Chief of Staff of the Prime Minister Arayik Harutyunyan and Head of the EU Delegation to the Republic of Armenia, Ambassador Vassilis Maragos, chaired a meeting regarding the effective implementation of strategic communication within the framework of the Armenia-EU Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA).
Press secretaries of state departments of the Republic of Armenia, public relations officers, experts took part in the meeting.
In his opening speech, the Chief of Staff of the Prime Minister welcomed the participants of the meeting and noted. “As you know, the government of the Republic of Armenia, attaching importance to strategic communication and considering it an important component of ensuring national security, has included this direction in the agenda of public administration reforms. In this context, during the past year, we did a lot of work with the participation of the European Union and USAID, civil society and, of course, our government partners. As a result of our research and various discussions, we have come to such an architecture of government communication, within which we will give an important role to our colleagues working in the field of communication of state departments and we will support them on the way to the realization of this important mission.
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As many of you are already aware, within the framework of the reforms, an appropriate strategic communication coordination body will be created, which, working closely with various government departments, will increase the role of communication in the entire government and, as a result, will ensure a more smooth process of the reforms. We will combine the key functions of development of research implementation principles, policy development, capacity building, and strategic planning in the office, the implementation of which will significantly improve the communication capacity of the entire government system.
The CEPA communication working group can become the starting point from which we will start testing the toolkit planned in the framework of the reforms. And it is not by chance that we have chosen this format, because when we say Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement, many of us perceive it as a reform, our goal is to have a better future, live in a safer environment, consume better quality products, manage changes effectively”, said Arayik Harutyunyan.
The head of the EU delegation in the Republic of Armenia, Ambassador Vassilis Maragos, welcomed the participants of the meeting and noted. “This initiative marks an important milestone in the EU-Armenia cooperation, and I believe that together we will strengthen the partnership.” Vassilis Maragos highly appreciated the efforts of the Armenian government to acknowledge the vital importance of strategic communication and noted: “Without that leadership and without the concrete decisions that led to the creation of the communications hub, we would not be where we are today.”
Next, a discussion was held on the implementation process of the new architecture of strategic communication by the Armenian government, the agenda of large-scale reforms, in particular, the main challenges of implementing effective strategic communication, the necessary mechanisms for effective internal and external communication of the Armenian government.
Summarizing the discussion, the Chief of Staff of the Prime Minister Arayik Harutyunyan emphasized the development of communication and awareness capacities, the unified policy of communication between state administration bodies, and noted that a lot of work has been done in the direction of communication, but there is still a lot to be done. In that regard, Arayik Harutyunyan emphasized the importance of involvement of communication officers of state departments. The Chief of Staff of the Prime Minister thanked the EU Ambassador for his support in the development of strategic communication reforms and architecture.
The Government of the Republic of Armenia