Being part of the UNDP-supported Open Parliament Initiative Action Plan, the communications strategy is to cover five areas: communications with the public, communications with the international community, communications with journalists, internal communications, and branding.

"It is essential that all stakeholders are involved in the development of the communications strategy of the Verkhovna Rada. It should be clear for the Verkhovna Rada Secretariat's staff as well as interesting and informative for users of the Verkhovna Rada's products," said Mykola Shevchuk, Deputy Chairperson of the Verkhovna Rada Secretariat.

Thanks to the online broadcasting of the plenary sessions, openness of events, and creation of remarkable website content on the Parliament's activity, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine is viewed as one of the most open governmental body to Ukrainian citizens and the media. Yet, a number of issues are still hardly accessible for an average user.

During the meeting, groups conducted SWOT analysis of the Parliament's communications in general: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges of Parliament's activity; effectiveness of the communication channels, information technologies, and media instruments used by the Parliament; target groups' perceptions of the Parliament; and needed resources for effective communication, etc.

Weak communication between the Verkhovna Rada and the international community was picked as one of the critical issues. Particularly, it's poor English of the Verkhovna Rada Secretariat staff, lack of an international PR strategy, inadequate media presence of the Parliament on the international media arena, poor quality and untimely provision of content for the English version of the Parliament's website, lack of systemic approach to the media coverage of international relations of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, lack of a technical platform to organize online meetings with other parliaments and international organizations, lack of communication with the press services of parliamentary alliances and national parliaments, situational communication with the press services of diplomatic missions accredited in Ukraine.

On the basis of this analysis, a toolkit will be developed to improve distribution of information about the Parliament's work and increase the level of trust to this institution and MPs.

The work of the Working Group on Communicationa Strategy Developement was supported by UNDP Ukraine.