The Press, Cultural Relations and Information Department (PKI-department) is one of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs's ten departments. Approximately 50 people are employed at the Oslo-base (home base), and most of them are diplomats (generalists), and not experts in cultural policy or having a background from the cultural sector. The Ministry’s work on cultural-related issues is ‘to be seen as part of the general promotion- and information of Norway’. The department is divided into two sections - Section for Information and Press-Relations, and Section for the Promotion of Norway and Norwegian culture abroad.

The section for information and press relations is mainly responsible for providing information concerning current foreign-policy issues to the Norwegian society, providing information concerning certain current foreign policy-issues towards foreign countries, the Ministry’s publications, seminars, exhibitions and research-trips and contact between Norwegian and foreign-media (press-conferences etc).

The Section for the Promotion of Norway and the Norwegian culture abroad is, as the name implies, responsible for presentation, general promotion and information about Norway abroad, as well as co-ordination of projects between Innovation Norway and other institutions, contact and service towards foreign Universities that teaches the Norwegian language, as well as bilateral cultural agreements.

The embassies play an important part in facilitating official international cultural relations.

The PKI-department’s cultural relations’ activities can (roughly) be grouped into two: what the MFA delegate to the cultural sector, and what they initiate and participate in themselves. Responsibilities and travel-funds are now delegated to several key organisations. This is part of the public-diplomacy trend, where NGOs are to take more responsibility, and networking does not take place between diplomats, but ‘artist to artist’.