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.

For the past three years (ever since attending “The Underlying Dynamics of Conversations that Matter”, a most excellent pre-conference workshop with Tom Atlee and Peggy Holman at NCDD 2008 in Austin, TX), I’ve been following the Group Pattern Language Project, a very exciting endeavor led by Tree Bressen, Sue Woehrlin and Dave Pollard and involving dozens of contributors from a variety of backgrounds, that aims to build — you guessed it — a pattern language of group processes.

Here’s how they describe the concept:

A Pattern Language is an attempt to express the deeper wisdom of what brings aliveness within a particular field of human endeavor, through a set of interconnected expressions arising from that wisdom. Aliveness is one placeholder term for “the quality that has no name”: a sense of wholeness, spirit, or grace, that while of varying form, is precise and empirically verifiable.

The term was originally coined by architect Christopher Alexander, who, together with five colleagues, published A Pattern Language for building in 1977. Others have since applied the term to economics, software design, liberatory communication, wikis and more.

The intention behind this ambitious project is to share knowledge that goes to the “deeper core of what brings a group conversation alive”. Their goals include:

1. To support Purpose-driven design. Form should follow function. The most important part of any meeting planning is to get clear on why you are having the meeting. That choice drives all subsequent choices for that event.
2. To deepen the skills of those who serve as group process guides, leaders, hosts, and facilitators. To assist with their learning in how to do design. To help them choose among many possible processes to create something that will be the best possible fit for their situation at a given time. [...]
3. To serve as a resource for those who are teaching others to design, lead, facilitate group process.
4. To increase process literacy among people who are users of process(es)–which is all of us. Our world needs us to wake up and get more savvy about this.

Throughout the three-year period, progress was documented on a public wiki, as new patterns were identified and went from seed stage to full maturity.

Yesterday, the group launched the Group Works Card Deck, a collection of 91 cards to help facilitators and participants make their group process work more effective:

The Group Works card deck is designed to support your process as a group convenor, planner, facilitator, or participant. The people who developed this deck spent several years pooling our knowledge of the best group events we had ever witnessed. We looked at meetings, conferences, retreats, town halls, and other sessions that give organizations life, solve a longstanding dilemma, get stuck relationships flowing, result in clear decisions with wide support, and make a lasting difference. We also looked at routine, well-run meetings that simply bring people together and get lots of stuff done.

More from the about page:

About the Group Pattern Language Project and the Card Deck

Why are we doing this? Our world is, to a very real extent, based on dialogue. Every action taken that involves more than one person arises from conversation that generates, coordinates, and reflects those actions. Those actions have impact. If our human world is based on conversations, then the work of creating and supporting those conversations is central to shaping a world that works. Designing and conducting meetings and other group sessions well is vital to determining our common future. This project grew around a shared understanding that in an urgent way, our survival depends on our ability to work and play well together, and on discovering and creating group processes which are at the same time effective and life-affirming. Because this is easier said than done, we wanted to deepen and spread the insights, skills, and capacity to make that promise real.

The following core beliefs guide our work:

• Seeing a world in flux and deep need, we believe the work of facilitators, both formal and informal, can make a significant difference to the quality and outcomes of essential conversations. Thus we accept a responsibility, as facilitators and participants in group process, to act for the common good.
• We expect convenors of group process to act with full transparency regarding the motives and expected results of the sessions we organize and run. With honesty and humility, we strive to continuously improve the calibre of our work.
• We choose to assume the best of people. We believe people flourish when entrusted with the opportunity to authentically self-manage, collaborate, and make decisions collectively, as true respected equals. Because the most critical issues facing us in the world and in our organizations are complex and interconnected, we need each other to do this—the challenges we face are beyond solving by leaders or experts in isolation. We believe in sharing power, that we are wiser when we work together.
• We believe that effective group processes are clearly driven by the purpose for which they are called. We respect participants’ life energy by invoking processes that productively use their time, resulting in cooperative sessions that meet a high standard in engagement, achievement and connection. We draw on experience and knowledge to create elegant designs with great care, yet remain flexible and open to change as the circumstances, will of participants and flow of events may dictate.
• Good process builds strong communities. Our work is an act of love in service to the world.

The  print version of the deck can be purchased for $25. A PDF is available for download free of charge.

While this marks a major milestone in the project’s history, the work is not done yet:

Because of space limitations, each card aims only to name the essential What and Why of that particular element. In order to actually use the patterns, you’ll need to come up with the How. A lot of Hows are supplied on our website, where you will find a growing pool of information about the patterns represented in this deck. Some cards have plenty of resources already on the website, while others remain to be fleshed out. Over fifty people were involved in the creation of this card deck, and we’d be delighted for you to join the circle by helping explain how to apply the patterns—see more on this below.

It will be fun to watch how this work evolves next.

And to everyone who played a role in this: Congratulations!

Peter M. Shane, Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E. Davis II Chair in Law at the Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law, just announced the arrival of a new book he has co-edited with Stephen Coleman, Professor of Political Communication in the Institute of Communications Studies at the University of Leeds: “Connecting Democracy: Online Consultation and the Flow of Political Communication”

From the NCDD listserv:

Dear Colleagues:

I am thrilled to announce the publication by MIT Press of, “Connecting Democracy: Online Consultation and the Flow of Political Communication,” edited by Stephen Coleman and me. The book is a collaborative project of 19 researchers investigating the experience and potential of online consultation in the United States and Europe.

