In light of the recent call for input regarding public participation best practices, it’s always interesting to compare how that question is being answered abroad.

Here’s a 2010 document by Planning Aid England, which is part of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI), the UK’s “leading planning body for spatial, sustainable, integrative and inclusive planning”: Good Practice Guide to Public Engagement in Development Schemes (PDF)

For developers, communities and decision makers, one of the biggest challenges in taking forward a development scheme is to ensure that public engagement is undertaken in a way which is meaningful, inclusive and brings benefits for all involved.

This guide is intended to provide practical advice for all those involved in public engagement in development schemes which require planning consent. It is illustrated by real examples of good practice and provides information and assistance to those planning, engaging in, or assessing community consultation.

The guide lists the following eight principles:

• Research and analysis – explore the context, history, different communities and groups in the area who may affected. Identify what will motivate people, what else is happening in the area, establish if it is connected and if so consider the potential to share events. Establish the goals – what are the benefits of engaging with communities and how will these be realised?
• Learn from the process – identify what people think of the way the consultation has worked. What could be done better, what else needs to be done, was it a balanced and inclusive process. Identify the lessons learned and take these forward into other projects.
• Continuing to engage – Has feedback been given and how will the relationships developed be continued into the construction and operational phases of a development project?
• Monitor and evaluate – monitor engagement and use the results to identify gaps and inform actions to widen the process and ensure a balanced community response is achieved. Consider the comments received and how they can be taken into account in the design – is further engagement required?
• Relationship building, knowledge and skills – develop links with key groups and individuals who can assist and advise on what matters in the area. Consider how existing community groups, networks and representatives might be involved, what barriers might exist and what help might be needed to build the capacity to engage.
• Communications – ensure that the information provided is clear, accessible and sufficient to tell people what they want to know, and to allow them to decide whether to engage. Be clear about what is fixed and why, and what is ‘up for debate’. Check that mechanisms are in place to allow information to flow in all directions and that response dates are clear.
• Timing – be realistic, allow sufficient time to achieve the goals set at the start. Provide a clear timetable for the project identifying consultation opportunities. Ensure engagement takes place when things can be changed and when it is cost effective to do so. Allow sufficient time for considered and informed response. How and when will feedback be provided?
• Inclusive – ensure under represented individuals and groups are included and that they have an equal opportunity to be heard. Be clear when making changes that these do not respond to a vociferous minority but are a response to a wider community view.

The “Delivering Good Practice” FAQ at the end seems quite useful, too, to help market public participation to planners, developers and the public.

The guide has been endorsed by IAP2 UK/Ireland.

Hat tip: IAP2 via Twitter.

In December, the White House issued a request for input regarding the U.S. Open Government National Action Plan. Their list of seven questions included one on e-participation. To jog your memory, here it is once again:

What are the most effective forms of technology and web tools to encourage public participation, engage with the private sector/non-profit and academic communities, and provide the public with greater and more meaningful opportunities to influence agencies’ plans?

The following response was intended to be a group collaboration between various practitioners, researchers and other thought leaders in the field of e-participation and online engagement, mainly from the U.S. but welcoming contributions from abroad. Despite the very short notice, Intellitics was able to host an informal call on December 16 that drew 14 attendees and expressions of interest from several others. Thank you to everyone who showed up.

We enjoyed a refreshing conversation. Due to the holidays, however, there simply wasn’t enough time to draft and finalize a collective response, especially since some of the people involved were busy preparing statements from their respective organizations, namely the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD), the Deliberative Democracy Consortium (DDC) and the International Association for Public Participation–United States of America (IAP2 USA). All in all, the January 3, 2012 deadline was a bit unfortunate, to put it mildly.

Not knowing just how strictly the deadline will be enforced, I have decided to go ahead and submit something now rather than wait for our little group effort to run its course. Below, I provide a few initial thoughts as my personal response to the White House request. I seriously hope that the conversation doesn’t end here and that the White House Open Government team will still be open to receiving input in a few weeks from now when a coordinated group response is more likely.

First off, I think the question is a particularly important one. Why? Because if current trends continue, and there is little reason to doubt that they will, public participation will continue to move onto the web just like everything else: from the way we work, to banking, to commerce, to entertainment, to education, to the way we connect socially. Increasingly, we rely on the web to deliver and receive these important functions in our lives, and I expect the same to hold true for community problem solving and decision making and the many ways people participate in the political process. That’s why this question not only deserves a thorough one-time response now but warrants a continued dialogue and exchange between the administration and the experts and innovators in this emerging field.

One of the insights a continued dialogue might reveal early on is that the question ought to be reframed slightly. There is no one single “most effective” e-participation tool available yet and probably won’t be for the foreseeable future. Rather, there are hundreds of tools — whether built specifically for particular e-participation scenarios or being used simply because they are available — which, by and large, all have their strengths and weaknesses and tend to be more or less appropriate depending on the purpose and the circumstances.

Given that the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in support of public participation is still fairly new, this is hardly surprising.

The key thing to understand here is that the effectiveness and overall benefit of any particular tool depends a lot on the context: the objectives, the immediate project parameters and numerous other factors, many of which have nothing to do with technology. Hence, a better way to frame the question might be to ask for the known or likely success factors for applying technology rather than focusing prematurely on specific tools.

Whether involving the public in person, online or both, the most important thing to get right in public participation is the overall process. Without the basics properly in place, no tool will ever be adequate. Those basics include but obviously aren’t limited to the following items:

• What are the decisions to be made?
• To what extent can, should and will the public get to influence the decisions?
• Who is the public?
• What is the timeline?
• Etc.

As I pointed out in my brief talk at SXSW 2011: Even the best tools won’t save you if you get the process wrong! Luckily, we have a global community of practice to build on whose countless decades of experience have produced well-established good practice guides and ethics for designing public participation processes, most notably from IAP2 but also other organizations in the field.

