Communication Plan Analysis Report for County Health Department

Question: Discuss about the Communication Plan Analysis for County Health Department. Answer: Introduction A project communication plan is a useful component that ensures appropriate collection, distribution, storage, retrieval and reporting of project informations(Bourne 2015). The main function of county health department (CHD) is to ensure that there is latest informations that can be dispensed to various stakeholders in case of any disease outbreak. Currently the department has information system that tracks specified information within a certain limit of tasks. The drawback of the information system is that it does not take consideration of CHD future needs expansion. The current performance is that the state data is linked with CHD databases while the environmental database is not linked with communication disease database. The public health departments expect that health conditions are communicated to its citizens. This is possible by having an information system that tracks and reports investigation of infectious diseases and takes consideration of employees dynamics(Kloppenborg 2 014). The CHD senior managers have seen the need of increasing capacities on how their program evaluates and responds to major communicable diseases outbreaks. The need was to be achieved by improving the current information capacity to reflect future informatics needs(Pritchard 2013). A project team consisting IT engineers and Epidemiologists were contacted to draw an integrated health information system which will communicate project information needs to relevant stakeholders. This paper will review the current CHD communication plan, and will make comparisons with well-known project management practices and methodologies. From the analysis recommendations and justifications will be done for a revised communication plan. Current County health department PCP report The CHD communication plan was guided by collaborative approach which takes consideration of how the internal and external stakeholders would understand the health integrative information system role. The approach was guided by the following three questions; how do we do our work? How should we do our work? And how can IS support our work? The project team was able to develop a communication plan for the project and contained the following details: Key stakeholders with their issues, key informations, level of informations, and methods used to communicate messages. In addition it was able to show the required timings for communicating the needs(Gido, J Clements, J 2014). The communication schedule showed that all the stakeholders (external and internal) were summarized in one schedule. The project defines the stakeholder power and influence towards the project(PMI. 2013). From the CHD communication plan it showed that all the stakeholder project issues were generalized (providing continuous information on the project status). The project plan did show the methods that can be used to transmit the key information. The project team only used the same methods of communication (email, meetings, telephone and teleconferencing) to all stakeholders except community members (Town hall meetings and conferences). The description of specific communication in terms of contents, levels of information was reported the same for all CHD stakeholders. The team argued that it will provide a highly detailed and formal communication approach to its stakeholders. Communication timing will be as per the project schedule the CHD project team generalized. Although the projec t plan for CHD was developed by the project team majority of its contents was generalized which made it to lack specificity of how communication needs of each stakeholder will be met. Recommendations The recommendations of the CHD project communication is based on the available project management practices for public sectors stakeholders. The project plan proposed is based on a participative approach(Bryde, D., Broquetas, M., Volm, J. M. 2013). The first activity when designing the communication plan approach is that stakeholder analysis is done to identify communication needs. Followed by a comprehensive project communication plan design containing some the following items: stakeholder communication needs, type of information to be communicated, reasons for distributing the information, persons responsible for distributing information, methods used to covey the information, and resources allocated for communication activities(Kendrick 2013). Other components that need to be included in the proposed project communication plan include ways to address any escalations, a glossary of common communication terminologies, a flow sequence that show how information is transmitted, and a summary of any communication barriers the project is likely to face(Heagney 2016). Escalations are part of any project activity which needs to be taken in considerations and mitigated. These additional components are critical in making decisions and mitigation problems originating from project activities executions(Lock 2014). Evaluation/Justification The analysis of CHD project communication plan and proposed communication plan shows the need to include items like resources allocated for communication activities that will facilitate the communication process. The communication plan accountability and authority will be enhanced when allocating duties to persons responsible for distributing the informations(Verzuh 2015). The communication plan needs to provide ways in which escalations will be addressed in order to increase stakeholder satisfaction and reduce conflicts(Zulch 2014). Evaluation of the methods to transmit the messages based on nature of information needs to be done by the project team in order to link the best method to communicate to specific stakeholders(Pinto 2014). The project team needs to provide a better way to show frequency in which information is to be communicated to specific stakeholders terms like frequent, periodic or occasionally can be used(Pritchard 2013). Conclusion The report discusses the need for CHD to have accurate and timely, current and future information plan for all stakeholder by developing an integrative communication plan for its health system. The research report made a comparison of CHD and other project management practices in reference to communication plan development. Based on the CHD case study review and project management practices the report recommended an effective communication plan that should entail the following: it should define persons involved in communication, information content, resources for communication resources, frequency and methods of distributing information, and persons responsible to provide the information. A well-developed communication plan should be suitable in identifying stakeholders and increasing information sharing in projects. It is then critical for project managers to design a comprehensive communication plan. Bibliography Bourne, L. Making projects work:effective stakeholder and communication management. New Delhi: CRC press, 2015. Bryde, D., Broquetas, M., Volm, J. M. "The project benefits of building information modelling." International Journal of project management 31, no. 7 (2013): 971-980. Gido, J Clements, J. Successful project management . Chicago: Nelson Education, 2014. Heagney, J. 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