CONFIDENTIAL
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In seeking precise targets (which is what the Communists promise to do) the Government's public information programme will have to exploit every means of identifying and reaching sectional interests. Those departments which have contact with or knowledge of such groups will have to design material calculated to appeal to them and even to act as the means of communication. In other words there is a new positive and active role for all the departments of Government.
13.
But these departments will not only have to represent themselves to their own specialised targets, they will have to represent Government as a whole to the whole public. So senior officers will have to learn not only to do a good job, but to be seen doing it and to relate the good job they are scen doing convincingly to the overall purpose of the Government. While this is in no sense self-glorification for senior civil servants it does call for a personal effort and a personal exposure which is not natural to civil servants and which in other places is the proper field of elected ministers. Since there are none such here we cannot let the case go by default. Senior officers must take upon them- selves personally much of the responsibility for projecting the desired image of Government in human terms as an organization which has taken the trouble to understand what the people need and expect and is taking wise steps to meet those needs and expectations.
14.
In this task senior civil servants will expect to receive sound technical advice and be assisted by the various technical services of professional publicity, but the impetus will come from them. They, and the Government as a whole must be convinced with the urgent necessity to win active and conscious support for the Government, to assist by whatever means in their power the development of the necessary machinery and techniques and to play their part in their use.
CONFIDENTIAL
9
Oct. 1967
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