Once an e-participation effort has been scoped, during the planning and design stages, it should become more clear which tools or category of tools are potential candidates. Factors to be considered when choosing a tool for, say, a generic ideation or policy deliberation project might include the following (in no particular order):

• Cost
• Optimal group size / scalability
• Multi-language support
• Facilitation and moderation capabilities
• Ease of use (participants)
• Ease of set-up (administrators)
• Training requirements
• Maintenance needs
• Reporting capabilities
• Proprietary vs. open source software
• Self-hosted vs. cloud solution
• Participant acquisition potential
• Integration with face-to-face processes
• Integration with other technology
• Bandwidth requirements
• Data retention / archiving options
• Support for (quasi-)anonymous participation
• Identity support
• Cross-platform and cross-browser support
• Support for mobile devices
• Branding options
• Customization options
• Fee structure
• Contractual aspects
• Legal aspects
• Accessibility aspects
• Etc.

It’s easy to see how any odd combination of the trade-offs inherent in this short list might have a seemingly weaker tool win out over a more robust one under certain conditions.

Another interesting question that should certainly inform the tool selection process is to what extent any of the perceived shortcomings of any given tool might be remedied by applying a certain structure or manual/human interventions, e.g. framing, scheduling, or facilitation. For example:

• Scalability issues might be overcome by dividing the participants into smaller groups or by breaking up the topic into a series of shorter cycles, each focusing on one sub-topic at a time.
• Lack of moderation capabilities might be overcome by providing participants with more thorough training upfront and by applying higher levels of hands-on facilitation.
• Lack of certain critical features might be overcome by using a combination of tools.

In closing, I’d like to point out that despite these caveats I believe a set of tangible guidelines could be produced to inform the administrations e-participation efforts, and we wouldn’t even have to start from scratch. A lot of research is available to inform this discussion. It will be a matter of pulling together the right resources and sufficiently engaging the experts. This will require significantly more time than was given in the original request. However, based on what I’ve been hearing, there seems to be a great deal of interest among this community of e-participation practitioners, researchers and other interested parties to continue the conversation. Let’s see if the White House will take us up on this offer.

In a blog post the other week, Code for America helped promote the White House’s most recent request for input, asking: How do you measure participation?

The post approaches this question with an understanding of “participation in its broadest sense”. Not to be too nit-picky, but that’s probably not the focused area of exploration I believe the White House has in mind.

With apologies for being a bit late (the deadline for submitting input ends tomorrow, January 3), here’s the comment I just left:

The White House is asking specifically for input on public participation, not participation in general.

The latter is fairly broad and may include all kinds of citizen activities (e.g. reporting an issue, building an app, doing cool things with data). The former, on the other hand, is a fixed term that’s very narrowly defined in that it always requires a decision making process and a decision maker willing to involve the public in that decision.

My preferred definition explains the term as follows:

“Public participation is the process by which an organization consults with interested or affected individuals, organizations, and government entities before making a decision. Public participation is two-way communication and collaborative problem solving with the goal of achieving better and more acceptable decisions. Public participation prevents or minimizes disputes by creating a process for resolving issues before they become polarized. Other terms sometimes used are ‘public involvement,’ ‘community involvement,’ or ‘stakeholder involvement.’” (James L. Creighton)

This is the specific area for which the White House is trying to identify best practices and metrics.

While public participation and civic engagement share some of the challenges regarding measuring and metrics (e.g. qualitative aspects, long-term impact), some issues matter more to one than the other (e.g. inclusiveness).

Various posts have previously tried to deal with the terminology issue, for example:

• What Is Public Participation? (March 24, 2008)
• Talking About Participation (October 30, 2009)
• Public Participation: Four Common Misconceptions (September 25, 2010)
• What Is Civic Engagement? (May 7, 2011)

Of the few public replies I’ve read so far, this one gets the focus on decision making mostly right: Outcomes First: Best Practices and Metrics for Public Participation

This is not a question about who owns the best terminology (public participation, public involvement, community engagement all work). It’s about being able to clearly understand the scope of the questions the White House is trying to answer. Otherwise, the input won’t be on target.

Over on Google+, Popvox CEO Marci Harris points to an article on The Hill from Friday that shows where the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction is apparently headed with regard to public participation:

Sen. Baucus seeks deficit-cutting ideas — but only from Montanans

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), one of the 12 members of the deficit-reduction supercommittee, is asking people from his home state to suggest ideas for cutting the deficit, and has provided a form on his website that only Montanans can use to send him ideas.

The suggestion form on Baucus’s site is “designed specifically for Montanans to submit ideas to help reduce the deficit.” The form asks for detailed address and contact information from each submitter, and only allows entries from one state, Montana.

Marci writes:

Surprise! The Senator from Montana doesn’t care what you think unless you are from Montana.

Don’t get mad — that’s the way it’s supposed to work. It doesn’t matter how “super” a legislator is, he or she still has to get elected by the people back home. Sorry to break it to you, but with the Debt Supercommittee (and almost any issue that has to move through the Senate Finance Committee), Montanans are more important than you are.

Politicians care narrowly about their constituents (something many citizens don’t seem to realize when trying to influence Congress). However, in this case the constituents are not limited to any particular district or state. Here’s the comment I left moments ago:

From a public participation perspective, this is clearly not the way it’s supposed to work. The supercommittee works on behalf of Congress, and the stakeholders — people affected by or interested in this issue — come from all states. If the committee wants to allow input from citizens, that’s great, but they must provide everyone with an equal opportunity to do so. Relying on the committee members’ own infrastructure, which obviously is biased towards their states, doesn’t quite cut it.

It’s hard to tell how much room there is for this committee to engage in meaningful public participation, anyway (though it certainly would be fun to try now, wouldn’t it), but flaws like this should be avoided.

Via @demsoc on Twitter, I found this gem in Local Government Lawyer, a UK-based legal publication that focuses on lawyers working for and advising local authorities: Judge quashes one of first selective licensing schemes over “perfunctory” consultation

Apparently, a local government in the UK had decided to implement certain changes to their housing regulations that were negatively affecting private sector landlords. A group of landlords was unhappy with the decision and challenged it in court on the grounds that “Hyndburn’s consultation prior to designation was inadequate and failed to comply with the statutory obligations set out under s. 80(9) of the 2004 Act.”

Here’s what the judge had to say (emphasis mine):

Reviewing the process undertaken by Hyndburn, the judge concluded that Hyndburn did not take reasonable steps to consult with the persons likely to be affected by the designation.

The judge said the statute required some precision in the identification of what is to be designated and its consequences, so that the extent of the effect on those persons can be appreciated. “In addition, it is hard to see how adequate steps can be taken to consult with persons affected unless one knows the likely licence conditions that will be imposed,” he pointed out, adding that consultations as to general principles were insufficient.

