Citizen engagement is the process by which governmental or public sector bodies can communicate with – and learn from – their citizens about the issues that affect them most.
It is a catch-all term for a range of practices that seek to engage individuals in planning processes, policies and local projects.
Why Is Citizen Engagement Important?
The impact of a given government proposal or initiative at the level of the individual is sometimes lost in the decision-making process. Engaging them is therefore key to addressing this problem. Through a variety of stakeholder-led public consultations, individuals are encouraged to provide feedback relating to their issues, needs and concerns. This creates greater transparency and accountability, and helps to build those crucial relationships between governments and the people they serve.
Good citizen engagement can facilitate a mutual exchange of information. It gives policy-makers the ability to access a diverse and representative range of perspectives. This is particularly important for developing policy that goes beyond the ‘one size fits all’ approach.
The benefits of effective citizen engagement practices can be summarised as:
- Increased civic engagement, participation and community involvement
- Greater representation of diverse voices and perspectives
- A stronger sense of mutual ownership and collaboration between public institutions and the communities they serve
- A more informed and responsive decision-making process that better reflects and addresses the needs of those affected
- Public trust in the policy-making process
As one former Government minister put it when discussing the importance of citizen engagement in the policy-making process :
“Greater citizen involvement is not just about getting the right decision, it’s about reconnection between citizens and those in power. It’s about challenging some of the cynicism about politics.”
Participation and Citizen Engagement
Arnstein’s Ladder of Participation is a useful concept within the field of citizen engagement. It describes different levels of participation by citizens in decision-making processes, from non-participation to complete engagement. Although not every individual and process can necessarily reach the ‘highest rung’, it is clear that effective participation builds a more positive relationship between the public and governmental bodies.
Meaningful participation is shown to hold governments and public bodies accountable, ensuring decisions are made with the public interest and citizen feedback in mind. Policies, plans and projects designed in part by the public themselves are also usually more popular and therefore often more sustainable in the long-term.
Citizen Engagement vs Citizen Participation
Citizen engagement and citizen participation are terms that are often used interchangeably, but despite some common features, have quite different meanings.
Similarities Between Citizen Engagement and Citizen Participation
A similarity they share for example, is that they are both about citizens getting more involved with the processes that govern their lives and affect their communities. Both citizen engagement and citizen participation seek to improve public service delivery.
However, while the two terms may share similar aims, citizen engagement and citizen participation are very different in their execution.
What Are The Differences Between Citizen Engagement and Citizen Participation?
Citizen participation is a largely informal process initiated and conducted by citizens themselves, without the need for facilitation by public bodies. It is ‘bottom up’ in organisation, and can be a good way for citizens to make their voices heard through active participation. It can include things like petitions, local campaign groups and neighbourhood networks.
Citizen engagement is much more formal. It is always initiated by a public body, often local government, and abides by set rules and limitations. It is top-down, and allows the public body in question to communicate with and get feedback from citizens about specific policies and issues. It can include things like statutory consultations, participatory budgeting, surveys and stakeholder workshops.
Both of these are different to community engagement which emphasises a sustained dialogue between public bodies and communities over time, rather than focussing on a specific issue or event. This includes things like community advisory boards and public meetings.
What are the Challenges to Citizen Engagement and Citizen Participation?
Both citizen engagement and citizen participation have their strengths and weaknesses. Citizen participation can benefit from the flexibility of existing outside of public institutions, but are often one-off events or sporadic. They therefore can struggle to gain the same level of authority and the resources necessary for wider application.
Citizen engagement is generally confined to quite specific rules and processes, but effective communication between governmental bodies and engaged citizens can have very positive results and create significant change in the process of policy production.
Examples of Citizen Engagement
What citizen engagement looks like depends on the aims of a given project, and there are lots of different examples of citizen engagement activities.
Examples of citizen engagement methods as used by governmental organisations include:
Public Consultations
Public consultations are the most widely used form of citizen engagement. They involve asking the public directly for input on the policies and plans that affect them, most often using surveys. In 2025, the majority of public consultations are conducted at least partially online using consultation software in order to more easily manage what can be quite a complex process.
