In the News: Surveying the Landscape of Local Government Public Engagement Efforts

Our friends at the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD) pointed us to a new article in the International City/County Management Association’s (ICMA) magazine Public Management. Authors Robert Vogel of Peak Democracy, Evelina Moulder of ICMA, and Mike Huggins of Civic Praxis paint a picture of local government public participation efforts, including their nature, purpose, scope, outcomes, and more. Their data come from the ICMA 2012 State of the Profession Survey.

Highlights of the survey results:

Inform: Eighty-five percent of the responding local governments report that it is “important” or “highly important” to provide the public with objective information to assist them in understanding problems/solutions/alternatives.

Consult: Seventy-five percent indicate that it is “important” or “highly important” to work directly with the public to ensure that their concerns and aspirations are consistently understood and considered.

Involve: Some 70 percent report that it is “important” or “highly important” to obtain feedback from the public on analyses of problems, solutions, and alternatives.

Collaborate: The results show that 57 percent of respondents reported that it is “important” or “highly important” to partner with the public in development of alternatives, identification of the preferred solution, and decision making.

Empower: Nineteen percent of respondents indicate that it is “important” or “highly important” to place decision making in the hands of the public.

And some conclusions:

Local governments are encouraging the public to participate in the identification of problems and their solutions, to share their concerns and aspirations, and to provide feedback and develop alternatives as part of the decision-making process. The outcome is optimized when local managers first ask themselves these six questions:

• What is the readiness and capacity of my organization for public engagement?
• Why am I involving the residents?
• What do I want to achieve?
• What do I want to know?
• What is the role of the public?
• How is that role communicated to the public in face-to-face and online interactions?

Read The Extent of Public Participation (Robert Vogel, Evelina Moulder, and Mike Huggins, March 2014).

Read the full results of the ICMA 2012 State of the Profession Survey.

Filed under Cities, In the News, Participation

Originally published at www.challengestodemocracy.us.