Seminar to offer sound advice

By Yook Dong-han

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Korean Institute of Public Administration (KIPA). I would like to congratulate President Dr. Park Eung-kyuk and other staff members on the institute’s 20th anniversary.

I also want to say congratulations on hosting the international seminar, “Public Relations Strategy: Building Government Trust and Communication between Government and Citizens,” as one of the 20th anniversary events.

Over two decades, KIPA has served as a national research institute for public policy and has made a big contribution to the improvement of administrative systems and policy development processes by helping to reform government structure, civil service employment, policy evaluation systems and business regulations.

Recently, KIPA has been expanding its research into conflict management and disaster prevention, which require more sophisticated analysis and in-depth study. It also established the Social Research Center to investigate and analyze policy issues with statistical data.

On Aug. 15, President Lee Myung-bak called for “ecosystemic development” in his speech for the 66th-anniversary ceremony of Korea’s liberation from Japan.

It means that we have to come up with a new development mechanism through which the preservation of the global environment can go hand in hand with economic prosperity, growth with improvements in the quality of life, economic progress with social cohesiveness and national progress with individual progress.

We can form the foundation of ecosystemic development when government, business and civil society work together in partnerships and establish collaborative relationships based on mutual understanding and active communication.

Also, we need not only to build trust between central and local governments for balanced national development, but also to have effective communication with business and civil society, and to establish a good relationship with the mass media.

To achieve this, it is necessary to create an effective public relations system to facilitate communication with people and to keep the public informed about the activities of agencies and officials.

In this regard, this seminar is very important because you are here to discuss how to build an effective public relations system in our government. Many policy experts from home and abroad have attended the seminar, including Walter Klits, resident representative of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Liberty.

I hope you will have a good debate and then offer sound advice for improving our services. Once again, congratulations on having this seminar as one of the events to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Korean Institute of Public Administration.