The following paragraph from the introductory chapter gives a flavor of our framework: “A useful understanding of the online consultation phenomenon has to go beyond how particular consultations might or might not affect the outcomes of individual policy- making episodes. We need to consider what such consultations provide, or could provide, to the larger flow of political communication within a society. This also means regarding online consultations as something more than simple two-way dialogues between citizen-participants and public decision makers. Instead, they represent a kind of networked communication involving citizens (both participants and auditors), public decision makers (of both the legislative and administrative sort), bureaucrats, technicians, civil society organizations, and the media generally. Exploring the meaning of online consultations to these diverse actors requires evidence -gathering through multiple methods, comparative study, and analysis across a variety of key disciplines. We have to appreciate how the experience is constructed by social, political, and legal forces, including, but not limited to the design of the online consultation experience itself. This sort of approach yields an understanding that the online consultation can best contribute phenomenon’s greatest contribution to democratic practice depends by inspiring and supporting a reimagining on it becoming both an impetus to, and a form of support for, a re-imagination of democratic citizenship—a robust form of citizenship that is enhanced by arguably rendered more practical (but hardly inevitable) because of new forms of information and communication technology.”

Just ordered it. Can’t wait to read it this weekend.

The Assembly of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) recently adopted recommendations regarding Agency Innovations in E-Rulemaking (PDF) after having reviewed the websites and e-rulemaking initiatives of 90 agencies.

The Conference studied the websites and e-rulemaking initiatives of 90 agencies, each of which had reported completing an average of two or more rulemakings during each sixmonth period covered by the semiannual Unified Regulatory Agenda in 2009-2010. The study reveals that individual agencies have used websites in innovative ways to promote erulemaking. For example, agencies have developed portions of their own websites to support rulemaking efforts. Some agencies have specialized webpages that allow users to submit and view comments on all of the agency’s open rulemakings, or to view information on the status of their priority rulemakings. Links from some agency home pages make rulemaking information easy to locate. Other agencies have innovated by using social media to get the public involved in the rulemaking process from the earliest stages. These social media tools include blogs, Facebook, Twitter, IdeaScale, and other online discussion platforms.

Their recommendations apply to other areas of online community engagement as well:

Increasing the Visibility of Rulemakings

1. Agencies should design and manage their presence on the Web (including the Web as accessed by mobile devices) with rulemaking participation in mind.

2. Each agency should provide access to a one-stop location, which should be easily reachable from its home page, for all of its pending rulemakings, highlighting those that are currently open for comment. This may take the form of providing pinpoint links to specific information about the agency’s rulemakings available on websites such as Regulations.gov, RegInfo.gov, Federal Register 2.0, and so forth, which would allow the agency to efficiently enable the public to retrieve all available information the federal government has about its ongoing rulemakings.

3. Agencies should consider, in appropriate rulemakings, using social media tools to raise the visibility of rulemakings. When an agency sponsors a social media discussion of a rulemaking, it should provide clear notice as to whether and how it will use the discussion in the rulemaking proceeding.

Making Comment Policies Easy to Locate

4. Agencies should display or link to their comment policies in prominent or multiple locations on their websites.

Improving Access to Agency Websites

5. Agencies should continue to improve the accessibility of their websites to members of the public.

6. Agencies should take steps to improve access for persons who have faced barriers to effectively participating in rulemaking in the past, including non-English speakers, users of lowbandwidth Internet connections, and individuals with disabilities.

Ensuring Access to Materials from Completed Rulemakings

7. Agencies should develop systematic protocols to enable the online storage and retrieval of materials from completed rulemakings. Such protocols should, to the extent feasible, ensure that website visitors using out-of-date URLs are automatically redirected to the current location of the material sought.

Periodically Evaluating Agency Use of the Internet in Rulemaking

8. Agencies should periodically evaluate their use of the Internet in rulemaking and should continue to innovate and experiment with new and cost-effective ways to engage the public in rulemaking via the Internet.

Here is the full list of adopted recommendations, including links to additional background information.

The Collaboration Project, an initiative by the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), just released a new resource: Tools for Online Idea Generation: A Comparison of Technology Platforms for Public Managers

The document is a follow-up to their previous introduction to online group brainstorming, which I thought was a nicely done primer for anyone just getting started with online engagement.

This latest document compares ten online tools for idea generation (one of which hasn’t launched yet), including key benefits and pricing information.

