On 26th May, the President of Latvia, Andris Berzins, invited the Director of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, to present the Centre’s activities, achievements and future plans. The President appreciated the current activities of the Centre, and stressed that strategic communication is one of the most important and complicated tasks of state institutions and thatit needs the highly professional approach that is provided by experts from the Centre.
Janis Karklins noted that the mission of the Centre is to contribute to the communication processes of the Alliance in order to ensure that it communicates in an appropriate, timely, accurate, and responsive manner on its evolving roles, objectives and missions. He stressed that the Centre’s strength is its strong personnel, which comes not only from different nations, but also from different areas of work – military and civilian, the private and academic sectors. In its research, the Centre uses all of the available modern technology, tools of virtual analysis, and analysis of the research that has already been undertaken. The Centre provides comprehensive analyses, timely advice and practical support to the Alliance.
Both the President and the Director agreed that in today’s intensive information environment, individual initiative and critical thinking capacities play an important role. At the end of the meeting, the Director informed the President about the ongoing planning of the Conference “The Riga StratCom Dialogue: Perception Matters”, that will take place in Riga, on 20th and 21st August. The President was invited to attend and inaugurate the Conference with an opening speech.