As I was searching the web today for resources on the history of public participation in the United States, I came across this paper (PDF) from 1998 by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of NEPA Policy and Assistance outlining a number of recommendations regarding effective public participation. The document defines public participation as follows: Definition of [...]
Here's a working definition I used during today's presentation at the 2013 Participatory Budgeting Conference: Digital Engagement The use of information and communications technologies to support, enhance or extend public participation and civic engagement processes. Another one comes to us via Steph Gray: Digital Engagement uses digital tools and channels to find, listen to and [...]
As participatory budgeting is slowly gaining traction in North America (see map), two ways have emerged how the term is being applied: Narrowly, referring only to processes that give participants decision making power, e.g. by way of voting on their preferred projects/investments (the "Empower" level on the IAP2 Spectrum) Broadly, referring to any participatory processes [...]
We're always glad to find useful definitions of some of the key terms related to our work (occasionally, we'll even add them to our little dictionary). The term public engagement had been missing from the list, somehow. Here now is one take, courtesy of New York, NY-based Public Agenda: FAQs: All About Public Engagement 1. What is [...]
Steven Clift just alerted me to a new report from the IBM Center for The Business of Government: A Manager’s Guide to Evaluating Citizen Participation (PDF), authored by Tina Nabatchi, Syracuse University. I admit I haven't fully read it yet, but a couple of issues jumped out that I wanted to point out really quick. 1) Terminology [...]
My previous post on micro-participation included a definition of civic engagement that I hadn't referenced before. According to Michael X. Delli Carpini, Dean of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, civic engagement can be defined as: Individual and collective actions designed to identify and address issues of public concern. I have [...]
This is one of those posts that's more of a mental note to myself than anything else. Don't expect to learn anything new if you're following these conversations already. Over on GovLoop, the difference between Government 2.0 and Open Government is being discussed (probably not for the first, much less for the last time). I [...]
Regular readers of this blog are probably well aware that when it comes to describing the process of bringing stakeholders into an organization's decision-making process with the goal of making better, more sustainable decisions, we prefer the term public participation. I have previously shared what I consider to be meaningful and well-established definitions (here, here). And while it [...]
The following comparison of dialogue and debate seems to have first appeared in the Winter 1993 edition of Focus on Study Circles: The Newsletter of the Study Circles Resource Center (now Everyday Democracy). Thanks to the Wayback Machine's vast internet archives, a snapshot from 2002 (?) is still available today: Comparison of Dialogue and Debate Dialogue is collaborative: [...]
We already have one very good definition of public participation in the archives, but for comparison's sake, here's the official IAP2 definition as per their training material: IAP2 views public participation as any process that involves the public in problem solving or decision making and uses public input to make decisions. Public participation includes all [...]