Active participation in public life is a key part of any healthy democracy. However, many citizens encounter barriers to engagement that prevent them participating fully in the democratic processes that shape their communities. Without intervention, they can become disillusioned and disenfranchised.
Identifying and addressing these barriers to active participation is essential to ensuring that public engagement remains meaningful, and citizens feel they have a voice. The following article discusses the issues, the solutions and how govtech is making it easier for everyone to be an active citizen.
What is Active Participation and Active Citizenship?
Active citizenship refers to the ways individuals engage with politics and civic life beyond just voting in elections. The concept is grounded in the belief that everyone has both the ability and personal responsibility to take part in democratic processes that affect them and their communities. Active citizens take affecting change into their own hands.
Active participation is the expression of active citizenship. It includes a range of activities that connect citizens with the democratic processes in their local area. Some examples of active public participation include:
- Attending public meetings or consultations.
- Signing petitions or joining campaigns.
- Volunteering for local projects or causes.
- Participating in protests.
- Making informed choices about policies and engaging in public debate.
- Contributing to decision-making through surveys, panels or deliberative events.
Active citizens take a proactive approach to keeping themselves informed of politics, both nationally and locally, and actively searching for ways to express their political will. When governments and public bodies support active participation, they help create a more politically engaged citizenry.
A society where active participation is the norm is therefore one where communities feel they have a real say in the politics, plans and projects that shape their lives.
What Prevents Citizens from Participating Actively?
There are many varied factors that could prevent individual citizens from participating in public life. For instance, the date of a particular public meeting may clash with someone’s holiday, or a consultation may occur when someone is going through a difficult time and doesn’t have the time or energy to get involved.
However, when particular barriers are a problem for a large number of people or even entire communities, it’s time to act. Barriers to participation can generally be categorised as follows:
Barrier 1: Issues with Communication
One of the most common reasons that citizens don’t participate in engagement activities is because they are unaware that they’re happening. While facilitators can design activities, run consultations and hold meetings with the best of intentions, none of it matters if the intended audience isn’t hearing about it.
Often, the issue is that activities are communicated in very limited ways. It may be that they are listed in an obscure place on a government website, where one would only go if they were already looking. It may be that they are advertised on social media, but only in one place and on a page with relatively few followers. Even when it is listed somewhere likely to be seen by members of the community, unclear or overly technical language may also lead to a lack of community engagement.
Solution: Engagement and Raising Awareness
Improving communication between facilitators and citizens is key to driving engagement and raising awareness, while addressing a possible barrier to participation. It is essential that those running engagement activities take advantage of multiple platforms, anticipating how best to communicate with a diverse range of participants. This could include:
- Posting across multiple social media sites, taking particular advantage of local groups to boost organic shares.
- Contacting members of the community personally, by email or letter, to inform them of opportunities to participate.
- Contacting community leaders, such as local councillors, and asking them to help spread the word.
- Back to basics: posting on notice boards, or taking out space in a local paper.
It is also vital that the language used when raising awareness can be understood by everyone in your audience who may encounter it, regardless of their level of education or experience.
Barrier 2: Accessibility and Inclusivity
Even where citizens are aware of a given opportunity, many people will still face practical barriers to participation. This might include issues around mobility, language barriers, digital access, literacy, caring responsibilities or working hours. When specific events are not designed with accessibility in mind, it can leave people feeling disincluded and unlikely to engage in future.
Some events are even designed in such a way that they unintentionally alienate an entire community, such as holding a public meeting during an important religious event or conducting a consultation without inviting stakeholders from particular backgrounds. Public bodies may then miss vital perspectives, and decisions risk being made without input from those communities.
Solution: Accessibility and Bridging the Digital Divide
Creating participation opportunities that are both accessible and inclusive requires attention to detail. It involves designing activities that people from all backgrounds and abilities can take part in, and considering what that looks like in practice.
Examples of decisions made with accessibility and inclusivity in mind include:
- Information being provided in plain English, with options to translate where relevant.
- Events being held in accessible venues, with the days and times varied to suit all schedules.
- Surveys and consultations should follow survey design best practices, including having screen-reader enabled technology.
