One of the frequently encountered weaknesses in the management of institutions, including the municipality, is the lack of effective instruments of establishing contacts and internal communications. Most of the weaknesses in the work of the municipality result from poor information of the managerial staff on one hand, and on the other hand, the level of awareness of the officials on current tasks regarding each structural unit. All this would usually lead to ineffective planning of the overall activity and waste of time and resources. This conclusion was reached by the managerial body of Razgrad Municipality after performing an in-depth analysis on the causes for gaps in the work of the municipal administration. After identifying the problem, different ways and forms to improve internal communications and to increase the awareness of officials and the managerial staff were sought. Different experience has been analyzed in this direction thus reaching the idea of introducing a system of weekly and monthly reports and duties. Meanwhile, because of the dynamically changing legislative framework regarding the administration s work, officials not always manage to inform themselves, being extremely busy with their schedules, and this would effect into a risk to make serious mistakes. In order to avoid this, the mayor delegated to the legal advisor the responsibility to elaborate ongoing updates on changes in the legislative framework and to present these to all managers in the administration.
After performing analysis on the causes for the most frequent mistakes in the work of the administration in Razgrad Municipality, a conclusion was made that in most cases these were caused by ineffective internal communication. A decision was made to improve communication by introducing a system of weekly and monthly reports and duties, prepared by managers of various sectors, heads of departments and units. The list of duties would envisage coming duties, which are different from the regular ones, for a given unit during a period of one week. The report would include information not only about he implementation of the indicated tasks, but also of tasks, which have incidentally appeared in the process of work.
Reports and tasks are prepared in several copies and in the end of the current week or month are submitted to the sector respective managers at different levels to the level of a deputy mayor. A copy of each report is collected by the public relations officer, who reads and extracts information, which could be interesting to the media, before submitting them to the mayor. To a large extent this would facilitate the work of the press-office, which could plan topics for the coming press-conferences or other medial events. The tasks are usually discussed at meetings of the managerial staff in the beginning of each working week, thus providing opportunities to all deputy mayors to access information about the performance of each unit. Summarized report of tasks is presented by the mayor to a larger staff meeting and to the rest of officials in the respective units and departments . During staff meetings general tasks are planned and activities to be performed under these tasks are also coordinated when participation of more units is required.
- Improved internal communication in the municipal administration;
- Conditions for more effective planning of work and action coordination created;
- Increased responsibility of municipal officials towards duties delegated within their position characteristics;
- Void the risk to make serious mistakes in the process caused by a lack of knowledge in the legal framework.
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