation going hand in hand with more ambitious objectives for citizen engagement (Sanders and Canel, 2013[1]).
In the United Kingdom, for instance, administrative reform has seen the creation of the Government Communication Service (GCS) as one of the 14 functions to operate throughout the country’s civil service (see Box 2.2). GCS counts over 4 000 professionals in each of its 25 ministerial departments and sub-national administrations, and serves in itself as a co-ordinating system and a network. In each ministry and agency, GCS-affiliated professionals implement communication strategies and campaigns, evaluate their outcomes, gather public insights, and conduct internal communication (UK Government, 2019[4]).
In Lebanon, public sector mapping can serve to highlight the absence of communications units in a majority of institutions despite the increase in the size of the public sector. One of the recommendations to follow the exercise could therefore be to designate units or positions dedicated to public communication, to be staffed by civil servants. These units can be developed in the short term by allocating existing personnel, given that the public deficit reduction strategies have put in place a hold on the recruitment of new civil servants. Any available funding could be addressed to training and capability-building to ensure any eventual communication units can perform their work. This can also be attained through new and existing programmes by donor organisations and low-cost virtual training resources.
In the United Kingdom, the GCS (Government Communication Service) is a professional organisation aimed at specialists in the public communication sector that work in departments of the central government, agencies and independent organisations. The GCS’s main function is to provide, on an international scale, communications of the public sector that support the government’s priorities, ease public sector operations in an efficient and effective way, and improve people’s lives. Its goal is to promote the UK abroad to help stimulate exports and external investments, as well as to work with other governments in the goal of reinforcing the country’s communication capacities abroad.
The GCS represents the communication function of the central government (including departments, agencies and the independent organisations of Whitehall), as well as one of the ten functions specialised in the functional model of the public sector. The GCS was created to support communication professionals that work within the ministries, agencies and independent organisations of the central government, with the goal of guaranteeing exceptional communication of the public sector and to defend its fundamental values: integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality.
Source: UK Government Communication Service (n.d.) Government Communication Service website, https://gcs.civilservice.gov.uk/about-us/ (accessed on 29 April 2021).
It is useful to stress that introducing public communications structures as part of current administrative restructuring would also support reforms for a more open government. The National Anti-Corruption Strategy and the ATI Law could both be assisted in their implementation by integrating disclosures and transparency provisions with communication activities. As noted previously, it also serves to consolidate a cultural shift in governance. OMSAR, for example, has recognised this opportunity and has begun to increase references to open government concepts in its communications to increase their visibility and endorsement among internal and external stakeholders.
Priority institutions and legal frameworks for reforms on public communication
The OECD’s analysis of Lebanon’s public institutions reveals that some ministries and agencies play a special role in the packaging and dissemination of information and can therefore expand their mandates in this respect. These include the PCM, OMSAR, the MoI, and the Central Administration for Statistics (CAS).
While embedding higher standard communication structures across all Lebanese government institutions should be an end goal of administrative reforms, the centralisation of the communication function in one office for whole-of-government communication would be a significant milestone towards institutionalising this function. A designated government communication office or unit could be a centre for developing expertise, setting and delivering a strategy for public communication to exist alongside the political one that is currently prevalent, and provide support and co-ordination to all ministries and institutions. The Lebanese government could therefore envision attributing this mandate to an existing entity (such as the ones described below) through a reform process, which could provide greater efficiencies than establishing a new institution.
During the formation process for the transitional government in December 2019, the role of the MoI was called into question and speculations about its abolition circulated in the country (Maharat News, 2019[5]). However, these speculations dissipated under Diab’s government, as the Ministry’s increased activity implied otherwise. Having emerged from this transition unchanged, the MoI has nonetheless taken on an important drive to redefine its function, including by issuing a reform proposal in June 2020 that would see it gain a broader mandate for communication. Indeed, reforming the MoI to include a dedicated central communication office would constitute a significant step towards institutionalising the function and addressing some of the gaps in resources and co-ordination. The Government could achieve this by updating the Ministry’s existing structure.
Alongside the MoI, OMSAR features prominently as a focal point for reforming communication since it is a primary driver of administrative and open government reforms. The Office has a core internal responsibility for ensuring that administrative procedures and regulations are circulated and up-to-date across the government. It acts as the repository of all publicly funded studies and research, as well as government resources and information from each ministry and agency. In parallel, OMSAR also serves as the liaison for citizens to understand and pose queries about the same procedures. More significantly, the Office is tasked with simplifying administrative procedures to bring the government closer to citizens, a mandate that positions it to play a central role in any open government reform.
