OSCE Mission to Serbia supports course on promoting good communication practices for Novi Pazar city officials

Some 75 city administration officials including city council members, public enterprise officials and providers of citizen services from Novi Pazar have successfully completed an OSCE-supported public relations and customer service training course held over a period of three months from November 2017 to January 2018. The final course in a series of three will take place in Kopaonik from 2 to 4 February.

The training programme supports city officials in improving their communication with citizens, particularly in responding to requests from citizens and media representatives regarding municipal services and the local government’s activities.

“The importance of communication between local officials and citizens cannot be overestimated. Local governments’ officials respond to countless requests from citizens who are concerned about services and the development of their community on a daily basis. With this training course we are supporting officials’ ability to adequately respond to these citizens, as part of Novi Pazar’s overarching communication strategy,” said the Head of the OSCE Mission to Serbia, Ambassador Andrea Orizio. 

In November 2017, the City of Novi Pazar finalized a communication strategy with support from the OSCE Mission to Serbia and the Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities. The strategy foresees a systematic and coherent approach for improving the public relations capacities of city administration officials and engagement with citizens in both everyday and emergency situations, which also prompted this training initiative.

The initiative is in line with the OSCE Mission to Serbia’s efforts to improve transparency and good governance in local administrations and its continued support to building local capacity in southwest Serbia.