Draft principles of good practice for deliberative processes for public decision-making:

For comments and discussion

Deliberative processes are one of the most innovative methods of fostering citizen participation in government. The OECD has collected a wealth of evidence as to how deliberative processes work across different countries. While there are a wide variety of models, analysis of the evidence collected reveals a number of common principles and good practices that may be of useful guidance to policy-makers seeking to develop and implement such processes.

The OECD has drawn these common principles and good practices together into a draft set of Principles of Good Practice for Deliberative Processes for Public Decision-making (draft “Good Practice Principles”). These draft Good Practice Principles could provide policy-makers with useful guidance as to the establishment of deliberative processes and the implementation of provisions 8 and 9 of the Recommendation on Open Government:

“8. grant all stakeholders equal and fair opportunities to be informed and consulted and actively engage them in all phases of the policy-cycle […]”; and

“9. promote innovative ways to effectively engage with stakeholders to source ideas and co-create solutions[…]”.

The draft Good Practice Principles are available on this Google doc for comment and discussion until 20th March 2020. Please submit your comments as as comment bubbles directly on the document or via email to opengov@oecd.org.

Following this, the draft Good Practice Principles, amended where relevant, will be presented to the OECD’s Public Governance Committee (PGC) and Working Party on Open Government (WPOG), as part of the forthcoming report ‘Catching the Deliberative Wave: Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions’ for consideration and discussion.

More information about the report and the OECD Open Government Unit’s work on innovative citizen participation is available here.