Mr Justice McCombe said consultees must be given sufficient information to enable them to reach an informed decision upon that on which they are being consulted.

“Without some fleshing out of the reasons for the proposals, the nature of the proposals as regards the licence conditions and as to the fee structure, it seems to me that an informed response was really impossible,” he argued.

“It is significant that, after the designation in the course of the present proceedings, the parties have indeed debated and to some degree reached compromises about licence conditions. It would have been more fruitful if that debate had occurred during the consultation process.”

The judge criticised the consultation as “perfunctory in the extreme”. It could not conceivably put the consultees in the position of being able to given an informed response to that which was really being proposed by the council, he added.

Mr Justice McCombe also suggested that confidence in the process was undermined because the council itself could not explain accurately or fairly to the Secretary of State the elements of the consultation it had undertaken. “In particular, I would refer to the apparent belief of the officers responsible for seeking the Secretary of State’s confirmation for designation that the landlords’ forum had been informed in the consultation, when it had not,” he said.

“Taken as a whole, I am satisfied that the council have failed to comply with s.80(9) of the Act,” he concluded.

The judge added that had he come to the view that the consultation exercise was adequate, he would have been inclined to hold that the period between consultation and designation was not so long as to vitiate the exercise.

“However, if the council’s consultation is a shallow one, as in my view this one was, its usefulness is likely to have a much shorter sell-by date,” he said. “In my judgment, the fact that so long had passed and so much had evolved in the formulation of the scheme between the perfunctory consultation and the designation should have raised in the authority’s mind a serious question whether by March 2010 they had taken the reasonably necessary steps to consult, so as to inform it adequately of the views of those affected in order to decide rationally whether the designation decision should be taken or not.”

Mr Justice McCombe said it was “regrettable” that Hyndburn had been so economical in the accuracy of its reports to the Secretary of State, another factor that undermined confidence.

Looks like public participation principles are firmly embedded in the United Kingdom.

On Wednesday, Umair Haque, well-known columnist and blogger for Harvard Business Review, shared a few thoughts on the then about-to-go-live Twitter town hall with President Barack Obama: AskObama Is a Meaningless Marketing Stunt

His piece read roughly like this (selectively paraphrased for illustrative purposes):

“… a tiny dose of digital dumbification… grumble grumble… a cynical exercise… perception over reality…  one-off marketing stunt… grumble… questions my pet hamster knows will probably never have a hope in Hades of having an impact on anything …”

And (quoted verbatim):

“… without a working, viable, lasting, participatory link to the who, what, when, where, and how of policy-making, the event is just that: a one-off marketing stunt, with little enduring significance or meaning.”

So I guess it’s fair to assume Mr. Haque’s feelings about this event were rather, shall we say, mixed.

Speaker of the United States House of Representatives John Boehner (R-OH) asking a question during President Obama's Twitter town hall.

While Haque’s post brings up a number of valid questions about the state and future of our democracy and the role technology might play in it, his criticism of the event itself is based on completely unrealistic expectations and thus misses the point.

I only managed to watch about twenty minutes of the event. From what I can tell it seemed like an o.k. town hall meeting, so I couldn’t help but leave this short comment:

Wednesday’s event had been announced and advertised as a “Twitter town hall”. Nothing more, nothing less. Town hall meetings, whether online or offline, are informal public meetings: anyone can attend, the convener shares some information, and sometimes participants get to voice their questions or concerns.

Town hall meetings are only one of many tools and processes that can be applied to engage the public in government decision making. Whether they are the right choice depends on the public participation goals that are being pursued. For example, town hall meetings can work well to help inform the public but perform rather poorly as tool for collaborative problem solving or deliberation.

As necessary as deepening or reinventing our democracy may be, this event was not intended to get us there. It should be judged on its own merits: Was it accessible? Was the process by which questions were selected transparent and fair? Were the answers helpful and factually accurate? How did it compare to similar previous efforts (e.g. the Facebook town hall we saw in April)? Etc.

On a final note, it seems a bit unfair to not at least mention Open Government in this context and the various participatory experiments the Obama administration has carried out over the past couple of years. Now, we can talk a great deal about how that’s been going and whether the approach is bold enough or not, but overall I wouldn’t call their efforts disingenuous (as the post seems to imply).

Agreed, this wasn’t democracy’s equivalent of the moon landing. Rather, it’s the equivalent of teaching a toddler how to count so she can grow up to become an astronaut (destined to fly to the moon and beyond). Baby steps!

As part of the newly-launched Campaign to Cut Waste, the White House on Monday announced an initiative that aims to “get rid of at least half” of an estimated 24,000 federal websites.

From a public participation perspective, here’s the part that’s interesting (emphasis mine):

As one of the first steps of the Campaign to Cut Waste and as part of an OMB memorandum to improve customer service, we’ve taken three concrete steps:

1. Stop the bleeding. Starting right now, there is a freeze on all .gov URL’s. This means no one can get a new one without a written waiver from the federal CIO, Vivek Kundra. Facing this constraint, agencies will focus on their current infrastructure, adding content and functionality to existing websites.
2. Map out the current landscape. To understand what’s working, and what isn’t, agencies will need to report on every URL they maintain.  In addition, we’re enlisting the oversight of a powerful stakeholder: you. In the next 30 days, a list of all registered .gov domains will be published so that you can pore over them yourself and offer feedback.
3. Develop a government-wide policy for websites. While it’s pretty obvious that we don’t need thousands of websites, what we do need is a little trickier. Should there only be one federal website? Is a more practical solution a common set of templates and standards so that sites are better connected to one another and more consistent to the public? A task force will consult with experts from the public and private sector to develop a policy for government websites moving forward. If you’re interested in participating in this process, let us know.

Maybe training is to blame, but whenever I see a government entity ask for “input” or “feedback” without outlining any of the specifics of the anticipated process, a whole bunch of alarm bells go off. Among other things, public participation requires clarity with regard to the intended outcomes as well as careful planning and good process. If those things aren’t obvious from the beginning, it’s unlikely the engagement will be successful.

Remember ExpertNet? It’s been well over four months since that request for “input, comment, and ideas from the public” ended, and there still hasn’t been any kind of debriefing or follow-up. That’s not good! Will things move forward, eventually? Or are the conveners still “hard at work analyzing”, as per their last Twitter update (from January 28, 2011)?

