Roughly 50% of the communication activities are initiated by or end up in administrations. Regional, national and European government departments are trendsetters for standardised terminology and nomenclature. They have a direct and indirect impact on the linguistical and terminological behaviour of all types of enterprises and of the citizens.
Within the CEN/ISSS framework, the Workshop for Administrative Nomenclature ADNOM has been set up to explore and improve the state-of-the art of administrative nomenclature and terminology throughout the European Union. Many other organisations, such as government and university departments, or terminology centres and associations in the EU member states have complementary goals.
Reducing ambiguity, improving compatibility between languages, completing what is lacking, increasing knowledge of what is available, and so on, are among the myriad ''projects'' that need to be undertaken.
With the support of the European Commission, an ADNOM Project Team is developing a model and a structure to relate administrative concepts and terms. In parallel, a plan for a ''long-term ADNOM activity'' is being elaborated. This work will be supplemented by a campaign to involve the relevant administrative departments and other organisations. To accelerate this process, the conference 'Terminology and Nomenclature; the Communicative Government' is organised.
The conference will address the need and rationale for ADNOM and follow-up work. Examples of good practices in Europe will be presented. The conference will wrapped up with round table discussions and the final drafting of a Declaration to promote progress in the field, addressed to political and government leaders.
The association NL-TERM is responsible for the organisation and the logistics of the event, whereas CEN/ISSS-ADNOM took care of the technical programme. The Royal Belgian Library has kindly made its facilities available for the conference.
The conference will issue a Declaration comprising recommendations addressing the responsible authorities. The Declaration will call for initiatives to significantly improve administrative terminology and nomenclature, at the national/regional as well as the European/international levels.
A draft Declaration will be prepared in advance to guide the Round Table discussion. Amendments proposed during the discussion will be introduced in the consolidated Declaration, to be presented in the final session.
Government administrations need to communicate better, faster, transparently and citizen-friendly; international cooperation and communication are a matter-of-fact; speed and accuracy of some services will be improved by introducing computers and telecommunications. These achievements and aims are expressed repeatedly in politics. The problems are financial or technical, but also social, educational and cultural. And linguistical. It is fine to be online, in the end the most important thing is to understand and to be understood. General knowledge of a language is not enough in today's complex society. Administrative departments use specific concepts and terms to convey domain-specific information. Access to specialised dictionaries - if they exist - is a necessity and it is worthwhile to know the terms frequently used, by heart. Even the citizen needs to know the basic concepts and some of the terms: about taxation, police, civil rights, education, health care and many other areas. Administrators should be aware that non-experts cannot know as much as they do about the ¿language¿ and the vocabulary of their domain of responsibility.