They also provide some guidance what to consider when choosing a tool. From the document (PDF):

Considering your needs

Many technologies are commercially available for online idea generation, ranging from low-cost, out-of-the-box tools to large scale, custom-built solutions. As such, many factors should be considered in deciding which technology best fits your needs. These include:

• Duration of engagement. How long will the idea generation project run? Will it be limited duration or an ongoing “market” of ideas?
• Community. Do you need to be able to identify your “power users,” those whose ideas tend to be the most influential? Do these users need to stand out among participants?
• Responsiveness. Do you need to respond to ideas and comments as the dialogue happens or provide updates on the status of particular ideas?
• Output. What kinds of data and analytics do you need the technology to provide?
• Structure of dialogue. Do the ideas need to be strictly organized or siloed (e.g., by topic), or can all ideas mingle together?
• Cost and resources. What budgetary and staff resources can you allocate to this engagement?
• Support. What degree of technical support might you need from the vendor?
• Deployment. How quickly do you need to launch the engagement?

Remember: While deciding on a technology is important, this decision is best made by aligning the the (sic!) technology to your core purpose for engagement. In other words, let the tools fit your needs, not vice-versa.

A few notes I might add:

• Raw contributions collected via these tools are usually quite messy. The ideas are half-baked (not a bad thing at all, by the way), not unique and tend to include a lot of other stuff (see this older post about different types of participant input). Accordingly, voting on these tools tends to happens prematurely.
• Strictly speaking, most of these tools fail to adhere to one of the core rules of brainstorming, namely to suspend judgment during the initial phase of idea generation. Remember there is no “thumbs down” in brainstorming (see this older post on brainstorming, which contains a couple of helpful definitions and explanations).
• Another common feature in this tool category is that they expose the leader board (those ideas which have received the most votes). This, of course, tends to significantly distort the results as the top ideas receive the bulk of participants’ attention (see this post).

No tool is perfect, they all have their strengths and weaknesses. Choosing a tool always requires looking at the trade-offs relevant to a particular situation. The point here is to be aware of the potential limitations and challenges and, where possible, mitigate around them.

On Friday, the City of Calgary launched a large-scale citizen engagement project: Our City. Our Budget. Our Future.

In February 2011, Council approved the engagement process for the facilitated review of core services and The City’s business planning and budget process. It is an extensive engagement process that will facilitate conversations with citizens, employees and Council to identify and confirm immediate priorities for The City’s next three year business planning and budget cycle while keeping an eye on the longer-term vision that will support the future that Calgarians envision. Dialogue Partners, Ottawa based public engagement consultants, has been hired to assist with the engagement process.

The backgrounder (PDF) has more details.

The Calgary Chamber of Commerce has recommended thirteen principles “to be incorporated into the final design of the project”:

Principles for The City of Calgary 2012 – 2014 Business Planning and Budgeting Consultation

The City of Calgary is developing a public engagement process for the upcoming 2012 – 2014 business planning and budgeting cycle. Authenticity and effectiveness of the engagement process will be critical to the success of the initiative.

The Calgary Chamber of Commerce looks for the following guidelines to be incorporated into the final design of the project:

1. Broad outreach – City budgets affect all citizens, and The City must find a way to connect with all stakeholder groups and the general public.
2. Authentic engagement — It is important that The City undertake legitimate and effective efforts to engage stakeholders, utilize input, and/or communicate why input can’t be used.
3. Identify community goals and priorities — The Process must start by identifying what matters most to Calgarians. Budget decisions are best made when they are based on the kind of city Calgarians want, as opposed to narrow tactical tradeoffs.
4. Reporting back — Calgarians must receive consistent and timely feedback on what has been heard, learned and, most importantly, changed, as a result of the engagement process.
5. Openness, transparency and dialogue — Citizens should be able to access and contribute to the discussions and dialogue arising from the process. A web space could help achieve this goal.
6. Ongoing and repeatable –The process should be constructed to allow ongoing feedback with annual input from the public and stakeholders.
7. Legitimacy — The process should be guided by the advice of a committee of recognized community leaders at the governance level, such as Board Chairs of City Authorities, key institutions, leading businesses and social services organizations.
8. Sufficient resourcing — Allow for reasonable resourcing for the consultation.
9. Accommodation of differences — Different groups require different techniques and approaches for engagement. The process should ask groups how they want to be involved.
10. Use of multiple approaches — Traditional processes such as meetings, open houses and submissions should be partnered with use of online social media to generate public feedback and commentary on ideas and submissions.
11. Multi-stage process — Multiple stages help people understand the process and learn as they go. This facilitates understanding of the evolution of the priorities and helps Calgarians support the outcomes.
12. Reasonable timelines — Inform the public of the various stages of the process with timelines included. Remind the public through the process of these timelines.
13. Build on existing work — Use The City of Calgary’s Engage! Policy as a starting point for engagement.

Very solid! Whoever wrote these knows what they are talking about.

The three-phased consultation is expected to include several online elements and is scheduled to run through June 2011.

The Center for Desease Control (CDC) has just published a useful guide that ties in nicely with some of our recent presentations on social media in public participation: The Health Communicator’s Social Media Toolkit (PDF)

This toolkit was developed by the Electronic Media Branch, Division of News and Electronic Media, Office of the Associate Director of Communication at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It was designed to provide guidance and to the share lessons learned in more than three years of integrating social media into CDC health communication campaigns, activities and emergency response efforts. In this guide, you will find information to help you get started using social media—from developing governance to determining which channels best meet your communication objectives to creating a social media strategy. You will also learn about popular channels you can incorporate into your plan, like blogs, video‐sharing sites, mobile applications and RSS feeds. This toolkit is intended for a beginner audience, although some viewers with an intermediate level may find parts of the toolkit useful.

