Czech government's new campaign aims to improve communication with public

The government has announced the launch of its new communication campaign – named “Czechia informs” – to help better inform and educate citizens about any governmental or legal changes that will affect people’s daily lives. It will take the form of a web page on the existing gov.cz portal.

According to the head of Czechia’s Department of Strategic Communications Pavel Lupjan, the main goal of the campaign "is to improve the awareness of people in the Czech Republic" as well as "people’s quality of life," iDnes.cz quotes him as saying.

In addition to being updated with new changes, the site will also allow people to search through past laws that have been implemented or amended. At present, it also offers advice on child-welfare payments, vaccination against tick-borne encephalitis, the New Green Savings Program, as well as other topics. The page is currently only available in Czech, but can be translated into English.

It cost the state over CZK 20 million to set up and will be active until at least the end of 2023. This move ties in with President Petr Pavel’s wish to improve state-public communication by informing the public more frequently about changes to the legislature. 

The change is also connected to the country’s digitization efforts – in January the government approved a proposal to bring all state administrative websites under one single domain – gov.cz. This page also offers various different information and guidance to the public, and is available in English.

A March 2023 survey from Czechia’s Center for Public Opinion Research found that 66 percent of all Czechs were “dissatisfied” with the government’s level of communication with the public. 

"If I had to criticize the current government, it would primarily be the way it communicates. They don't consider it that important – they kind of ignore it,” said political scientist Vít Hloušek Brno’s Masaryk University in iRozhlas.cz. Similarly, political Petr Just from Metropolitan University Prague has described the government’s public communication as its “Achilles' heel.”

Too, although its Council of EU presidency last year was seen as largely successful, the government’s downfalls came in its communication. "Unfortunately, the government did not use the potential of the presidency in the context of communicating European affairs to the public,” analyzed Deník N in December.

The government will hope the new site increases its popularity among the public and boosts its performance in an aspect it is much-criticized in.