How does the information office work?

The Talks 
by: Erwin Mabugat

TO INFORM.

That’s the basic function of the Information Management Unit, formerly the City Information Office. To gather, document and dispatch.

But how do we cause accomplishment? That’s the usual question often misinterpreted. 

Several people sometime react on the information personnel’s invisibility. That sometime the head could not be caught sitting in her table. Even this writer has for many instances been difficult to reach. Not to mention the intermittent appearances of the other staff. But of course, the IMU office has never been amputated by personnel.

Our office is far different from that of the City Accounting Office nor that of the City Treasurer’s Office. These are the frontline offices that accommodate clientele almost every day. The CAO and the CTO regularly have walk-in clients.

Unlike those offices, the IMU personnel must snake away to dig up the data. The IMU does not invent the sources of information. We must leave the office and find the materials ourselves. These materials do not come in to us. We have to snatch them ourselves.

Being visible is not what we crave for. What anchors us all is the fact that people can learn from us. That we continue to feed them with sufficient information that can educate and motivate the stakeholders. We admit that we can hardly deliver the supply on time. Should this be the magazine or the tabloid, this setback always has the reasons.

However, we have never become insensible of our mandate as to provide the people with sufficient but timely information. The IMU, as to hurdle the challenge and pose a trend, has resorted to the advent of the information technology, the digital world. We have thus created and maintained an account with the social networking of Facebook. The fan page posts simple announcements and notices, including activity photos and news tidbits on Cadiz. We update the page daily.

We also blog: a website. This blog publishes the office’s media releases online. This has been the creative alternative tool to discharge our functions. We update the site monthly and/ or depending on the availability of the post materials.

The IMU also has three sets of the bulletin board. The boards are mounted oppositely along the stairways in the city hall. These contain legal notices, announcements, memoranda, circulars or ordinances, accounting reports and other public documents.

We always take the challenge: to uphold the virtue of information power. The power that educates and motivates; the power that molds and acts. Rarely seen visibly but our pen incessantly performs to stoically provide the people with information.

For us, working is not about being seen at all times, it is about accomplishment. It is about fulfilling the task.

Like the proverbial pen, the IMU labors discreetly but causes great things./*