This is the first post in a two-part series by Code for America’s Debs Schrimmer, originally published by Data-Smart City Solutions. Both parts are based on her recent paper in an ongoing series published by Data-Smart City Solutions exploring data-related facets of civic engagement in today’s cities. Schrimmer, who is Research and Editorial Coordinator at Code for America, gives an inside perspective on lessons learned from the implementation of Code for America’s civic engagement strategies in partnership with the City of Boulder, CO.

The project aimed both to improve engagement and to address affordable housing in this growing city by creating new outlets for residents to meaningfully participate in the “Housing Boulder” planning process. The project stimulated an interactive dialogue and increased the participation of underrepresented communities. It also equipped the City with new engagement strategies that could be applied to other initiatives and city departments.

This post introduces the history and background of the partnership and the main components of its civic engagement strategy. Schrimmer then explores in-depth a set of useful recommendations and tools for addressing a common public engagement challenge: reaching a representative sample of the community. The second post in the series will pick up with useful recommendations and tools for addressing another set of challenges: identifying the most relevant information and channels for participation, ensuring that citizen actions are productive, and responding to feedback. Download a pdf version of the full paper here.

By Debs Schrimmer

Code for America is a San Francisco-based non-profit that believes government can work for the people, by the people, in the 21st century. Over the last five years, we’ve partnered with dozens of local governments around the country to improve service delivery—in the health, safety and justice, and economic development areas—through technology. We also focus on improving the public’s relationship with government by creating innovative spaces and channels (sometimes digital) where government and residents can meet.

From this work, we’ve developed a strong perspective on what makes “21st century civic engagement.” In order for governments to be open, responsive, and engaging, community members must feel they are active participants in building government, and that their participation can influence decisions about issues that affect them. We believe that technology can be a powerful tool for community engagement. It can help local government expand their reach to a broad cross-section of the community (and clearly see who is being left out), help people understand the issues at hand, encourage productive actions, and demonstrate how those actions are creating positive outcomes.

Typically, Code for America partners with cities through our flagship Fellowship program. The Fellowship embeds a team of software developers, designers, and product managers into a city department for eleven months to help improve a city service. However, in January 2015, we piloted a new type of “Senior Fellowship” program, a six-month partnership where one alumni Fellow worked with the City to develop new approaches and tools to support deep and broad community engagement.

During this project, the City of Boulder and Code for America partnered on “Housing Boulder,” the community engagement process that would inform Boulder’s 2015/2016 Housing Action Plan. While this case study documents our work on a housing-related project, we believe our engagement tactics are relevant to a much broader audience. As a result, this case study also offers a series of recommendations to help governments begin using 21st-century civic engagement strategies that creatively combine in-person and digital channels.

PARTNERSHIP OVERVIEW

Boulder, CO is a city in southeast Colorado located at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. It has around 100,000 residents, is a fairly liberal-leaning city, and is the home of the state’s largest public university, the University of Colorado. Because of its high rankings in health, education, art, food and beverages, cycling infrastructure, and proximity to outdoor recreation, Boulder is a very desirable place to live. All of these factors have contributed to increased growth in the City, and challenges around keeping it an affordable place to live. Like many U.S. cities, housing is a particularly sensitive issue and central to the affordability issues. For Boulder, key housing issues include:[1]

• A shrinking economic middle class (for the City of Boulder, this is a $65,000 to $150,000 annual household income).
• Detached single-family homes are increasingly only affordable to the wealthy.
• Attached condos and apartments are more affordable, but less appealing to families.
• Almost 60 percent of Boulder workers live in surrounding communities.
• Shifting demographics, especially aging, and changes in housing preferences.
• A need for more diverse housing options in existing residential areas.
• Lack of a strategy for guiding redevelopment in the City.

Housing Boulder was launched in 2013 as a comprehensive housing strategy to help determine community priorities for the expansion and preservation of diverse affordable housing choices in Boulder. Two central characteristics defined the Housing Boulder effort: broad community outreach to ensure an open, balanced, and fair process; and convenient and meaningful opportunities for residents, those who work in Boulder, and other interested parties to inform the planning process.

The City of Boulder had put together a comprehensive engagement strategy that focused on both in-person and virtual engagement strategies including large events, small working groups, posting information to the city’s website, and using tools and surveys to gather community feedback. While they were executing on this strategy, the City wasn’t completely satisfied with the results of the outreach.