The Scottish Government has been conducting public consultations via Citizen Space for over a decade. It has allowed them to run more far-reaching public consultations on topics as diverse as independence to climate change bills.
Speaking on the necessity of having a robust public consultation process with easily interpretable results, a spokesperson for the Scottish Government said:
“We wanted to make the process of responding to the consultation as simple as possible – simple for users to express their views, and simple for us to redact, analyse and publish those responses. We were very happy with the outcome.”
Participatory Budgeting
Participatory budgeting is another citizen engagement process, in which citizens and community groups can have a say in how public funds are spent. It involves proposing ideas for funding and voting on how money is allocated, usually using specific funding streams or for particular local projects.
The aim is to ensure fairness and transparency, demonstrating the resource limitations facing governmental organisations to the public. It is also an important tool for showing the financial priorities of the public to their representatives.
Geospatial Mapping
Geospatial mapping uses local area maps to visually represent how individuals view their community. It can be used to highlight specific local issues, define spaces, and allocate resources effectively.
By linking big ideas to familiar areas, geospatial and participatory mapping make it easier for the public to get involved in the public planning decisions that affect their area. Research on the subject in recent years has been very positive:
“Participatory and community mapping has emerged as a key tool for identifying and communicating development needs and been further recognized as a means to support social change.”
– Handbook of Communication for Development and Social Change.
Citizen Advisory Committees
Forming a citizen advisory committee or citizen panel, can be a useful way to get a ‘quick’ cross-section of what a community thinks about a given issue.
Smaller committees can be made up of just tens of citizens, usually key stakeholders in the area. Larger panels – involving hundreds of even thousands of people – may choose their participants through random sampling, often by postcode. They may also need to consider representation on their panels, and make sure it is diverse enough to give all viewpoints on a given issue.
Citizen Engagement in Local Government
Local government is one of the key beneficiaries of effective citizen engagement practices. Just some of the potential outcomes for better engaging citizens include:
- Getting feedback from residents on a new local plan;
- Assessing the level of public support for a new policy or initiative;
- Making sure a public service provision, such as policing or road repairs, is working correctly at every level (e.g from specific neighbourhoods to the whole borough);
- Communicating with citizens about some of the potential resource limitations a local council may be facing, and getting their input on priorities;
- Better understanding how different individuals relate to their local area;
- Improving the understanding that citizens have of local government, and building trust.
Local government is often seen as a bit of a ‘middle man’ between central government and the public. Their devolved powers allow them to act as a mediator. In fact, many of the policy decisions that most affect people in their day to day lives are decided in town halls rather than parliament.
The public consistently reports having greater levels of trust in local governance than parliament. Although the topic of public trust is complex, this may in part be because local government can interact with citizens directly, employing the engagement techniques above to build greater understanding and therefore trust.
What’s Next For Citizen Engagement?
Increasing citizen engagement and participation is almost always the ideal for any public body, local or national government. The benefits – as demonstrated above – are numerous and make effective governance simpler.
However, sometimes actually carrying out citizen engagement activities can seem like a daunting task. Some of the common issues include:
- Not having the funding to run extensive in-person activities.
- Not having the resources to staff those activities.
- Difficulty finding time in a busy calendar.
- Trouble ensuring that consultations are inclusive and representative.
- Issues with accessibility.
- Not having the correct tools to analyse data gathered from activities.
In 2025, many of these issues can be addressed by having a reliable citizen engagement platform. Public consultations can often be run online or in a hybrid manner, allowing them to be run with less costs and in a way that is more accessible. Data can be analysed effectively and to greater effect using software designed for purpose.
The future of citizen engagement does not necessarily require a huge increase in resourcing, but does require the resources to be used more efficiently using technology where possible.
“With Citizen Space, we have the confidence to know that our activity is going to be accessible. People are able to access it through a whole range of devices and using assisted software. It meets all of those requirements without me having to worry about it. It really does make a difference.”
– Lucy Rumble, Strategic Consultation and Engagement Lead