5. “Government should be
participatory. Public engagement
enhances the Government’s
effectiveness and improves the
quality of its decisions.”
Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government
January 20, 2009
6. The Idea In A Nutshell...
• The goal is for government to make
better, more sustainable decisions
• One strategy to help achieve that goal is to
involve the public and let citizens
influence the decision making to some
degree
• This process is called public participation
7. Public Participation Defined
• Any process that involves the public in
problem solving or decision making and
uses public input to make decisions
• Involves interested or affected individuals,
organizations, and government entities
• Two-way communication and collaborative
problem solving with the goal of achieving
better and more acceptable decisions
Source: IAP2, Jim Creighton
8. Public Participation ROI
• Identify better solutions
• Build buy-in
• Save time, money and energy
• Avoid project delays
• Reduce risk of litigation
• Build community / social capital
• Etc.
9. Decision Making Cycle
Define
Evaluate problem
Implement Identify alternative
solutions
Decide
Develop
Evaluate and evaluation criteria
prioritize
10. IAP2 Spectrum of Public
Participation
Designed to assist with the selection of the
level of participation that defines the public's
role in any public participation process. Levels
of participation depend on the goals, time
frames, resources, and levels of concern in the
decision to be made.
http://www.iap2.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=5
http://www.iap2.org/associations/4748/files/IAP2%20Spectrum_vertical.pdf
11. Key Questions (Online and
Offline)
• What are the decisions to be made?
• Who are the decision makers?
• How will the public’s input influence the
decision?
• Where in the decision making cycle?
• What level of impact?
23. 1. Set the Right
Expectations
• When you invite the public to participate
you’re making a commitment that they will
have some level of impact, however minimal
• Be very specific about how the public’s
input will influence the decision
• Don’t over promise!
24. 1. Set the Right
Expectations
• When you invite the public to participate
you’re making a commitment that they will
have some level of impact, however minimal
• Be very specific about how the public’s
input will influence the decision
• Don’t over promise!
25. 2. Do Outreach
• As with many things, build it and the won’t
come
• Important to get the right people to the
table
• Allow sufficient lead time to let people and
stakeholder groups know about your online
consultation
26. 3. Assume People Are Busy
• People have lives!
• Make it convenient and manageable for
them to contribute on their own terms
• You are responsible for taking care of both
your highly-engaged power users as well as
your drive-by participants
27. 4. Provide Good Learning
• Participants need to understand the basic
ins and outs of an issue before they can
enjoy informed conversations
• Provide complete and unbiased information
in accessible formats
• Harness participants’ expertise to help you
improve your materials
• Let them teach each other
28. 5. Set Ground Rules
• Online consultations require ground rules
• Be transparent
• Explain when you have to interfere (e.g.
comment moderation)
• Stay open to feedback
29. 6. Summarize Early And
Often
• Share what you are hearing
• Allow participants to confirm you get what
they’re saying
• Give participants a chance to catch up on
things they may have missed
30. 7. Keep People In The Loop
• Make it easy for participants to follow the
consultation
• Provide regular updates
• Multiple channels
31. 8. Lead
• Consultations don’t run on auto pilot
• You know what you want out of a
consultation, make sure you get it
• Good (daily) facilitation is key
32. 9. Offer Technical Support
• For the average participant, most tools are
more difficult to use than you think
• Assume a broad range of skill levels among
participants
• Provide help (e.g. FAQ, video tutorial, help
line)
33. 10. Follow Up
• After a consultation is over, follow up in a
timely manner
• Let the participants know how their input
influenced the decision or why it could not
be considered
35. So What About The Tools?
• Tools don’t matter (that much)
• Selection greatly depends on the task
• Some good ones, some crappy ones — you
can make a lot of them work
• Even the best tool won’t save you if you get
the process wrong
37. Some Rights Reserved
Except where noted, the contents of this presentation
are licensed to the public under Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
(CC BY-NC-SA 3.0). The terms of this license are
available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-
sa/3.0/