Really, reporting back shouldn’t take that long. Or if it ever does, an interim update is in order. Maybe something will still emerge at some point, maybe the ExpertNet consultation did indeed provide some value for the conveners. At this point, it’s hard to tell.

Since we’ve written about this stuff a lot over the past  few years, we thought we’d dig into our archives and share three posts that might help the White House pull off a better input gathering exercise this time around:

1. State clearly how participants’ input will be used: What impact will the participants have? How will they influence the decision? What will the process look like? Read this post to understand why it’s important to be careful what you promise!
2. Outline the basic parameters of the consultation: At the very least, the White House should explain upfront the overall timeline, how the public’s input will be used to inform their decision making, what the follow-up will look like. Ideally, a much more detailed FAQ will be provided.
3. Provide regular updates: Don’t wait until the project is over to share what you’ve learned. There’s plenty of room for interim updates and summaries to help keep people in the loop and to validate your findings early on.

It’s commendable that the White House continues to look for opportunities to engage the public. It would be even better if they started to follow the principles that ensure their public participation efforts have the integrity they deserve.

As reported by Federal Computer Week last week, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) recently published a report for Congress that evaluates the first year of the Open Government Directive: The Obama Administration’s Open Government Initiative: Issues for Congress (PDF)

From the summary:

The 112th Congress may have interest in accessing information and documents from the executive branch. This report examines and analyzes the Obama Administration’s initiative to make the executive branch more transparent, participatory, and collaborative. [...]

[...]

The 112th Congress may oversee the Administration’s open government efforts and has the authority to codify any parts of the initiative. This report reviews and discusses the centerpieces of President Obama’s transparency initiatives, the Open Government Initiative and the Open Government Directive. The report analyzes agency response to the OGI and the OGD and examines whether the OGD’s requirements can meet the stated goals of the Administration. The report discusses the three central tenets of the Administration’s OGD—transparency, public participation, and collaboration—and analyzes each one individually to determine whether agencies are meeting these requirements and whether the requirements may improve the effectiveness of the federal government.

Several people have already weighed in (Joe Goldman, Nancy Scola, Andrea di Maio and others).

The report puts a strong focus on objective-driven Open Government and the need for measurable results. And while I generally agree with that (a lot), I found the report’s analysis regarding public participation (page 30-31) somewhat lacking. Here’s why:

1. Fails to mention the need for good process design

In the analysis section, the report mentions a number of high-level concerns and challenges, paraphrased here:

• The public may not be well-informed enough.
• There may not be enough citizens who are motivated to engage in public policy deliberations and who are capable of doing so.
• Public comments may not be useful to the federal government.
• Responding to public comments may cause delays in government action.
• The resource requirements (dedicated employees, work hours) needed to respond to these comments are unclear.
• Most public participation may come from special interest groups.
• Web-based public participation may give certain participants unfairly greater access to policy makers.

These are all valid and important points. However, what the report doesn’t mention is that good process design will almost always help address these challenges. For example, good process design takes into account the resources the convener has available to process participant input and will only make commitments that are feasible. Good process design creates ways for participants to learn about the issue (remember, inside every public participation program is a good public information — or, as I would phrase it today — public learning program). Good process design helps bring all voices to the table, not just special interests.

2. Generalizes based on one bad example

The report looks back on the Open Government Dialogue in 2009 and observes how the suggestions were “of varied relevance and utility.” It also quotes one editorial that concluded that the quality of public comments during the Open Government Dialogue “was not consistently encouraging.” While both statements are true, undoubtedly, they do not generally apply to all public participation, online or offline. What is not mentioned is that the Open Government Dialogue was, despite all its good intentions, poorly designed and poorly managed. In all likelihood, better process design and a more hands-on management would have yielded much better results.

* * *

On a final note, while it’s true that “[t]he OGD presumably was created, in part, using suggestions from the public”, there was never a proper follow-up that informed participants about if and how their input had influenced the final document. Again, something which a good public participation design would have taken care of in a timely manner.

Despite these minor shortcomings in a report that I found generally on target, one take-away for me is that the public participation field still has a lot of work to do in better documenting their successes, developing a consistent framework for measuring return on investment, and to much better share this information with any organization in the public, private or non-profit sector that is involved in engaging their constituents in public participation.

It’s not enough to know better, it’s essential that this knowledge becomes readily available to a much broader audience than it is today. As I mentioned on Twitter, this is something I would like to make a focus area of IAP2 USA over the next year or two.

Over on the Common Sense California blog, Daniel Klein writes: Calgary Public Engagement raises some questions (it’s a short post, quoted here in full):

The City of Calgary, Alberta is launching a public engagement process for Business Planning. Read more here. This is an example of the need for a common definition of public engagement. Is public engagement a process of informing citizens of what the government plans to do? Is it asking for comments from the public and then the government still making the final decision or is public engagement a process where normal citizens can impact the policy decisions of elected officials through their input? As time irons out the definition, it seems the City of Calgary views public engagement as the process of informing the public of the issue, getting a little feedback from the audience and then making their decision.

So which one is it: informing, consulting or allowing for actual “impact”? Yes, yes, and yes!

Depending on the circumstances, public participation (as defined here and here) can take on a variety of forms. With regard to impact, here’s what I wrote back in September: Public Participation: Four Common Misconceptions

Public participation comes with a wide range of expected participant impact. This one may be the most counter-intuitive of the four, but there will always be situations when all a decision maker can commit to is to share information or invite limited feedback at best. That’s why IAP2′s Spectrum of Public Participation (PDF) explicitly includes the public participation goals Inform and Consult, neither of which require the decision maker to incorporate any of the participants’ input. At the Consult level of public impact, for example, the convener only promises to “provide feedback on how public input influenced the decision” (technically, that influence may be minimal or zero).

I don’t have enough background information about the Alberta consultation mentioned above, so I won’t judge whether theirs is a genuine effort at public participation (the article referenced is unavailable at this moment). However, just because they appear to fall on the left side of the Spectrum doesn’t say anything about the quality of the process.