OMSAR’s mandate can also be broadened to include fostering whole-of-government co-ordination in the area of public communication. It is enabled to form inter-ministerial committees (such as the country’s technical anti-corruption committee which it heads) and introduce new administrative procedures. As such, it is undertaking to establish such a committee on public communication, which it could steer to foster greater co-ordination, promote the adoption of good practices and oversee the implementation of related reforms. OMSAR has indeed been holding meetings with a number of key ministries over the course of 2019 and 2020 to explore co-operation opportunities and consolidate a network of public communicators, which remains informal at present but could be consolidated as part of comprehensive restructuring.
The Office has already performed a similar role in the implementation of the ATI law. Among other activities, it has held a workshop in July 2019 that defined the role of information officers with respect to ATI implementation and provided practical training, developed in partnership with the OECD and UNDP. It has since been following up with the 102 public officials who participated to check whether information officers had been appointed and to lay the grounds for a peers’ network.
Moreover, the Office developed a National ATI implementation Action Plan in partnership with OECD and UNDP, which was adopted by the Ministerial Anti-Corruption Committee in July 2020. This Action Plan defines the obstacles, roles and responsibilities for the implementation of the law, as well as a clear timeframe, monitoring and follow-up mechanisms. Action items include appointing ATI Officers within all obligated administrations, providing training and developing support resources, and implementing mechanisms for receiving and handling complaints (UNDP, 2020[6]). Overall, this experience can both serve to leverage the ATI implementation to pursue some short-term communication goals, and can be replicated in the context of reforms concerning communication.
Such whole-of-government co-ordination could also be conducted at the centre of government level, namely within the President or Prime Minister’s Office. In certain OECD countries such as Canada or Norway, these offices work on the co-ordination of departmental and horizontal communications as per Box 2.3 below.
In many OECD countries, whole-of-government co-ordination is conducted within the centre of government or a line ministry, and consists of bringing together and harmonising the communication activities of all ministries.
In Norway, the Office of the Prime Minister co-ordinates closely with the heads of communications of all ministries through weekly meetings, in which best practices are demonstrated. Co-ordination is also maintained on a daily basis through digital channels, in order to share any relevant experiences and ensure aligned communications.
In a similar way, Austria’s “Inter-ministerial Communication Group” consists of ad-hoc meetings with the heads of public communications of ministries and national institutions. Its goal is to exchange information and co-ordinate important events that concern the entire government, to create more cohesive communications.
In Slovenia, the Government Communication Division, an independent specialist service to the centre of government, ensures co-ordination of all communication officers across the government on a regular day-to-day and weekly basis through meeting sessions. These sessions cover a series of activities that include revising the communication grid, brainstorms on open communication issues, as well as on-spot training through several courses on relevant topics and good practices.
Source: OECD (2020), Understanding Public Communication Survey.
Data and evidence are the foundation of a transparent, open, and effective government. To this end, the Central Administration for Statistics is an important actor to consider in the context of reforming Lebanon’s public communication. The CAS, sitting under the PCM, collects and publishes statistics on social and economic indicators, on top of technically assessing data collected across each ministry and ensuring its harmonisation. This is conducted as part of a quarterly data-gathering drive covering all public institutions. Despite these efforts, most of the CAS’ data are not in open data formats that permit ease of re-use and analysis, but rather in PDF files. In parallel to a drive to make its data more available, which currently includes the publication of 11 time-series datasets online, the CAS would benefit from creating a communications unit that drives engagement with its data and ensures that it informs public discourse. It would be important for such a unit to support simultaneously peers throughout government in deploying data in their communication.
To conclude, administrative reforms are a priority means of developing the institutional structures that can enable a shift towards a strategic model of communications in Lebanon. OMSAR emerges as a central actor to push forward this progress in parallel to its implementation of various steps for the modernisation of the public administration. The roles of the President and Prime Minister’s Office, along with the MoI, will also be key.
While formalising structures and responsibilities is an essential part of the process, ensuring that the appropriate policies and legal frameworks are in place to guide their application is equally important. To this end, over the long term, Lebanon could consider supporting this shift towards more institutionalised public communication with a law that sets its mandate and scope and regulates its conduct. Such a law could further establish the separation between political and public communication. In Italy, Law 150 of 2 000 provides a comprehensive legal framework for the management of communication by public administrations, including obligations on the dissemination of specific kinds of information. It is presently being updated to better reflect the use of digital technologies and their impact on media and information ecosystems (Box 2.4).
In 2000, Law 150 became the legislative framework for the public communication and information function in Italy. Notably, it recognises the purposes of communication, including informing the public about laws, policy processes and activities of the government, and facilitating access to services among others. It recognises responsibilities for public communicators and their distinct mandate within the civil service, and separate from both press offices, and spokespeople (which are traditionally associated with political appointments). Law 150/2000 is undergoing a reform process to update it in light of the significant changes relating to the growth of digital communication technologies, and to strengthen provisions for its implementation.
In Spain, the Commission on Advertising and Institutional Communication (Comisión de Publicidad y Comunicación Institucional) was introduced by Law 29 of 20 December 2005. The Commission has the mandate to differentiate between institutional and political communication. Notably, the Law that established it highlights four objectives for its campaigns: public utility, transparency, professionalisation, and “institutional loyalty”.