Their “top lessons learned from using social media” include the following twelve recommendations:

1. Make Strategic Choices and Understand the Level of Effort
2. Go Where the People Are
3. Adopt Low‐Risk Tools First
4. Make Sure Messages Are Science‐based
5. Create Portable Content
6. Facilitate Viral Information Sharing
7. Encourage Participation
8. Leverage Networks
9. Provide Multiple Formats
10. Consider Mobile Phones
11. Set Realistic Goals
12. Learn from Metrics and Evaluate Your Efforts

The toolkit provides brief explanations of some of the key terms and technologies used in social media and contains several checklist for using blogs, podcasts or other tools such as Twitter. It also outlines the 2010 H1N1 and Seasonal Flu Outbreak Campaign as an example of social media campaigns.

Via: CDC’s Social Media Experience: A Sneak Peak

The Institute for Local Government (ILG) today launched a new email newsletter that looks quite promising:

Welcome to the inaugural issue of Perspectives on Public Engagement and Local Government, an electronic newsletter from the Institute for Local Government (ILG). We hope this occasional e-newsletter will be of interest to local officials as well as other individuals and organizations concerned with the capacity of city, county and other local governments to pursue the effective and inclusive engagement of their residents in public decision-making.

The Institute for Local Government is the nonprofit research and education affiliate of the League of California Cities and the California State Association of Counties. The Institute’s purpose is to promote good government at the local level, which it pursues through a number of program areas including public engagement, public service ethics, land use and environment, climate change, local government 101, and more.

The Institute’s Public Engagement and Collaborative Governance program, author of this e-newsletter, provides information and resources to encourage and support local officials’ public engagement efforts. This first issue of Perspectives is somewhat focused on the Institute’s own public engagement work; however, future issues will range more broadly.

The “What’s New in Public Engagement Technology?” section covers the following topics:

• New Report on Legal Issues and Social Media
• Cities Use Technology to Give – and Get – Information
• Keypad Polling Enhances Public Meetings
• E-Democracy.org Launches Participation 3.0
• Manor, Texas Innovates

Apparently, I received the newsletter because I am subscribed to one or more of their electronic publications. Not sure how you can sign up for this one, but check their website: http://www.ca-ilg.org/engagement

The International Association for Public Participation (IAP2), in an effort to better cater to local member needs around the world, is currently making some changes to their governance model.  Part of this process will see the emergence of a new national organization in the US (until now, there were only a dozen or so local chapters).

I’m part of the transition team, and we just launched an interim website to keep members and the interested public informed about our progress:

http://iap2usa.wordpress.com

Please have a look, subscribe to our RSS or leave a comment of encouragement if you feel so inclined.

Things are still very much developing but if all goes well this should be exciting news for the public participation community here in the States.

The other day, someone on Twitter passed along this announcement about a new budget consultation in Seattle, WA:

I admit it doesn’t take a lot more to get me interested, so I clicked right through. Here’s a bit of a checklist I usually apply when I scan online consultations such as this one (listed in no particular order):

• Is it clear who is the convener? Sort of. Yes, it does say Seattle City Council in the top header but I’m not sure that’s obvious enough. Plus, the page doesn’t  include any contact information nor does it link back to the council’s homepage.
• Does it say what the site is about? Sort of. Something about balancing the budget and providing input, though very little detail is provided.
• Does the site educate participants about the issue at hand? No. The site does not provide background information or other related resources. How big a deficit are we talking about? Has the council or any of its committees already done any preliminary work? Are there any areas that are out of scope in terms of this consultation? Anything participants should consider before they chime in?
• Is the promise to the public clearly defined? No. Unfortunately, it is not clear at all if and to what degree the participants’ input will inform the decision-making process. Will their ideas be considered? Will there be follow-up afterwards?
• Is the timeline defined? No. The site does not specify any key dates, phases or milestones. When will the comment period close? When will the new budget be decided?
• Are the community ground rules defined? No.
• Are the rules for moderation defined? No.
• Can the convener be easily contacted? No. The site does not provide any contact information.

At first glance, that’s a pretty weak performance. If I were to grade it, I’d give it a straight F. However, further digging painted a somewhat brighter picture.

From the press release:

Seattle City Council seeks resident feedback during 2011 – 2012 budget process

SEATTLE – The City of Seattle faces a $67 million general fund deficit for 2011, meaning there are some very difficult budget decisions to be made in the months to come. As the City Council works to balance the Seattle’s 2011-2012 budget, considerable input from residents is needed to develop a budget that best reflects the needs of our city.

Here we learn about the extent of the 2011 budget deficit ($67m), and a rough timeline is outlined when the budget decisions will be due (over the next few months). The press release mentions three ways for citizens to get involved: the IdeaScale website, which I reviewed above, an online comment form, as well as a series of three public meetings.

The press release makes two promises to the public (emphasis mine):

Visit our new Ideascale page at seattlecitycouncil.ideascale.com. Here you can share, comment and vote for ideas on how to balance the budget, with the most essential ideas rising to the top. We are continuously reviewing this feedback and will respond to the most popular ideas.