It should be noted that some consider public engagement to consist of only the processes outlined on the right half of the Spectrum (Involve, Collaborate, Empower). To them, the left side (Inform, Consult) does not qualify. While that’s certainly a distinction that can be made I think it’s a bit limiting. Many projects will fall into several categories, including on the left side, depending on which stage they’re at. Moreover, doing things on the left side of the Spectrum can often be a prerequisite for doing things well on the right side.

We know there are a lot of (online) tools for participation available today, and we find out about more examples of how they are being used almost every day.

About three weeks ago, someone asked me if I knew of any politicians strongly committed to voter participation who “have started to use these techniques sincerely and effectively.”  I thought my answer wasn’t good enough (frankly, I couldn’t come up with any examples), so here’s a call for a bit of community research.

Some of the use cases I think would qualify:

• Inform constituents about decisions or votes that have already been made
• Collect constituent feedback with regard to certain policy proposals with the goal of helping the politician make a more well-informed decision
• Collaborate with constituents on crafting a policy proposal
• Allow constituents to decide a certain issue with the politician being committed to carrying out that decision

In essence, any kind of examples of politicians using social media and other online tools to engage their constituents in their decision-making processes is what I’m looking for.

If you have any leads, please leave a comment below, shoot us an email or use hashtags #edem or #opengov on Twitter. Thanks!

The European Institute for Public Participation (EIPP), a Bremen, Germany-based not-for-profit organization whose mission is to promote better decision-making through public participation, just shared a new paper titled Making citizens’ voices heard — and listened to. Thoughts on public participation in Europe (PDF).

I found this definition of public participation useful (page 3/4):

Public participation, thus, is the deliberative process by which interested or affected citizens, civil society organizations, and government actors are involved in policy-making before a political decision is taken. It is collaborative problem-solving with the goal of achieving more legitimate policies.

Authors Patrizia Nanz and Simon Dalferth conclude (page 13/14):

Public participation has the potential to revitalize the political system and alleviate the disenchantment of citizens with politics. In this paper we have presented an approach to complement European representative democracies with effective participatory practices. We have discussed the advantages and shortcomings of public participation. We recommend that three steps be taken for public participation to come to fruition: a framework for public participation needs be adopted, a systematic methodology must be developed and a rigorous and continuous analysis of costs and benefits established.

If these steps are taken, public participation has the potential to strengthen the democratic legitimacy of European governance. By fostering deliberation among citizens over the nature of problems and the best way to solve them, participatory practices produce a pool of (transnationally) shared arguments which – disseminated by mass media – contribute to the emergence of a wider public sphere, in which policy choices of member states and the European Union are exposed to public scrutiny (Nanz, 2006). Through public participation, the process of political decision-making in the EU would be opened up both to the input of citizens’ concerns and to public scrutiny of the larger citizenry.

Good stuff. I look forward to meeting some fellow European public participators at the January 8 meetup.

I’ve been invited to be a panelist at the PACE conference in Peoria, AZ next month:

A Conference on “Authentic Public Participation”

There are over 4.5 million voices in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area. They’re getting louder…Are you listening???

What is Civic Engagement?  What is authentic public participation?  How can you get involved in your community and provide meaningful discussion with your government? How can elected officials and other decision makers really hear what you are telling them?  The PACE conference will answer these questions and more!

Here are some of the questions the closing panel on “The Role of Social Media in Civic Engagement” might tackle:

• What is and what isn’t social media? What makes it social?
• How is social media changing the way that citizens engage with their government and communities?
• Does social media allow for authentic public engagement?
• What are the strengths and opportunities for use of social media in public engagement?
• How can governments and opinion leaders use social media appropriately and to their advantage?

Here is the full schedule for the day.

The conference is hosted by the City of Peoria in collaboration with the IAP2 Grand Canyon Chapter.

I’m very much looking forward to the conversation! Please leave a comment if you want to point out any interesting aspects that we should cover. Thanks!

As an added benefit, this will provide a great opportunity to meet some of my fellow IAP2 USA members in person and further hash out our strategy as we kick-start the organization.

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 isn’t quite perfect yet, the current Wikipedia entry on public participation also points in the right direction:

Public participation is a political principle or practice, and may also be recognised as a right (right to public participation). The terms public participation may be used interchangeably with the concept or practice of stakeholder engagement and/or popular participation.

Generally public participation seeks and facilitates the involvement of those potentially affected by or interested in a decision. The principle of public participation holds that those who are affected by a decision have a right to be involved in the decision-making process. Public participation implies that the public’s contribution will influence the decision.

As is often the case with these kinds of terms, there are two basic language challenges:

• Same concept, different terminology: Around the world, a variety of terms are being used that essentially describe the same or very similar concepts. Just take a look at Painting the Landscape: A Cross-Cultural Exploration of Public-Government Decision Making (PDF, 4.5MB), a joint research project of the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) and the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, which identified a dozen or so different names in their list of “typical public participation terminology”, from “consultation” in South Africa to “public management” in Brazil to “co-management” in Cambodia (page 546).
• Same word, different meanings: To complicate things even further, the reverse is also true. A term like participation will often mean different things to different people.

The challenge of trying to overcome language differences and agree on common terminology has come up before. There really is no right or wrong, for the most part; everyone is free to use the terminology they prefer and that they find most useful. What’s important, in the end, is to understand what we mean by certain terms when we talk  to each other. This is especially true for the term public participation, one of the three pillars of the Open Government Directive.

Based on my observations listening to the discussions around Open Government, the following four aspects of the term public participation tend to get easily and commonly confused:

1. Public participation applies strictly to decision making or (political) problem solving. Many citizen activities that are being referenced in the context of Open Government such as reporting potholes, building mash-ups using open government data, or helping NASA design better ways to lift small satellites into space are not considered public participation, at least not by this definition.
2. Public doesn’t necessarily mean everybody. Public here refers to a public, not the public. A public will usually be made up of those people affected by and those with an interest in a decision, a more or less carefully defined group that can be very large or fairly small. Furthermore, public participation processes can be applied just as well internally, inside organizations, behind closed doors.
3. Public participation comes with a wide range of expected participant impact. This one may be the most counter-intuitive of the four, but there will always be situations when all a decision maker can commit to is to share information or invite limited feedback at best. That’s why IAP2′s Spectrum of Public Participation (PDF) explicitly includes the public participation goals Inform and Consult, neither of which require the decision maker to incorporate any of the participants’ input. At the Consult level of public impact, for example, the convener only promises to “provide feedback on how public input influenced the decision” (technically, that influence may be minimal or zero).
4. Public participation is top-down, not bottom-up. Its success is critically dependent on a decision maker’s willingness and ability to initiate, lead and support a participation process from beginning to end.

