Citizen engagement has been transformative to policy development for governments across the world. As the rise of digital democracy has made the process of citizen engagement simpler, citizen input has been invaluable to the creation of policy that is both inclusive and effective.
What Is Citizen Engagement?
Citizen engagement is first and foremost a dialogue between government or public sector bodies and citizens. It facilitates a transparent and mutually informative exchange, where policy-makers – can access a more diverse, representative range of perspectives, and citizens can meaningfully contribute to the decisions that affect their lives.
This creates greater transparency and accountability, and helps to build those crucial relationships between governments and the people they serve.
The benefits of good citizen participation practices are numerous, including:
- a greater level of trust between public bodies and the people they represent
- a greater level of diversity and inclusion;
- a sense of mutual ownership;
- increased civic participation from a given community,
- more effective decision-making process that better understands the needs of individuals affected.
Examples of Citizen Engagement
As citizen engagement seeks to identify and isolate the perspectives of individuals rather than communities or groups (this would be community engagement, which you can read more about here), the method of engagement is usually formal. Initiated by governments and those in power, methods for actively seeking out responses from the public can include some of the following:
8. Conduct Public Consultations
Public consultations are the most common form of citizen engagement. They are used throughout the world by governments and public bodies to get feedback from their citizens on the plans, policies and proposals that may affect them.
Many public consultations are a legally required part of the planning and policy development process, such as statutory consultations. However, public consultations are also used voluntarily as a way of better understanding the view of a given community or group on a given proposal.
Public consultations are an essential part of the democratic process. They provide a deeper and richer understanding of how the public feel about specific policies and plans
In recent years, existing barriers to participation in public consultations have been greatly reduced by the wide utilisation of technology which has allowed things like public meetings to be streamed, consultation processes to be more easily advertised, and public consultation software to simplify the process as a whole.
7. Run More Engaging Surveys
In-depth surveys are one of the most prominent methods of conducting public consultations, as well as being useful for creating engaged citizens outside of a more formal consultation process. Good survey design is one of the most important tools for effectively gathering an accurate and representative picture of public opinion.
Survey questions can provide both quantitative and qualitative insights. Broader, open questions provide the option to share opinions that may not have otherwise been conveyed effectively; whereas closed options, like choosing an answer on a sliding scale, can give an overview of general community perspective.
Choosing the correct mode of survey and analysing the data effectively is not only important for getting the most useful information, but it is also the best way to effectively engage the local community with the subject matter.
6. Create Citizen Panels…
The creation of a citizen panel is a more hands-on approach to making sure that a given consultation process is really representative of the community members it affects. Citizen panels are generally selected by random sampling of a given local area, usually by postcode. However there are also other methods of recruitment that include making sure that a representative number of people from specific religious, cultural or other minority groups within a community are present on a given panel.
Generally speaking, a citizen panel is made up of hundreds (or even several thousand) respondents,. Care needs to be taken to make sure that the panel – which can run for several years, with participants being asked to respond to questions as they evolve – remains representative. There are various tools that can now be used to easily maintain an up-to-date database, which has rendered citizen panels an even more useful tool for effective engagement.
5. …or create Citizen Assemblies or Juries
Citizen assemblies and citizen juries are similar concepts that are run with fewer people or on a much shorter timescale, which may be useful if a more quick-fire but less in-depth process is needed.
Choosing the correct size and scope that is appropriate for a given project depends somewhat on the resources available and the duration the project is expected to run for, but having a body of people that can respond in real time to ongoing developments is an invaluable resource for engaging citizens.
4. Engage In Participatory Budgeting
Participatory budgeting is another excellent way to engage citizens in the way that their councils and public services are being run. Participatory budgeting allows participants to plan how they would allocate money for public services given a specific budget and all the priorities that budget should cover.
For example, respondents may be given a budget for a local council area and then be given choices about how to divide funds between education, waste management, road repairs and every other aspect of local government.
Not only does participatory budgeting help public bodies understand the changing priorities of their citizens and therefore enable better responsiveness, it also allows the public to better understand the pressures and hard choices facing those services.
Speaking on participatory budgeting, the Executive Member for Finance at Scottish Borders Council said:
“It is vital that we get residents’ views on how frontline services could be changed, improved or delivered differently to help us save money. We want to know what services are priorities for our residents, where they could do without, or with less, or would be happy to pay a little more.”
3. Use Geospatial And Participatory Mapping Tools
Geospatial mapping can tell us a lot about what a community values; how they see themselves, what they want and need, and where they draw the “boundaries” of their world. That’s why participatory mapping, or placemaking is such a valuable tool for engaging citizens, as it can convey information in a visual manner that can help contextualise questions that may otherwise feel too complex or abstract.
Those who may not wish to engage with formal consultation processes can sometimes be engaged by mapping activities that make clear how otherwise broad questions relate to their area and day-to-day lives.
Geospatial mapping tools can be used for participatory mapping in order to analyse information provided by the public. This is particularly useful when planning exactly where to allocate public resources to the greatest effect.
2. Use Social Media To Boost Awareness…
. Social media can have a substantial positive outcome on citizen engagement worldwide.
For more than a decade, social media has been used by planning officials to both garner public opinion and perhaps most importantly, to disseminate information.
However, there are two key caveats to social media use for citizen engagement. Firstly, it is not enough to use social media alone. There are significant demographic challenges on any and all social media platforms. Although they can promote inclusivity, they are not inherently inclusive. Secondly, social media is only effective for public bodies where they have already achieved a significant amount of ‘cut through’ in a competitive environment. It is not enough to only use social media when you’re doing a consultation, you have to be consistently present and active, as well as aware of how to use a given social platform to drive meaningful interactions.
1. And Other Online Tools For Citizen Engagement
Public meetings like town hall meetings are a vital part of engaging the public, as not every interaction between public bodies and citizens should be solely online. However, in-person only events may of course face issues such as a lack of accessibility and a more limited audience. That’s why a blended approach, where public meetings and other in-person community events aimed at engaging people with the democratic process can also be advertised and streamed online, creating a hybrid environment that may actually generate more engagement – not less.
Citizen engagement as a mechanism for communication between public bodies and citizens is now largely done using a range of online tools on platforms like Citizen Space, which allows the multi-faceted process of gathering feedback and analysing data for a wide range of purposes and services to be done in one place, simplifying what was once often an unwieldy process.