Submit your thoughts about the budget using our online comment form. Emails received will be tallied and shared with each Councilmember to keep them updated on issues important to you.

That’s starting to look a lot better already.

Finally, the press release contains a link to the homepage of the council’s budget committee, which prominently features this invitation:

Friends and neighbors;

As we work to balance the City’s 2011-2012 budget, we need considerable input from you to put our spending priorities in order. With your help, we will develop a budget that best reflects the needs of our city.

The Seattle City Council is providing many ways for you to participate in this year’s budget process. Share with us your thoughts on which services you expect city government to deliver by:

• Attending one of our three public hearings held in north, south or central Seattle.
• Visiting our Ideascale page at seattlecitycouncil.ideascale.com.** Here you can share, comment and vote for ideas on how to balance the budget, with the most essential ideas rising to the top. We are continuously reviewing this feedback and will respond to the most popular ideas.
• Emailing us your thoughts about the budget using this form. Emails received will be tallied and shared with each Councilmember to keep them updated on issues important to you.
• And of course, calling and post mail is always an option for contacting Councilmembers with your feedback.

Stay informed. This site contains multiple resources that will help guide you through the budget process.  Seattle’s budget document is actually the size of a large city phone book, serving as a candid picture of the City’s priorities and a road map for the future. You are an important part of an open and transparent budgeting process. We hope you will join us in this important exercise.

On the same page, a more detailed schedule is provided, though it doesn’t say explicitly when the period for public input will end.

The site also references A Guide to Seattle’s Budget Process (PDF), which contains a nice overview of the basic numbers (revenues, expenses). In it, another two ways to participate are mentioned:

• Video (live meeting coverage on cable or online, recorded meetings online)
• Audio (live meetings via phone)

All in all, it looks like most of the necessary information is available, it may just need some organization across the various web properties.

In closing, here’s my recommendation to the Seattle City Council:

• On the IdeaScale site, provide the necessary context by prominently referencing the budget committee homepage, the calendar and the guidebook.
• Across all sites, be even more explicit about how participants’ input will be used and what impact they can or cannot expect to have.
• Outline any important dates related to the consultation (mainly, when the opportunity for public input will end).

We’ve added this project to ParticipateDB and will watch how it evolves.

After a longer period of downtime, one of the most comprehensive resources in the area of dialogue and deliberation is back in business. From the blog post: NCDD resources are back online (all 2,392 of them!)

The Resource Center describes and categorizes close to 2,400 resources — including many dialogue guides, D&D methods, online tools, case studies, videos, higher ed programs, articles, NCDD publications, and more.  It’s up on the new ncdd.org site (we’re transitioning from thataway.org to ncdd.org) so you can see the new, simpler, cleaner site design while you’re at it.

Check out the many manuals and guides, organizations and programs as well as journals and newsletters.

Update (02/03/2010): There is now an official NCDD list at http://twitter.com/ncdd/ncddlist (already much more comprehensive than ours, so we recommend you follow it instead!)

* * *

And while we’re at it, why not create a list of Twitterers who are members of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD)?

Here it is: @intellitics/ncdd

I had the distinct pleasure to attend NCDD’s past two conferences (in 2006 and 2008). It is an organization made up of so many great people, it’s truly amazing. So if you find following the conversations on Twitter worthwhile, consider supporting NCDD and become a member (at complete bargain rates, too, considering the value).

If you’d like to be added, just send me a direct message. Or leave a comment below in case I’m not following you yet (make sure to include your Twitter handle).

Playing with Twitter’s (relatively) new list feature this morning, I’m putting together a list of Twitterers who are members of the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2).

IAP2 is currently undergoing a member consultation about the future governance structure of the organization, and I find that following the discussion via people’s blogs and Twitter is always helpful.

There’s also a North America meeting in the works the last weekend of January in Phoenix, AZ and I expect some interesting tweets to come out of that.

Here’s the list: @intellitics/iap2

To be added to the list, simply send me a direct message. Or leave a comment below in case I’m not following you yet (make sure to include your Twitter handle).

Over on the recently re-launched Ascentum blog, Joseph Peters (Partner at Ascentum) and Joe Goldman (Vice President of Citizen Engagement at AmericaSpeaks) just published a neat list of ten key questions to consider before launching an online public consultation: Open Policy Making 101: 10 Questions To Ask Before Launching Your Online Public Consultation

1. What do you want to know?
2. What is your commitment to participants?
3. Who needs to participate?
4. How hot is the issue?
5. What type of contribution are you looking for?
6. What type of data will you collect and analyze?
7. What are your timelines?
8. What resources are available to support the process?
9. How can participants stay involved?
10. Which online tools should you use?

The document (PDF, 916 KB) lays out these principles in good details. Once again, the recommendations are concerned about good process first and tools second.

Their take on timelines is fairly specific, and I would like to hear if others in this field can either confirm or add to it:

Generally speaking, a process that is open to the general public should be live for four to six weeks to ensure adequate participation.