And there you have it — four distinctions to keep in mind next time you hear someone talk about public participation.

In preparation for the upcoming series of NCDD 2010 Regional Events (including the one right here in the Bay Area, October 29), Sandy Heierbacher (Director, NCDD) has asked for input on a question I know has been on the minds of many in the NCDD community for the past few years: “How can we best meld/combine face-to-face engagement with online engagement?”

NCDD is currently in the process of gathering “some of the best-of-the-best materials” to support the three topic areas the events will focus on (quality public engagement, online tools, collaborations that work). Here’s the forum thread regarding the question above if you’d like to check it out: Combining Online and Face-to-Face Engagement

Much to my disappointment, I wasn’t able to find any specific material about online/offline integration on our internal wiki (aside from a few very general tidbits which — unsurprisingly — seem to indicate we think favorably of the concept and would like to explore it further). That despite the fact that we’ve tossed this question around many times in the past and do have a few ideas as to what the app could do to make integration easier. Adding Web 2.0 insult to social software injury, my bookmark stream on Delicious came back empty as well, though I’m almost certain I’ve enjoyed reading about this topic elsewhere before.

I guess I’ll have to go back and try to dig up some of the sources I vaguely remember, but before I do that here is a list of ten things I’d probably look into first if I were in charge of online/offline integration for a standard public participation effort today. As an obvious disclaimer, any of these may have already been tried by someone during some project (please leave a comment if you are that person).

With that out of the way, here we go:

1. Start from the beginning: Make online/offline integration a core piece of your overall participation strategy (as with many things, success is probably much harder to achieve if the idea enters the project as an afterthought).
2. Use online to promote offline and vice versa: Think online event calendar or event notifications on your website or websites, and promotion of your various web properties at your face-to-face events, incl. hand-out materials.
3. Allow for each of the two channels to feed into each other: Post summaries/minutes of your face-to-face events online, make some time at the beginning or during an event or meeting to hear report-backs from online participants on how their part of the consultation is coming along. Live broadcasting (audio, video) of face-to-face events can be extremely valuable as well as a backchannel to allow for some level of remote participation.
4. Make your online content available offline: Many online consultations maintain a library for important documents and resources, some projects even allow the participants to add to this repository or express whether or not they find a particular resource helpful. In addition, participants are generally given the opportunity to create a lot of raw content (posts, comments, ideas etc.), and sometimes these are summarized and synthesized by a moderator or facilitator. To the extent it is reasonable, consider taking some of these materials to your face-to-face events. That obscure third-party impact study about the planned development in your neighborhood from two years ago that one online participant shared and that many others found highly valuable? Maybe a good candidate to share with your offline audience as well.
5. Identify the “bumble bees”: Ask participants to indicate if they plan to attend both online and in person and give them an opportunity to become ambassadors between the two channels. Their task can be quite simple: occasionally report back, generally help communicate between online and offline participants, help identify disconnects or gaps etc.
   (Note: for those unfamiliar with Open Space Technology, a Bumble Bee “moves from one group to another, cross-pollinating.”)
6. Get the media to attend both online and offline activities: As part of your regular media outreach, make sure the press is aware of your online activities and give them observer status. Furthermore, make sure they are comfortable using your online properties (e.g. discussion forum, idea generation tool etc.). Facilitate direct contact with online participants where appropriate (e.g. for interviews).
7. Bridge the digital divide: Ok, this is a tough one as digital divide issues can be hard to overcome. Don’t try to boil the ocean! Small things can have a positive impact and may be worth the extra effort. There are a number of things you can do to bring your online offerings closer to those people who don’t have access. Think partnering with public libraries or schools for computer access, installing kiosk systems at your face-to-face events etc.
   One particular idea we’re pursuing with Zilino is the ability for the facilitator to invite participants into the role of citizen reporter (if you will) and have them gather evidence (stories, ideas, concerns etc.) from people who lack online access or aren’t likely to participate at all (either online or offline).
8. Synchronize online and offline activities: Events done right — whether online or offline — can have huge drawing power. Orchestrate your overall activities in ways that link online and offline participation more tightly (e.g. an online discussion phase leading up to a face-to-face event, a face-to-face meeting designed as the kick-off for further dialogue online). In some instances, you might even consider running online and offline activities in parallel and allow for some level of exchange of content and ideas in real-time.
9. Encourage participants’ use of social media: Similar to item #3 above, social media can be a great way to enable participants help each other make sense of the process and share their findings. Luckily, there is a ton of material out there that explains how to do this kind of community building so I won’t go into detail here.
10. Encourage higher-bandwidth modes of communication: This all depends on the geographic realities one is dealing with, of course. Provided a large-enough group of online participants live in close proximity to each other, you could use your website to coordinate small groups to meet face-to-face (alternatively, a phone conference might do the trick). Just because someone can’t attend a public meeting at 5pm on a Thursday doesn’t mean they can’t meet their neighbors for coffee after church on Sunday. The web can be great at this kind of matchmaking and scheduling. You could take advantage of these ad-hoc gatherings by keeping a list of small group tasks handy or topics your participants ought to address. Or, leave it more open: simply provide them with a minimum amount of guidance (e.g. how to have a productive conversation) and let them focus purely on relationship building, something that may pay off immensely once they go back to engaging each other online.

Still reading? Here’s a bonus idea:

11. Ask your participants: Seriously, they are way smarter than you (often enough, at least). Let them help you figure out how to bridge online and offline in ways that work best for them.

And that’s it, ten pretty basic starting points to get going! Hopefully, this is enough of a collection to get the conversation started. Please leave a comment if you have feedback to share, more ideas to add or know of any interesting resources (confirming or contradicting anything I’ve said). Thanks!

IAP2 Certificate in Public Participation

I had the distinct pleasure to attend all five days of IAP2′s Certificate Training Course in Public Participation last month (check their training calendar for upcoming training opportunities in your area). As I mentioned at the time, it was time well spent!

