Government pandemic solution

Development of a comprehensive model of government response to the pandemic, including activities on health care, transportation and logistics, protection of entrepreneurship, government communication aimed to increase confidence in government decisions, to the fastest stopping citizens’ panic, disease dissemination and its consequences.

Oksana Horbach, Director of the Centre for Strategic Communications "StratCom Ukraine"

The Covid-19 pandemic has been a challenge for governments around the world. Responses to this challenge have varied from country to country, depending on economic development, the resilience of the health care system, the communication capacity of governments, the past experience and the capacity for comprehensive responses.

The situation is unique not only in the fact that, for the first time in history, the pandemic had such an all-encompassing impact, damaging the global and local economies, but also in the fact that, for the first time, citizens panicked and consequently committed harmful acts, with irreparable consequences for their health. An infodemic phenomenon emerged, which in countries with low confidence in governmental decisions, ruined all governmental attempts to remedy the situation.

Thus, we highlight the problem - the lack of an effective model of governmental response in a pandemic. We understand, however, that an effective model should include a communication strategy to increase trust in government decisions and to counteract the infodemic. 

Main target audience: Governments of countries

Secondary target audience: Citizens as recipients of government action

The governments' needs to find the best solutions to block the pandemic was clearly evident during Covid-19. There are a number of steps and solutions made by several countries whose experiences should be improved and extended to other countries.

The testing of the preliminary model will take place in each of the countries whose experiences will be studied during the project. Accordingly, representatives of public services, experts of public administration of these countries will be involved in the development of the model, their opinions will be taken into account during development of the final model and recommendations.

“Public good” of our solution are:

The developed system of actions and decisions of the government aimed at:

1.Minimizing the consequences of the pandemic in different areas

2.increased government awareness and readiness to act in crisis

3.increasing the level of citizens' confidence in government

4.optimization public budget expenditures

5. Forming citizens' understanding of the real efforts of governments to overcome the pandemic

6.increasing the protection of citizens by the government

7. citizen’s behavior changing, reducing the impact of infodemia and stress

As we indicated in the previous position, our project provides a series of "public good". We expect our solution to have an impact on our target groups.

On the one hand, the government receives a "template" of actions and decisions then a confidence in the correctness of its decisions, which is based on research and data. On the other hand, these actions and decisions demonstrate an effective result for citizens. Thus, both target groups have an understanding of what to do in a crisis, panic decreases, there are no massive behavioral errors, and efficiency and confidence in overcoming the pandemic increase. And the most important result is that the "government - citizen" relationship becomes strengthened for mutual reinforcement and assistance.

During the first year, the following stages will be implemented:

1. Researching: data collection and analysis: actions and decisions of national governments, processing of results

2. Formation of preliminary model

During the second year, the following stages will be implemented:

3. Testing and refinement

4. Preparation of the final model

5. Presentation of the model and recommendations to national governments and international organizations.

During the third year, the government’s response to the pandemic (activities and decisions) will be analyzed to find improvements potential of the developed model.

The main elements of monitoring and evaluate impact are:

- stage 1  Researching : availability of all necessary data for analysis

- stage 2 Formation of preliminary model: creation of all elements of the model, the number of experts involved

- stage 3 Testing and refinement phase: number of tests, feedback collection, number of experts involved, number of changes and improvements

- stage 4 Presentation of the model and recommendation: number of copy of the research report, number of presentations (events or meetings), communication campaign indicators (media products: articles, comments, interviews, analytical reviews, speakers, stakeholders, reach)

Barrier 1:

Lack or secrecy of data for analysis

Mitigation 1: 

information requests to official and public sources, using of alternative sources, using of open sources, comparison of data, involvement of experts who have effective access to data for analysis.

Barrier 2:

Lack of platforms for the presentation of the developed model (national governments and international organizations)

Mitigation 2:

Preliminary negotiations by an authoritative facilitator, using of official diplomatic channels, involvement of experts from these authorities in testing the first version of the model and preliminary presentations.

Centre for Strategic Communications StratCom Ukraine

https://stratcomua.org/en

European and Security Studies Foundation

https://www.facebook.com/fesr.org.ua/

We are concerned that despite modern technology, the Covid pandemic has disrupted the traditional lives of countries around the world. Only a few governments have been able to provide an adequate response and make decisions to limit the impact of the pandemic. Most countries were not ready. But the people who were exposed to panic and infodemia turned out to be even more vulnerable. They received a severe blow with long lasting consequences.

The main barrier we want to overcome by implementing this project is to search the best experience, to construct of an optimal model of government response and its dissemination to other countries.

We would be glad to cooperate with research organizations, individual experts in such areas: public administration, health care, transport and logistics, communication and entrepreneurship