[cma-l] Government officially confirms scrapping the COI

[CMA-L]

The Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude has confirmed the closure of
the Central Office of Information which will be abolished in April
2012.

The move has been heavily criticised by the Prospect union which
warned that a decision not to replace the COI with a new body will
fragment government communications and breach the promotion of shared
services.

Government communications chief, Matt Tee, proposed scrapping the COI
in a review in March and the government said it would replace the
department with the Government Communications Centre, a new body which
would be more streamlined and would concentrate pan-government
marketing and advertising activity "in fewer areas of focus and to
targeted audiences." The government said this would make
communications more effective and would avoid "aiming multiple
messages at the same audience".

However the government has now opted against establishing the GCC and
will instead redeploy staff elsewhere and introduce job cuts.

In changes to the governance structure, a small team of 20 based in
the Cabinet Office will direct strategy, for which jobs are now being
advertised. The team will support a communications delivery board,
chaired by ministers and departmental communications directors. The
government said a shared communications delivery pool would also be
set up for certain specialist services.

It said campaigns, such as health and the recruitment of armed forces,
would continue.

Prospect, which represents information professionals in government,
says the move has put 400 staff at risk of redundancy and criticised
the government for failing to consult or warn staff.

Paul Noon, general secretary of Prospect, said staff had been left
"shocked and devastated".

He said the closure had come completely out of the blue. "Across
government, ministers are centralising finance, HR and procurement in
order to save money and cut duplication," he said. "At COI a shared
service that has worked well and is respected by the industry in which
it operates is about to be chopped into little pieces. It makes no
sense at all."

But the Cabinet Office said changes would improve the efficiency and
effectiveness of government communications.

Maude said the government has slashed "unnecessary spending" on
communications and described the changes as important and significant.

"This does not mean the end of vital and cost-effective marketing
campaigns, such as those campaigns that save people's lives. However,
it does mean that communications spending in the future will never
again get out of hand and instead will be more transparent, better
co-ordinated and less bureaucratic."

The government said spending on advertising and marketing had been cut
by 68% to £168m in the past year and departments had reduced the
number of in-house communications staff by a quarter and their budgets
by half.

Most of the job losses are likely to be among marketing staff, whose
numbers are being cut from 3,233 to 1,940.

In March, Tee recommended replacing COI with a new communications
centre and a 15% cut in the government's total communications staff,
saving £50m from the COI's £329m staffing budget.

Noon said the recommendations and a major restructuring exercise
carried out last year now appear to have been "a complete waste of
time".

He said that far from saving money, the cuts to COI "will leave most
government communications in the hands of media agencies who are
certain to be more expensive than in-house professionals"

Source: http://bit.ly/lukZQs

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