As per the training materials, here’s what the three training units encompass:

Planning for Effective Public Participation (two days)

At the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Define public participation and what distinguishes it from related fields
• Apply a systematic, rigorous planning process to public involvement
• Identify and understand the IAP2 Foundations of Public Participation and apply the Foundations to public participation planning
• Apply the IAP2 planning tools to public participation planning including:
  • The Core Values
  • Code of Ethics
  • Spectrum
• Identify and write public participation objectives that clarify the role of the public
• Develop a public participation plan
• Plan for evaluation of a public participation process

Gain enhanced awareness of:

• The relevance and benefits of public participation within decision making that affects the public
• Ways to effectively engage stakeholders in decisions and related processes

Communications for Effective Public Participation (one day)

Communications for Effective Public Participation offers an introductory overview of communication skills necessary for conducting public participation activities. The course provides an introduction to general communication concepts as they apply to public participation. It focuses on skills needed to prepare and present information and offers tips to address communication challenges commonly faced while conducting public participation activities.

The course is designed as a primer and is suitable for practitioners who want an overview of basic communication techniques as they apply to public participation efforts. At the end of the day, you will be able to:

• Describe the communication process and what is required to make that process effective and authentic
• Discuss specific communication skills needed for effective implementation of public participation projects at all levels of the IAP2 Spectrum
• Use the course manual as a reference for different methods of conveying information

Techniques for Effective Public Participation (two days)

The focus of this two-day course is on techniques, or what public participation practitioners do to facilitate the process of participation. We will build on the foundations laid out in the Planning course to link technique selection to the different levels on the IAP2 Spectrum of Participation and achieve the objectives for different steps in the decision process.

Our goal is that students will leave this course with a broader understanding of what, when and how– what techniques to use, and when and how to implement those techniques effectively.

Needless to say, this was quite a bit of material to digest, and it will be exciting to further apply the IAP2 principles and framework to the work we do with Zilino and beyond.

This is the third part of a series of discussion starters on contextual aspects of e-participation (part 1 dealt with Institutional Backing, part 2 with Advocacy and Leadership). Contributed by our student intern, they are inspired by his master thesis on e-participation.

Establishing mechanisms for collaborative governance, such as e-participation processes (or public participation processes in general) requires changes in how public administrations view themselves and how they cooperate with the constituents they are paid to serve (also known as customers or citizens).

Because of the consequences for routines, procedures and hierarchies, bureaucratic change is very hard. Involving the public means an increase in openness, which will shift power from the institution to any group of stakeholders in a transformative process, at the end of which there might be new modes of two-way governance, something entirely incompatible with elitist bureaucratic cultures of contemporary organizations. Making governance more participatory will not work without the willingness and capacity to include and process feedback constructively and openly. Especially because bureaucracies often view public participation in terms of increased workload, it is therefore important to establish efficient management processes around e-participation projects which will expedite and automate workflow, just as it is important to preemptively talk about wrong perceptions within the bureaucracy. E-participation will remain a facade unless institutions open themselves up. That means the release of relevant information to the public and the provision of easily understandable documents relevant to the projects. Institutions need to establish an atmosphere of collaboration, solving problems in conjunction with the public and establishing mechanisms for stakeholders to dock into public value creation processes.

Proper expectation management on the convener’s side can facilitate bureaucratic change by setting realistic goals, communicating them to all involved parties and planning carefully. Knowing exactly what policy makers are expecting from a process helps tailoring it toward meeting these expectations. This sort of clarity may prevent blame games and help avoid failure when it comes to implementation and expectation management toward the public. Because it is at that moment where success is threatened by a lack of political will or institutional contingency plans. Token participation and misuses for ex-post legitimization, or the illusion of public involvement are the worst case scenarios.

What we need to keep reminding ourselves of is that e-participation is not just another policy tool that can be used with the stroke of a pen. Participation changes governance, it makes it collaborative, and that sort of change causes friction. Underlying change of the bureaucracies and their self-understanding is therefore paramount. My question is how that can be achieved? Are these merely legal questions? Leadership issues? Do we need “new” new public management?

It seems the topic of ethics and integrity in public participation is coming up more often these days (see my comments here, here).

Just for the record, these are the rules by which we at Intellitics abide.

First, we have IAP2′s Core Values for the Practice of Public Participation:

Second, IAP2′s Code of Ethics for Public Participation Practitioners:

The International Association of Public Participation (IAP2) Code of Ethics for Public Participation Practitioners supports and reflects IAP2′s Core Values for the Practice of Public Participation. The Core Values define the expectations and aspirations of the public participation process. The Code of Ethics speaks to the actions of practitioners.

Preamble

As members of IAP2, we recognize the importance of a Code of Ethics, which guides the actions of those who advocate including all affected parties in public decision-making process. In order to fully discharge our duties as public participation practitioners, we define terms used explicitly throughout our Code of Ethics. We define stakeholders as any individual, group of individuals, organizations, or political entity with a stake in the outcome of a decision. We define the public as those stakeholders who are not part of the decision-making entity or entities. We define public participation as any process that involves the public in problem-solving or decision-making and that uses public input to make better decisions.

This Code of Ethics is a set of principles, which guides us in our practice of enhancing the integrity of the public participation process. As practitioners, we hold ourselves accountable for these principles and strive to hold all participants to the same standards.

PURPOSE. We support public participation as a process to make better decisions that incorporate the interests and concerns of all affected stakeholders and meet the needs of the decision-making body.

ROLE OF PRACTITIONER. We will enhance the public’s participation in the decision-making process and assist decision-makers in being responsive to the public’s concerns and suggestions.

TRUST. We will undertake and encourage actions that build trust and credibility for the process among all the participants.

DEFINING THE PUBLIC’S ROLE. We will carefully consider and accurately portray the public’s role in the decision-making process.

OPENNESS. We will encourage the disclosure of all information relevant to the public’s understanding and evaluation of a decision.

ACCESS TO THE PROCESS. We will ensure that stakeholders have fair and equal access to the public participation process and the opportunity to influence decisions.

RESPECT FOR COMMUNITIES. We will avoid strategies that risk polarizing community interests or that appear to “divide and conquer.”

ADVOCACY. We will advocate for the public participation process and will not advocate for interest, party, or project outcome.

COMMITMENTS. We ensure that all commitments made to the public, including those by the decision-maker, are made in good faith.