Finally, here’s their item number ten:

10.  Which online tools should you use?

This question is intentionally left until last in this list. Many organizations choose a shiny new tool and decide to use it before carefully considering their overall approach.  This ends up having the software drive the process and not the objectives. There are many tools and solutions to choose from, each with unique strengths and weaknesses. The options are endless, but you need to match the tool to your strategy based on the questions you have already answered from the list above.

Exactly. And supporting that mapping process of finding the right tools for the job is something we’d like to see ParticipateDB grow into over time.

Back in February, the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD), along with a number of other established associations and organization in the field of dialogue, conflict resolution and public participation, launched a collaborative effort to craft a set of principles for public engagement that would inform the Open Government Directive currently being worked on by the Obama administration.

After two months of insightful discussions, the final version of the Core Principles for Public Engagement Document (PDF, 144 KB) has now been released. It starts:

In a strong representative democracy, citizens and government work together to build a society that protects individual freedom while simultaneously ensuring liberty and justice for all.  Engaging people around the issues that affect their lives and their country is a key component of a strong democratic society.

Public engagement involves convening diverse yet representative groups of people to wrestle with information from a variety of viewpoints all to the end of making better, often more creative decisions. Public engagement aims to provide people with direction for their own community activities, or with public judgments that will be seriously considered by policy-makers and other power-holders.

The more any given public engagement effort takes into consideration the following seven Core Principles, the more it can expect to effectively build mutual understanding, meaningfully affect policy development, and/or inspire collaborative action among citizens and institutions.  These seven interdependent principles serve both as ideals to pursue and as criteria for judging quality.  Rather than promoting partisan agendas, the application of the Core Principles creates the conditions for authentic engagement around public issues.

The Seven Core Principles

In practice, people emphasize or apply these principles in many different ways, and often embrace additional principles. These seven principles reflect the common beliefs and understandings of those working in the fields of public engagement, conflict resolution, and collaboration.

1. Careful Planning and Preparation

Through adequate and inclusive planning, ensure that the design, organization, and convening of the process serve both a clearly defined purpose and the needs of the participants.

2. Inclusion and Demographic Diversity

Equitably incorporate diverse people, voices, ideas, and information to lay the groundwork for quality outcomes and democratic legitimacy.

3. Collaboration and Shared Purpose

Support and encourage participants, government and community institutions, and others to work together to advance the common good.¹

4. Openness and Learning

Help all involved listen to each other, explore new ideas unconstrained by predetermined outcomes, learn and apply information in ways that generate new options, and rigorously evaluate public engagement activities for effectiveness.

5. Transparency and Trust

Be clear and open about the process, and provide a public record of the organizers, sponsors, outcomes, and range of views and ideas expressed.

6. Impact and Action

Ensure each participatory effort has real potential to make a difference, and that participants are aware of that potential.

7. Sustained Engagement and Participatory Culture

Promote a culture of participation with programs and institutions that support ongoing quality public engagement.

————-

¹ In addition to reflecting the democratic ideals of liberty, justice, and freedom for all, the term “common good” refers to things that optimize the well-being of all (like a traffic light in a dangerous intersection) or conditions that serve to benefit all involved (as in a consensus agreement focused on cleaning up the water supply).

There’s also an expanded version that goes into more detail:

PEP Expanded Text

Although we are not seeking endorsements for the expanded text under the principles and their one-sentence descriptions, the text under the headers “In high quality engagement” and “What to avoid” was developed alongside the basic seven principle, in a highly collaborative and transparent manner.  The purpose of the expanded text is to illustrate and breathe life into the principles, and should accompany the list of Core Principles whenever possible.  The expanded text can be tweaked or revised for a variety of different audiences.

Intellitics is proud to be among the group of initial organizational endorsers.

About a couple of weeks ago, the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD) — in collaboration with a few other organizations in this field — launched the Public Engagement Principles project, an effort to craft a recommendation for the Obama administration as they work on the Open Government Directive. From the NCDD website:

Get involved in the Public Engagement Principles project, a collaborative effort to see if our broad field can present a united front to the Obama administration. We are starting by developing and describing a set of core principles or criteria for quality public engagement that are broad enough yet meaningful enough that we can all endorse. Help us get there!

Here’s how Sandy Heierbacher, NCDD’s director, introduced the project:

We are facing an unprecedented opportunity in the fields of public engagement, conflict resolution and collaboration. President Obama has demonstrated his commitment to participation, transparency and openness in his administration in numerous ways we’ve all taken note of

There are a number of established associations and organizations in the U.S. that unite professionals and promote the practice and principles of consensus, dialogue, participation, collaboration, conflict resolution and other means of achieving largely the same end.

We suspect that many of these groups will try to communicate with the administration about how to best move forward, but we are concerned about the fact that although most of us speak the same basic language to describe this work, we tend to use many different dialects. This could weaken each of our cases, and overwhelm members of the administration rather than support them.

Rather than each of us contacting the administration separately with mixed messages and various levels of success, we believe we could make a greater impact working together. Can we collaborate or unify to present a collective source of principles, practices, talent and resources that this administration and nation will need in the next four years?

