Public+Deliberation-+A+Manager's+Guide+to+Citizen+Engagement

This document is a PDF handout from the IBM Center for The Business of Government.



Table of Contents Citizen Engagement as a Global Movement ................................10 Citizen Engagement in the Activities of Federal Agencies ............12 two barriers to Effective Agency Engagement Practice ................12 Citizen Engagement today: the state of Practice .........................14 A Focus on Engagement ..............................................................18 Characteristics of Face-to-Face Deliberation ................................21 Models of Face-to-Face Deliberation ...........................................24 Deliberation in Practice ...............................................................26 online Engagement in Federal Agencies ......................................5 Challenges to online Deliberation ..............................................7 Unique Features of online Deliberation ......................................8 online Deliberation: Examples from Practice ..............................8
 * Foreword** ..............................................................................................4
 * Executive Summary** ..............................................................................5
 * Introduction** .........................................................................................7
 * What Is Citizen Engagement?** ..............................................................9
 * Putting Citizen Engagement into Practice** ..........................................16
 * Using Deliberative Democracy as a Tool for Citizen Engagement** ......20
 * Deliberative Democracy: Face-to-Face** ...............................................24
 * Deliberative Democracy: Online** .......................................................
 * Conclusions and Recommendations** ...................................................44
 * Acknowledgments** ..............................................................................47
 * Endnotes** ............................................................................................48
 * Selected Resources** .............................................................................50
 * Resource Persons (Interviews)** ............................................................51
 * Bibliography** .......................................................................................5
 * About the Authors** ..............................................................................55
 * Key Contact Information** ....................................................................57

www.businessofgovernment.org 5  ExECUti vE sUMMARY ExECUti vE sUMMARY in the United states, municipalities, states, and regions are coming to recognize that democratic governance can be revitalized through new opportunities and spaces for citizen participation. Governments are responding to rising pressure for democratic reform through a range of innovations that create new chan- nels of engagement with the public and share decision making with citizens. in washington, D.C., the Mayor’s office of neighborhood Action has instituted a biannual strategic planning process that ties citizen input to budget decisions. six municipal governments in Connecticut use handheld devices to engage youth in the monitoring and evaluation of city services. Widespread cities like los Angeles are experimenting with neighborhood Councils to reduce political apathy, give citizens a larger say in the development of the city budget, and foster a culture of participatory and responsive local government. in major cities like baltimore and Chicago, community involvement in neighborhood policing has helped to reduce crime while lowering costs. these and many other innovations in participatory decision making together point the way toward innovative governance mechanisms that nurture the democratic impulse and achieve results. the purpose of this guide to citizen engagement is to strengthen the foundation for participatory gover- nance within the federal government, in particular in agency decision making. the guide provides examples of experimentation with new techniques to engage citizens at all levels of governance, thereby encouraging federal managers to see them- selves as potential agents within this movement to reinvigorate democratic governance. in this guide we hope to make the case for two key shifts in public administration. First is a shift from information //exchange// models to information //processing// models of citizen engagement. second is a shift from citizens as //consumers// to active //shapers// of government policies and programs (Cornwall and Gaventa, 2001). we believe that these two basic adjustments toward viewing citizen engagement as fundamentally knowledge building and necessarily influential within the administrative process can have profoundly positive benefits to the substance, trans parency, legitimacy, and fairness of policy develop-  ment as well as the general view of government held by citizens. we hope this guide will shed some light on exactly how this can be achieved. this guide is composed of four main sections: in the first we’ll conduct a quick inventory of existing policy frameworks for citizen participation and summarize the shortcomings of current practice as it is shaped by these policy guidelines. the guide will then intro duce an emerging field of practice known as “delib-  erative democracy” and provide some examples of where citizens engage face-to-face in addressing community issues. we’ll then move into the online world, which has demonstrated a remarkable capac- ity to spark innovation and experimentation and has yielded several interesting techniques of which agency managers should be aware. Fourth, we’ll provide a very concise summary of key features and techniques for deliberation within a framework for understanding how they can complement policy and program development. in the same section we’ll provide an inventory of some of the most promising techniques as a starting point for agency managers to “pick and choose” among methods. Finally, we’ll conclude the guide with a set of recommendations in this guide we hope to make the case for two key shifts in public administration. First is a shift from information //exchange// models to information //processing// models of citizen engagement. second is a shift from citizens as //consumers// to active //shapers//of government policies and programs (Cornwall and Gaventa, 2001). we believe that these two basic adjustments toward viewing citizen engagement as fundamentally knowledge building and necessarily influential within the administrative process can have profoundly positive benefits to the substance, trans-<span style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica;"> parency, legitimacy, and fairness of policy develop<span style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica;"> ment as well as the general view of government held by citizens. we hope this guide will shed some light on exactly how this can be achieved.<span style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica;"> this guide is composed of four main sections: in the first we’ll conduct a quick inventory of existing policy frameworks for citizen participation and that we expect can encourage public deliberation in the activities of federal agencies and support the development of an “infrastructure of engagement” throughout government.<span style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica;"> to develop the observations and recommendations discussed in this report, we have relied on a substan-<span style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica;"> tial literature review (including an in-depth review of existing public involvement guides), interviews with over two dozen managers in public agencies, and our own experience over the last 10 years working with government authorities at all levels to bring citizens into policy-making processes. we have sought to make our recommendations as relevant and as practical as possible by relying upon practice-<span style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica;"> based evidence of what works, and the knowledge of agency executives who have been engaging citizens in policy development for years.