Events & Conferencing News South Africa

Public sector excellence symposium

Thebe Ikalafeng, founder of the Brand Leadership Academy, is launching the inaugural Public Sector Excellence Symposium - A Roadmap for Improved Performance and Service Delivery - at the Sandton Sun Hotel in Johannesburg on 26-27 October 2009 and talks about the event's key speaker.

The symposium is an initiative aimed to inspire and empower the public sector to share global and local social marketing thought leadership, insights and best practices, as well as to share expertise and celebrate and promote excellence in the public sector.

Global authority in social marketing, Nancy Lee, who has over 25 years of professional marketing experience with special expertise in social and public sector marketing, leads the symposium.

She is an adjunct faculty member teaching social and public sector marketing at the Universities of Washington and South Florida. She has been a guest lecturer at the University of Cape Town, Yale University, Stanford University, Oxford University, Victoria University in Australia, the National University of Ireland in Galway and the Health Promotion Board in Singapore.

She has held numerous corporate marketing positions and taken part in the development of over 100 social marketing campaigns in the areas of public health, safety and environmental protection.

In a prolific partnership with Philip Kotler of Northwestern University, widely recognised as the father of marketing, Lee has co-authored five books, including Corporate Social Responsibility, Social Marketing: Influencing Behaviours For Good, and their new book, UP and OUT of Poverty: The Social Marketing Solution. She lives on Mercer Island in Seattle Washington.

Global perspectives

She will provide global and local perspectives to the challenges faced by governments, state-owned enterprises, agencies and non-profit organisations. Lee will also share her latest social marketing global research as well as private and public sector insights from her ground-breaking book “Marketing in the Public Sector - A roadmap for improved performance” to demonstrate how governments can use citizen insights to transform governments and enhance service delivery.

“I believe there is a lot of marketing excellence in the public sector by government, agencies and parastatals. Many have embraced ‘branding' and marketing communication as an effective vehicle to engage with the public. However, there is always room for improvement whilst other government entities do not utilise contemporary marketing practices at all,” explains Ikalafeng.

“This initiative is designed to celebrate and enhance public sector excellence. It is about creating awareness of the ‘best of government', and empowering the public sector with citizen-driven inspiring ideas and input to raise excellence in service delivery communication.”

“I feel the public service excellence initiative will give bottom-up ‘feedback' - insights from citizen's perceptions of excellence in the public sector, as well as raising the profile of marketing excellence communication in the public sector to address service delivery in the public sector. The symposium will also inspire the public sector with global insights and best practices in service delivery.

“Ultimately, it's intended to be an annual benchmark and best practice initiative so that the outcomes of the initiative are sustainable,” concludes Ikalafeng.

Bizcommunity.com is the media partner for the symposium.

More information on website www.publicsectorexcellence.org.

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