The discussion forum has quickly become a treasure trove for anyone interested in making public engagement work. The list of over a dozen tried and tested sets of principles from around the world as well as the conversations about which pieces are generally applicable or how they should be framed in the context of a guideline or recommendation to the administration is a valuable asset in and by itself and I hope NCDD will preserve the results.

Here’s the latest revision of the public engagement principles:

CRITERIA FOR PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT

The following principles describe high quality public engagement in public conversation on public issues.  While each is distinct, they overlap considerably and reinforce each other in practice.  They serve both as ideals to pursue and as criteria for judging quality.  Their proper use is to generate authentic engagement in public problem-solving, collective creativity, and social healing.  They are not designed to promote partisan agendas.

1. Preparation – Consciously plan, design, convene and arrange the engagement to serve its purpose and people.
2. Inclusion – Incorporate diverse people and ideas to lay the groundwork for quality outcomes and democratic legitimacy.
3. Collaboration –  Support organizers, participants, and those engaged in follow-up to work well together for the common good.
4. Learning – Help participants listen, explore and learn without predetermined outcomes — and evaluate events for lessons.
5. Transparency – Promote openness and provide a public record of the people, resources, and events involved.
6. Impact – Engage official and public attention and follow up — in context — so that each participatory effort actually makes a difference.
7. Participatory Culture – Promote programs and institutions that sustain quality public engagement and advance democratic principles and competence.

Tom Atlee did a lot of the integration and synthesis work on this.

I want to start a conversation about how these principles can best be applied to online participation efforts and tools.

A few days after the launch of the new WhiteHouse.gov website, President Obama issued a memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, which announced that the new administration

… is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.  We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

It also directs the yet-to-be-named Chief Technology Officer (emphasis mine):

… to coordinate the development by appropriate executive departments and agencies, within 120 days, of recommendations for an Open Government Directive, to be issued by the Director of OMB, that instructs executive departments and agencies to take specific actions implementing the principles set forth in this memorandum. The independent agencies should comply with the Open Government Directive.

Here’s what the memorandum had to say about public participation:

Government should be participatory. Public engagement enhances the Government’s effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions. Knowledge is widely dispersed in society, and public officials benefit from having access to that dispersed knowledge. Executive departments and agencies should offer Americans increased opportunities to participate in policymaking and to provide their Government with the benefits of their collective expertise and information. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public input on how we can increase and improve opportunities for public participation in Government.

Today, Washington DC-based Sunlight Foundation rolled out Our Open Government List (OOGL), a new microsite that allows the public to make suggestions as to what should be included in the Open Government Directive:

Shortly after President Obama’s inauguration, he issued a memo on transparency directing his top officials to develop plans for an Open Government Directive to promote transparency, participation, and collaboration. The Sunlight Foundation has created this page in order to add a public element to the crafting of this Open Government Directive that is itself transparent, participatory, and collaborative.

We encourage you to submit ideas for what the Directive should address, and to vote for your favorite submissions below.

While a lot of the discussions lately seem to focus solely on the aspects of transparency and open government data, I thought it was appropriate to point out that  the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) has developed a list of seven Core Values for the Practice of Public Participation that could be tremendously helpful in guiding government efforts in this area:

1. Public participation is based on the belief that those who are affected by a decision have a right to be involved in the decision-making process.
2. Public participation includes the promise that the public’s contribution will influence the decision.
3. Public participation promotes sustainable decisions by recognizing and communicating the needs and interests of all participants, including decision makers.
4. Public participation seeks out and facilitates the involvement of those potentially affected by or interested in a decision.
5. Public participation seeks input from participants in designing how they participate.
6. Public participation provides participants with the information they need to participate in a meaningful way.
7. Public participation communicates to participants how their input affected the decision.

I’ve added them to OOGL here under Public Participation Principles (feel free to vote).

PEP-NET, another promising e-participation initiative at the European level, launched earlier this month.

From the about page:

PEP-NET will be a European network of all stakeholders active in the field of eParticipation. PEP-NET therefore already includes public bodies, solution providers and citizen organizations as well as researchers and scientists. The network is open to all organizations willing and actively trying to advance the idea and use of eParticipation in Europe.

The project aims to help overcome fragmentation and promote best practice by connecting established and experienced eParticipation players and networks throughout Europe as a critical first step. The objective of this project is to achieve critical mass for the establishment of a Pan European eParticipation Network (PEP-NET). Such a network will act as a repository and disseminator of good practice and exchange of experience, and be a visible resource for all interested parties across the European Union.

PEP-NET will ensure wider access to European eParticipation projects and permit more effective dialogue between eParticipation experts, researchers, practitioners, public administrations, civil society organisations and the interested public with the ultimate goal of facilitating knowledge transfer, encouraging further eParticipation trials and establishing European leadership in this field.

[...]

Already, a number of organizations in the field have signed on as the initial PEP-NET members.

The project is coordinated by Hamburg, Germany-based TuTech Innovation GmbH, who for over a year now have been sharing a steady flow of insights on their blog (mostly in German).

