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Public Involvement Network News
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The Changing Landscape of Public Engagement
Pat Bonner
In 2006, Network News urged readers to look at “Public Deliberation: A Manager’s Guide to Public Engagement,”
by Carolyn Luckensmeyer and Lars Hasselblad Torres, of AmericaSpeaks . In the Introduction (page 7) the authors state: “In this guide we hope to make the case for two key shifts in public administration. The first is a shift from information exchange models to information processing models of citizen engagement. The second is a shift from citizens as consumers to active shapers of government policies and programs [Note source: Cornwall and Gaventa, 2001. From Users and Choosers to Makers and Shapers: Repositioning Participation in Social Policy. Brighton, UK: Institute for Development Studies] We believe that these two basic adjustments toward viewing citizen engagement as fundamentally knowledge building and necessarily influential within the administrative process can have profoundly positive benefits to the substance, transparency, legitimacy, and fairness of policy development as well as the general view of government held by citizens.”
The authors conclude (page 44) that: “Rethinking public engagement is a critical challenge for federal agencies in the 21st century. In an era of declining trust in public institutions, public flight from politics and urgent issues that require collaborative solutions, we encourage federal managers to rethink the way government engages with the public. We want to stress in particular the emerging role of government as convener, and to think about ways agencies can contribute to the growth of an infrastructure for engagement.” The authors recommend a series of six internal reforms that agencies can begin implementing on their own (page 45) and five external reforms (pages 45 -46) that may require “substantial, nearly government-wide reforms” to create the “infrastructure for engagement.”
In November 2006, The Work Foundation, a London-based research and consultancy organization, released “Deliberative Democracy and the Role of Managers,” by Louise Horner Rohit Lehki and Ricardo Blaug.
The researchers propose that “people who receive public services…should not be seen as passive consumers, but citizens with democratic rights, whose wishes need to be respected through a serious, renewed and continuous focus on their refined preferences and priorities. Honoring what the public values most, rather than hitting centrally imposed targets, should be the principal aim of all public servants.” In essence, they say that “the job of the public manager is to maximize public value.”
In March 2007, IBM’s Center for the Business of Government released “Reflections on 21st Century Government Management,” the first publication in its 2008 Presidential Transition Series. In it are essays by professors Donald Kettl (University of Pennsylvania) and Steven Kelman (Harvard).
Professor Kettl’s discussion focuses on “five imperatives for the performance of American government in the 21st century:
- a policy agenda that focuses more on problems than on structures
- political accountability that work more through results than on process
- public administration that functions more organically… , through heterarchy, than rigidly through hierarchy
- political leadership that works more by leveraging action than simply by making decisions
- citizenship that works more through engagement than remoteness” (page 9)
He notes on the last point (page 15) that: “effective 21st century government requires a new role for citizens, one that requires them to rethink their connection to – and involvement in- the pursuit of the public interest”
Professor Kelman suggests five trends -- if there is a focus on performance (page 40):
- performance measurement and management
- improved contract management
- interorganizational collaboration
- choice and competition
- efficiency-promoting budget reforms
On the trend of collaboration he notes (page 46): “For interorganizational collaboration between government and the private or voluntary sectors, the main driver of collaboration is the view that organizations outside government possess resources in terms of capacity and/or legitimacy that help in solving public problems, so collaboration enhances the ability to achieve public purposes. For interorganizational collaboration inside government, the main driver of collaboration is to try to overcome inevitable tensions and trade-offs among different organization-design departmentalization decisions.”
Professor Kelman suggests that collaborative governance across sectors is the newest and therefore the trend most likely to change and develop in the next decade. Among the policy and research areas needing work as the trend expands he includes (page 48):
- partnerships – why they work or don’t and the performance consequences in different contexts
- the special managerial skills and mind-set required for the newer kinds of partnerships
- democratic theory questions about public-private collaborations – i.e., when do they add legitimacy to public actions (the assumption of the enthusiasts) and when do they raise questions about illegitimate interest group control of policy formulation.
The Center has launched an interactive, web-based conversation and invited readers of the essays to offer their reactions. The Center has asked the following questions to encourage response:
- Do you think Professors Kettl and Kelman got it “right in their essays?
- Are there other new trends …that you would like to add to the discussion?
- Are there topics or subjects that you think the IBM Center for the Business of Government should commission research reports on in the coming months? Are there real life examples of public sector organizations demonstrating new approaches to management that are worthy of case studies?
Most recently, on April 4, 2007, the Working Group on Community Engagement in Health Emergency Planning of The Center for Biosecurity (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Baltimore, MD) released recommendations to mayors, governors, and health officers on why and how to involve local civic networks in preparedness.
The Working Group notes that: “In the context of a health emergency, strong partnerships between authorities and local civic networks can augment officials’ ability to govern in a crisis, improve application of communally held resources, and reduce social and economic costs”
Three of the findings directly relate to the changing relationships between government and the public:
- Adept crisis managers engage community partners prior to an event, and do not just hone their media skills (Community engagement…is a two-way exchange of information that allows for joint learning and problem solving over time and that outlines the responsibilities of authorities, local opinion leaders, and citizens at-large about a matter of public concern.)
- Partnerships provide leaders the wisdom and courage to weigh tradeoffs and confront difficult scenarios. (The community engagement model keeps a dialogue going about complex issues, and it brings together diverse parties to create and implement solutions. This kind of collaboration has helped communities navigate through tough issues that combine personal values with scientific and technical information, including “brown field” management, environmental health, and nature conservation.)
- Certain ingredients are necessary for genuine community engagement. (…community engagement in health emergency policy requires top level support, proper budgeting, dedicated personnel, careful planning, and tracking of success. …involving citizens in the policymaking process will more likely succeed if laid upon some prior structure. Deliberate outreach—through trusted intermediaries—to groups …typically absent from the policymaking table will be necessary to include the perspectives of the poor, the working class, the less educated, recent immigrants, and people of color.)
One of the Working Group’s recommendations is that: “Federal authorities should make a sustained national investment in local health emergency preparedness systems that collaborate with civic groups and incorporate citizen input.”
Current examples of intergovernmental collaborations, multi level public/private collaborative problem solving partnerships in public engagement and new partnerships to support collaborative work follow.