The City had a commitment to involve members of the community that may not have participated in city planning processes in the past, and engaged with Code for America to complement the existing approach by testing new practices and tools to broaden their reach and ensure that underrepresented audiences were also participating in the dialogue.

Project Team

Code for America hired Becky Boone, a 2014 Code for America fellow in Denver, as a full-time Senior Fellow in Residence to live in Boulder and work with the city for six months. Her work was supplemented with strategic oversight and support from staff at the Code for America headquarters in San Francisco, CA.

In the City of Boulder, work was primarily concentrated in the City’s Communications Department and Department of Planning, Housing and Sustainability. The team also consisted of the Housing Boulder Process Subcommittee, which included members of the City Council and Planning Board. The Housing Boulder Process Subcommittee also partnered with working groups, which were comprised of members of the public interested in the City’s housing issues.

Code for America’s Approach

Over the past five years, Code for America has worked with local governments across the country and developed a number of tools designed to increase participation and engagement. We have seen that there are five key practices of effective 21st-century community engagement, codified as the Code for America Engagement Standard:

1. Reach: Defining the constituency you are trying to reach, with an emphasis on identifying those whose voices aren’t already represented.
2. Information: Providing relevant information that is easy to find and understand, and speaking with an authentic voice.
3. Spaces and Channels: Making use of a diversity of spaces, both online and offline, that meet people where they are.
4. Productive Actions: Identifying clear, concrete, and meaningful actions residents can take to reach desired outcomes.
5. Useful Feedback Loops: Making sure the public understands the productive impact of their participation, and that their actions have value.

The project was organized around this set of practices, and tailored to meet the needs of the City and residents of Boulder. To understand these needs and set a baseline to measure impact, Code for America conducted user research with the community and government staff.

User Research & Project Goals

Over the month of January 2015, Code for America conducted interviews with staff and community members. In speaking with the Community Planning & Sustainability Department, we observed that:

• While the department frequently asked for public feedback, they didn’t regularly let the community know how their participation and feedback led to productive outcomes.
• The department expressed concern that they were only hearing a select few voices that participate in public meetings, open houses, and media platforms; and these voices may not be representative of the “community at large.”
• The information that was being provided on the project website was difficult to navigate and understand.

From the community interviews, we saw that:

• The community didn’t have a good understanding of how planning processes work, or the function of City Council.
• People did not trust the existing process, they felt that the decisions were already made, and that their participation would not change or influence the outcomes.
• Many people said they were too busy to participate in in-person meetings.

Taking the project scope and user research into account, the City of Boulder and Code for America worked together to define the goals of the project, which were to:

• Stimulate interactive dialogue and collaboration with a cross-section of the community.
• Increase participation and move from one-way communication to multi-way dialogue.
• Create a new approach to community engagement that can be replicated on other projects and in other communities.

While our partnership with the City of Boulder specifically focused on building inclusive community engagement into a housing strategy, we believe these practices apply to community engagement efforts more broadly. The following are the approaches and tools we used to meet the City’s goals, and a set of recommendations for governments to deepen their own community engagement efforts

EXPANDING REACH

Our first step was to define the constituent groups who were currently participating, and set goals for increasing engagement with the population that was not participating. For Code for America, participation meant actively engaging in Boulder’s housing conversation through in-person or online channels.

Because the City was not formally collecting demographic data about meeting participants, we needed to develop a baseline. We collected this data using clicker polls and surveys, and found that majority of the people participating in the in-person events were homeowners between the ages of 56 and 74.

However, using a tool called Census Reporter, which allows users to easily sort through U.S. Census data, we got a better understanding of the demographics of the City. We found that:

• 65% of the population of Boulder is under 40.
• 52% of the population of Boulder rents their home.

This discrepancy in representation suggested a need to target younger residents in the City. The Pew Research Center’s internet user demographics indicate that 97% of adults ages 18-29 years
old, and 93% of adults ages 30-49 years old use the internet, we felt that driving online engagement would help us reach the City’s underrepresented demographic: renters under the age of 40.

Outcome

At the end of the partnership, public participation in online channels began to better reflect the City’s demographics. Thirty-six percent of participants in online forums were under the age of 36, while only 21% of those who attended the in-person meetings were in the same age category. In addition, 45% of those who participated online were renters, compared to 28% at in-person meetings.

RECOMMENDATIONS TO EXPAND YOUR REACH