Sources: Forum PA (2020), “Legge 150 del 2000: cosa prevede la prima (e a tutt’oggi unica) legge quadro sulla comunicazione pubblica”, https://www.forumpa.it/open-government/comunicazione-pubblica/legge-150-del-2000-cosa-prevede-la-prima-e-a-tuttoggi-unica-legge-quadro-sulla-comunicazione-pubblica/; Presidency of the Government of Spain (n.d.), “Comisión de Publicidad y Comunicación Institucional”, www.lamoncloa.gob.es/serviciosdeprensa/cpci/Paginas/index.aspx (accessed on 28 April 2021).
To summarise the main takeaways from the present chapter, the following recommendations provide a path for developing specific governance structures and processes that will enable progress towards strategic public communication in Lebanon. The below points take into account the present budgetary and personnel pressures and rely on the expected efficiencies from broader administrative reforms to identify and reallocate existing resources in the short to medium term.
As part of cross-government organisational restructuring, OMSAR or the PMO can introduce requirements (either through decrees or regulations) to designate communication roles in all public institutions. It should be provided that at least one person is dedicated to this function in each body, and that they are members of the civil service appointed for fixed terms. Such reform should lay out longer-term targets for developing the communication units with a number of specialised roles.
Existing and upcoming administrative reforms (on anti-corruption, access to information, the open government agenda more broadly or on digital government for example) have the potential to address the issue of empowerment of public communicators by defining roles and responsibilities more clearly and favouring a more prominent representation for them in the policy cycle. They could consider including provisions on the role and authority of such officials and approval protocols to avoid the often cited bottleneck of having to go through the Minister for all communication initiatives.
OMSAR could drive forward the process of establishing an inter-ministerial committee on public communication as a platform to design and oversee reforms on this function, seek high-level endorsement, allow for the exchange of good practices and help professionalise this function. This can build on the existing network of public communicators established with the OECD.
The network could benefit from developing interactions and co-operation with the group of Information Officers being trained by OMSAR to better leverage proactive information disclosure and media relations for communication and transparency.
Ultimately, a central co-ordinating office should be formed, whether within the President or Prime Minister’s Office, the MoI, or OMSAR, that sets out a whole-of-government communication approach, lends implementation support to each unit, and manages activities of the network of communicators.
This centralised communications office should be responsible for ensuring that communicators work in pursuit of objectives that further the government’s policy priorities and the open government principles of transparency, integrity, accountability and stakeholder participation. Communications strategies, and monitoring and evaluation of their implementation, can be structured around these goals.
While implementing any of these recommendations will bring Lebanon closer to communicating strategically and effectively over the long-term, short-term results will be needed to sustain and grow the support for reforms. It is essential to note that the proposed interventions should be accompanied by acknowledgement from the top decision makers that public communication, as opposed to political communication, is in itself a central service to citizens and a tool to improve policies and services. To this end, a few proposed steps can help improve buy-in from key stakeholders at the start of the process.
Current and near-future communications campaigns and activities conducted by those public entities who already have established capabilities should be evaluated against some desired outcome metrics to demonstrate the value of this function and provide evidence of the return on investment.
An important topic that could provide a pilot for a government-wide communications campaign conducted at the institutional level is the CEDRE Vision. As a major driver of policy changes affecting various fields and issues, communicating effectively about CEDRE reforms to domestic and international stakeholders would be an important element for their success. It could therefore serve as an initial opportunity for rolling out a co-ordinated, strategic communications campaign that brings into play some of the recommendations above. Such a campaign could rely on donor funding if existing resources are not yet available.
References
[3] Government of Lebanon (2018), Vision for Stabilization, Growth, and Employment, http://www.pcm.gov.lb/Admin/DynamicFile.aspx?PHName=Document&PageID=11260&published=1.
[2] Lebanese Government (1926), “The Lebanese Constitution”, https://www.wipo.int/edocs/lexdocs/laws/en/lb/lb018en.pdf.
[5] Maharat News (2019), Ministerial statement: Work to abolish the Ministry of Information and form the Supreme Media Council, https://maharat-news.com/ministryofinformation1 (accessed on 23 November 2020).
[1] Sanders, K. and M. Canel (eds.) (2013), Government communication in 15 countries: Themes and challenges, Bloomsbury, https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/government-communication-9781849666121/.
[4] UK Government (2019), Government Communication Plan 2019/2020, https://gcs.civilservice.gov.uk/communication-plan-2019/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Government-Communication-Plan-2019.pdf.
[6] UNDP (2020), National Action Plan to Implement the Right to Access to Information Law, https://www.lb.undp.org/content/lebanon/en/home/library/democratic_governance/national-action-plan-to-implement-the-right-to-access-to-informa.html.