Senior govt officials to attend workshop on information flow

To ensure smoother flow of information from the government, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry will hold a day-long special "sensitisation" workshop tomorrow which will be attended by senior officials from different ministries.
The workshop, which will be addressed by I and B Minister Arun Jaitley and Cabinet Secretary Ajit Seth, is being held with an aim to streamlining the government's line of communication, a senior official said.
Apart from joint secretary-level officers from different ministries and departments, private secretaries to ministers and officials of Press Information Bureau will be participating in the meet.
Officials said the workshop is aimed at sensitising the joint secretaries and other key officials as they play an important role in communication staretegies. The meet intends to harmonise the dissemination of information.

They said that while the workshop is being organised by the I and B Ministry through Press Information Bureau (PIB), the idea for such a meet originated from a suggestion from the Prime Minister's Office. This idea was later developed in meetings of senior officers, including I and B Secretary Bimal Julka.
Jukla said that there was a view that there was not enough in the media space with regard to initiatives that several of the social sector ministries had taken. Overall it was felt that there is a need for easy information flow from ministries to Press Information Bureau, he said.

"The PIB officers, joint Secretaries and private secretaries to ministers will be there and they will all get sensitised to different aspects of communication strategies. And then they will know that on how to communicate with the media, whether it is crisis management, disaster management or other developmental administration management," he said when contacted.
Director General of PIB Frank Noronha said the exercise aims at "building effective synergies between ministries and PIB."
Officials said that the structure of the workshop has been designed in a manner that all sides should understand the perspectives of the other. Eminent persons with long experience in journalism will also participate in the workshop and share the media's perspective with government officials, sources said.