The following are a few Facebook groups we watch that deal with various aspects of dialogue, deliberation, public participation, e-government or e-democracy (membership numbers as of today):

• C2D2 – Canadian Community for Dialogue and Deliberation (18 members)
  Community of interest on dialogue and deliberation. Conference held every two years.
• Conversation Cafe (308 members)
  Conversation Cafes promote community, democracy and wisdom world-wide through generating millions of open, respectful public conversations.
• e-democracy (346 members)
  For those interested in e-democracy, especially the efforts of E-Democracy.Org.
• E-Demokratie.org (in German, 12 members)
  E-Government oder E-Verwaltung beschreiben die Darstellung von Regierungs- und Verwaltungshandeln. E-Government wird aber auch häufig synonym mit dem Begriff E-Demokratie (eDemocracy) verwendet. Im Detail muss dabei jedoch stark differenziert werden: so geht es bei E-Demokratie nicht nur um elektronisch gestütztes Regieren. Es geht um viel mehr, es geht um Legitimation, Partizipation und Öffentlichkeit.
• ePractice.eu (97 members)
  epractice.eu is a good practice exchange scheme with a web portal, weekly newsletter, country factsheets, online library, practitioner profiles, events calendar and monthly workshops created by the European Commission for the professional community in eGovernment, e-Inclusion and eHealth. epractice.eu involves practitioners from all 27 Member States, EU-member candidate states and EFTA countries but others are welcome to join. The portal combines online activities with frequent offline exchanges: workshops, face-to-face meetings and public presentations. A large knowledge base of real-life case studies submitted by portal members is freely available. The Facebook extension is provided in order to bridge the gap between Facebook’s social and epractice.eu’s professional touch.
• Everyday Democracy (53 members)
  Everyday Democracy (formerly the Study Circles Resource Center) is a national organization that helps local communities find ways for all kinds of people to think, talk and work together to solve problems. We work with neighborhoods, cities and towns, regions, and states, helping them pay particular attention to how racism and ethnic differences affect the problems they address.
• Government 2.0 (205 members)
  A new governance construct is possible… Create it
• I support participatory democracy! (395 members)
  This group is for people who believe that democracy only becomes meaningful when it involves its people in participatory decisionmaking processes.
• ICT4Democracy (192 members)
  Gathering of citizens from across the world believing that Information and Communication Technologies can help in providing us with more and better democracy and are willing to do something about it … in their lifetime …
• International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) (20 members)
  IAP2 is an association of members who seek to promote and improve the practice of public participation in relation to individuals, governments, institutions, and other entities that affect the public interest in nations throughout the world.
• National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD) (348 members)
  A group for those dedicated to solving tough problems with honest talk, quality thinking and collaborative action. Join us if you agree with Einstein, that the problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.
• Participatory Budgeting (158 members)
  Participatory Budgeting (PB) can be broadly defined as the participation of citizens in the decision-making process of budget allocation and monitoring public spending. Participation may take various forms, from effective decision-making power in the allocation of resources to more modest initiatives that confer voice during the development of the budget. This is a group for exchange of information among those interested in practices of participatory budgeting.
• POLITECH INSTITUTE (European Center of Political Technologies) (112 members)
  POLITECH INSTITUTE is a not-for-profit international association (AISBL) and a European Center of Political Technologies located in Brussels, Capital of Europe, bridging public institutions, international institutions, governments, regional and local authorities, universities, research centers, think tanks, civil society and political leaders with technology actors for a better use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) towards the advancement of modern public governance and democracy.
• The World Cafe (249 members)
  A group for practitioners of/people interested in the TWC.

Needless to say, most of these organizations maintain resource-heavy websites of their own.

It’s by no means an exhaustive list, but should give you a head start if you want to connect with people in this community via Facebook. If you happen to know of any additional Facebook groups in this area, feel free to leave a comment.

I just joined a recently launched online community at epractice.eu, a portal created by the European Commission which connects practitioners from the e-government, e-participation, e-health etc. field from all across the European Union. It is “an interactive initiative that empowers its users to discuss and influence open government, policy-making and the way in which public administrations operate and deliver services.”

From the welcome message to their new eParticipation and eDemocracy Network:

Welcome to the eParticipation and eDemocracy Network

The eParticipation and eDemocracy Network is now open to all interested in issues such as eEngagement, eDeliberation, eInvolvement, eLegislation and eVoting, as well as eDecision, eRule and ePolicy-making. Despite this broad remit, however, these issues are all inter-related and contribute to new concepts and practices for the governance of our societies. Thus, it is also important not to see ‘e’ tools as separate from traditional democratic and participatory processes, for example there are potentially fundamental impacts on the relationships between representative and direct democracy. The community is an open platform for meeting and sharing experiences and knowledge, as well as for asking and providing support. It will encompass blog discussions, news items, good practices, promoting events and sharing documents and source material. It will also link to and help coordinate the various European Commission supported studies and projects directly relevant to eParticipation and eDemocracy. [...]

At Intellitics, that sounds like our cup of tea.

Already, a number of well-known European e-democracy practitioners and advocates have signed up. Given epractice.eu’s track record as a valuable resource in this field, I expect this community to get off to a great start.

Feel free to look me up. Look forward to insightful discussions and meeting great people.