SUPPORT OF THE PRACTICE. We will mentor new practitioners in the field and educate decision-makers and the public about the value and use of public participation.

Needless to say, we believe these rules apply both online and off.

Shortly after the newly-elected coalition government in the UK took office this past May, they launched a website that invited the public to comment on their Programme for Government (their policy agenda for the next few years). The site went live on May 20, 2010 and stayed open for feedback for about three weeks, during which time they received close to 10,000 comments.

They just published their responses, and The Guardian on Monday pointed out a few issues with this project: Coalition’s first crowdsourcing attempt fails to alter Whitehall line

9,500 responded online to request for suggestions but no departments willing to amend any of their policies

The government’s first attempt at crowdsourcing its coalition programme has ended without a single government department expressing a willingness to alter any policy.

Crowdsourcing involves soliciting knowledge and expertise from the public to help find solutions to problems. The coalition asked the public to respond to its programme on government websites. It received 9,500 replies online.

However, its formal responses, published on each website, shows Whitehall regarded the process largely as an endorsement of what it was already doing.

In cases where most of the submissions conflicted with existing policy, the department simply restated the policy. The departmental responses were published last Friday without publicity.

Leaving aside for a second the use of the term crowdsourcing in this context (see here, here), here’s the comment I left over on the Democracies Online Exchange:

This looks like your typical bad attempt at public participation, a prime example how *not* to do it.

Things that may have possibly gone wrong:

Maybe the final decision on what the “programme for government” should look like had already been made, in which case there was no reason whatsoever to consult the public in the first place.

Or maybe all the new leadership was interested in was to inform the public (and maybe acknowledge their concerns) with little or no commitment for this input to be incorporated in any way. In this case, it appears the public’s expectations were managed rather poorly.

Or maybe they *were* in fact open to incorporating public feedback in some areas and to some degree but the input they received was irrelevant, lacked in quality or otherwise was not helpful to them. In which case, maybe they should have facilitated the process better.

Or better yet, maybe the *leadership* was genuinely interested in collaborating with the public on improving the proposed policies but many or most of the key internal stakeholders (the various departments) hadn’t bought into it. In which case someone didn’t do their homework.

Whatever the case may be, any of these would constitute a major and inexcusable failure, in my view.

I’d be interested to hear HMG’s side of the story, though based on how their other online projects have been going so far I’m not convinced they know what they’re doing.

Two of the other online projects I mention are the Spending Challenge, which is still ongoing and has already raised concerns, and Your Freedom, which for a lot of the same reasons has received mixed reviews at best.

The cornerstone of quality public participation, whether online or offline, is process integrity. This is not it!

I had heard of the DAD acronym before (decide, announce, defend) but was unaware of SCID until it came up during training last week. Here’s what SCID stands for:

• Solicit (ask stakeholders for input)
• Consider
• Ignore
• Decide

Obviously, this is not good practice as it violates a number of public participation principles (mainly, you don’t ask for input if the decision has already been made or if there is no genuine interest in having that input inform the decision to some extent).

Between the two, SCID is worse than DAD in that it first sets expectations regarding the level of impact participants will have only to then disappoint these expectations.

Even if the participation project is well-intentioned, the perception of SCID can set in easily and quickly. Take, for example, this recent announcement from the Spending Challenge blog:

Thank you for the ideas so far…

As you may have noticed, the site has been the subject to a small number of malicious attacks so we have unfortunately had to pause on the interactive features for now, but we’re still keen to hear any further ideas you have, which we may publish at a later date.

We are really grateful to have already received thousands of good ideas and we’re committed to giving as many of you as possible the chance to get involved and feed into the tough decisions that must be made in the Spending Review.

Without going into a lot of detail, the Spending Challenge consultation launched on June 24, at first for UK public sector workers only. Once it opened up to the general public on July 9, the site was soon overrun by objectionable content. The rich idea generation and commenting features including all content were eventually taken down on July 16 and replaced by a standard one-way feedback form.

For anyone who doesn’t have a lot of trust in the process, a statement like this may well seem like a cop out and prove that the public’s input never really mattered much in the first place (see the tweet shown above).

Better communication might alleviate some of these concerns, but in the end only actions that are in line with what was promised will build the necessary trust with the public. And trust and credibility — and obvious as this may seem, this was one of the key take-aways from last week’s IAP2 certification training — are what makes or breaks any public participation effort.

The good news here is that the D in SCID (the decide) hasn’t actually happened yet. It’s still entirely possible that a lot of the input that’s being gathered will have an impact and that this consultation will have been a meaningful exercise after all.

This is the second part of a series of discussion starters on contextual aspects of e-participation. Part 1 was on Institutional Backing. Contributed by our student intern, they are inspired by his master thesis research.

Some e-participation projects originate from within (or from outside) public institutions, but are not decided at the top. Initiators of e-participation projects can come from outside a public institution and remain so, but in many cases the initiative comes from outside and efforts are made to then relocate the initiative within a public institution (this might be the case where an advocacy organization, a citizens association or academics are the driving force behind an initiative). The other possibility is that somewhere within an institution, an office or individual acts as the policy innovator (but it is somewhere in the middle belly of the bureaucracy, not at the top level).

In both of these cases, enormous leadership and advocacy efforts are necessary to get buy-in. With buy-in, I mean that those leading an institution are convinced of the merits and goals of an e-participation project and fully back it as an official act of their institution, resulting in the proper institutional backing for such a project. Even more broadly, buy-in is at the core of what the entire open government movement seeks to achieve: to instill the awareness for open government processes within the public sector and the public at large. What is necessary is to find the right arguments for the right audience to convince them of the benefits of e-participation or its suitability for a certain problem or challenge. However, in most bureaucracies, it is not only risky to start an intra-institutional campaign for openness, there is also usually little resources for it.

Books on leadership exist plenty, but aside from leadership skills, what are really helpful tips for advocates of e-participation from within and from outside? What are success stories? Does it help to skip “a few ranks” and talk directly to someone higher up? Where does one need to find allies? How long would one want to foster and plan the project before “giving it away” to the institution to see it rot away in a drawer? Should outside actors be brought on board (without authorization)?

Many questions remain, as we are figuring out proper ways to open up public administrations for more participation and collaboration. This is a reminder that it is primarily about people, not about software. What are your thoughts?