- Alternative formats should be provided where possible, in order to be accessible to those without digital access (for example, paper surveys and phone interviews).
Digital tools, particularly purpose-built govtech platforms, can do a great deal when it comes to promoting accessibility. Whether it is for a consultation or online survey – or something more complex like running a citizen assembly – citizen engagement platforms should meet all current accessibility standards as a minimum. Online platforms can do a great deal to support those of different abilities, particularly those who may struggle to attend physical events, to engage in public life.
However, it is still important to consider the digital divide. Not everyone has access to a computer or the ability to easily use one. Where possible, public events should offer alternatives for those who can’t use digital tools or offer help accessing it (for example, at the library)
Barrier 3: Lack of Trust
In some cases, citizens are aware of an engagement activity and able to take part, but choose not to. Often, this comes down to trust. If individuals or communities have previously contributed and seen no results, they are unlikely to invest time in engaging again. Equally, if they feel that a public engagement event is simply a box-ticking exercise, they may not wish to waste their time.
A recent survey of social attitudes in Britain by the National Centre for Social Research found that just 5% of people believed politicians would generally tell the truth “in a tight corner”. Almost 60% thought they would almost never do so. Decisions that are perceived to be political – for example, decisions made by local councils or policy-changes by government – are often met with suspicion by the general public. Citizens can be reluctant to take part in activities where they don’t trust the process will actually lead to concrete results.
Solution: Creating Trust and Transparency in Public Life
Building trust in public processes takes time and dedication. Demonstrating that activities matter and are not simply an obstacle in a predetermined process is essential. Policy-makers must show:
- Transparency: by being clear about how citizen input can and will be used, and feeding back results.
- Accountability: by making it clear what bodies have responsibility for what and how they interact with citizen input.
- Consistency: by making sure that promises made are kept, and citizens are kept in the loop. This is particularly important for those who have already participated.
Where difficult decisions have to be made, transparency is still more important to keeping people engaged than sugar-coating the facts. Being honest about limitations can create an honest and mutually beneficial dialogue between citizens and policy-makers. They are then more likely to participate in the future, becoming active citizens.
Using the TOMs framework
The national Themes, Outcomes and Measures framework is a method of measuring social value for public bodies. It is a method of assessing their success in instituting the requirements of the Social Value Act (2012). The National TOMs Framework is structured around five key themes, 20 core outcomes, and 48 core measures:
- Themes: These represent the broad strategic priorities that an organisation aims to address.
- Outcomes: These are the specific goals that support each theme and reflect what the organisation seeks to accomplish.
- Measures: These are the indicators used to evaluate the achievement of the outcomes. In the National TOMs Framework, these are action-oriented and reflect tasks or activities that a supplier can undertake to help deliver the intended outcomes.
Part of how governments and public bodies can build trust is by demonstrating that they can “practice what they preach”. By following TOMs, they can demonstrate that they take issues like protecting the environment and prioritising community wellbeing seriously. Local governments and public bodies can use public service contracts as a way of demonstrating transparency and principle.
Using Govtech to Overcome Barriers to Participation
Digital tools have been mentioned throughout this article, however it is worth emphasising the capacity govtech has for overcoming barriers to participation.
In any given engagement activity, digital engagement tools have the ability to help citizens visualise things differently. That could mean taking part in a participatory mapping exercise using geospatial tools, and allowing citizens to express their ideas about their area in a familiar space. It could mean having a go at community budgeting, which allows citizens to express their view of how public money should be spent in their area.
Digital tools create engagement that is more visual and accessible. People can contribute in their own time, using their own devices, and in a format that suits them. This reduces the need for physical attendance, which is not always possible for everyone.
Although these activities existed before the wide availability of digital engagement platforms, the propagation of govtech has made them much simpler and quicker to carry out. What once required in-person meetings, specialist equipment and a lot of administration can now be delivered online in a less resource-intensive manner. In turn, this makes it easier for public bodies to widen their reach, maintain ongoing participation and reach a more diverse audience.
Citizen Space is the go-to platform for connecting governments, developers, and citizens. If you’d like to learn more about how our software can be used to facilitate active participation, book a free demo and we’ll walk you through it.
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