From the Canadian Public Policy Forum comes “Rescuing Public Policy – the case for Public Engagement” (PDF 1.58 MB, 188 pages) by Dan Lenihan. The book is based upon Dan’s practical experience in the Public Engagement Project carried out in a number of Canadian provinces, territories and organizations, and is the final report of that work.

Lenihan takes to task what he describes as the ‘consumer model of politics’, something we should all recognise, where the politicians focus on the small vote-catching issues to the detriment of the big problems faced by nations and economies. He then proceeds to offer an alternative approach to engagement. The document is not about e-participation, or even social media, for as he so clearly recognises, this would be putting the cart before the horse, and there is a need to gain trust through proper participative methods before introducing additional tools.

At the outset Lenihan clearly identifies central government politicians failure to realise the complexity involved in any delivery due to the existing structures and layers within government. He also recognises that the public require a level of consultation and transparency, that is nothing to do with transparency after the event, which seems to be a UK government trend, the citizen wants to be consulted at the outset, even if its to provide their support!

On page 37 Lenihan states “real solutions to complex issues not only require that stakeholders, citizens and communities be fully involved in the policy process; they require genuine collaboration between governments and the public”, unfortunately as he describes earlier Clinton (in his second term), and Blair were only interested in winning and so employed the marketeers to drive their ‘consumer model’ of politics.

At page 52 he describes his “Golden Rule of Public Engagement. It says that, if governments really want citizens and stakeholders to take some ownership of the issues, it is not enough simply to ask them for their views on the solutions. Governments must engage the public in a real dialogue where all parties work through the issues and arrive at the action plan together”. How I wish so many politicians and ‘public servants’ would learn this.

The third chapter is given over to Lenihan comparing some alternative approaches to engagement leading up to the fourth chapter that focuses on joining up services and how a participative approach can assist (co-design). Chapter five then examines some of the difficulties put in the way of the employing participation, particularly by the politicians or policy makers. The remainder of the book carries on to summarise the work, explain how politics might be reclaimed as a result of implementing the approaches outlined. There’s also a brief history of work carried out in New Brunswick. The work concludes with an appendix including an evaluation framework for collaboration with benchmarks outlined.

Given the recent dialogue around participation it will be interesting to see how the worldwide community sees Lenihan’s proposals and whether these can be further developed. However I remain skeptical about politicians and policymakers being truly willing to dilute their own control to the masses, but maybe I’m wrong?

David Newman, part of a group that produced one of the big ideas for the digital agenda (diagram presented at http://cirn.wikispaces.com/Putting+users+at+the+heart+of+the+Digital+Agenda+for+Europe) pointed to the failing of the report that it didn’t meet the latter two of the four stages people go through when integrating digital tools into their lives and work: 1. Accessibility, 2. Skills and competences 3. Effective use 4. Empowerment.

I then supported him stating my own argument is for feedback loops as standard, that are consistently employed to change systems. However my BIG concern is that government and therefore participation is so BIG that even those elected or employed in it can’t appreciate the magnitude/complexity, so how the hell does the citizen? This brings with it the issue of where to start and end feedback loops. I entirely agreed that the measures named were of little use and had argued this point endlessly!

Andy Williamson supported this saying his research ”clearly shows that engagement becomes effective when you ask, listen, respond, and act”. Professor Stephen Coleman agreed with the preceding arguments whilst asking ”which metrics should the report have been measuring?” Ella Taylor-Smith, inquiring about the strategy the report was linked to, raising the issue that digital participation was described in another Scotish strategy as “people’s ability to gain access to digital technology, and understand how to use it creatively. Increased digital participation can improve people s quality of life, boost economic growth and allow more effective delivery of public services.” Which hardly the conventional definition of e-participation. Andy Williamson then went on to raise the matter that there appeared to be no actual ‘voting citizens’ involved in the charter.

At about this point Steven Clift jumped in with a lengthy commentary around work he was due to publish on ‘Inclusive Social Media’ – there were an extensive number of measures in the proposition. Pedro Prieto-Martin of CKYOSEI stepped in suggesting that it was a matter of differing definitions. He also mentioned their own paper “The e-(R)evolution will not be funded“  which paid some attention to evaluation issues, especially around EU-funded projects. Pedro was also concerned at the number of evaluation criteria that required collection and analysis. He then pointed out that their association claimed that the best way to advance the field was to “closely align eParticipation research with citizens and civil society needs”. ( http://www.ckyosei.org/docs/EParticipationResearchOnServiceOfCivilSociety.pdf ) He proposes viral growth, satisfaction, and impact as potential measures.

Ella reported that they also used a final analysis based on input, actions, output, outcomes and impact in the final results report of the HUWY project. (Avalilable here: http://www.iidi.napier.ac.uk/c/publications/publicationid/13367375 ). In terms of definition she preferred that of Ann Macintosh – “use of information and communication technologies to broaden and deepen political participation by enabling citizens to connect with one another and with their elected representatives” Macintosh, A. (2006) eParticipation in Policy-making: the research and the challenges . In P. Cunningham & M. Cunningham (Eds.) Exploiting the Knowledge Economy: Issues, Applications and Case Studies; IOS press, ISBN 1-58603-682-3, pp.364-369, which seems a pretty good one to me too. She also directs to a wider view of participation – http://pathwaysthroughparticipation.org.uk/.  Ann Macintosh also concluded her contribution by informing us that she has “been working recently with colleagues, Simon Smith and Jeremy Millard, considering the issue of eParticipation evaluation. The results of our study can be found in a paper soon to be published in the International Journal of Electronic Governance. In it we present a framework for evaluating eParticipation, distinguishing between factors which lie at least partly within the control of the stakeholders in an eParticipation initiative and factors which are largely external. It uses a three-layered impact assessment framework distinguishing between outputs, outcomes and impacts. Its multi-layered character is intended to prompt evaluators to consider links to high-level policy goals, culturally-specific understandings of eParticipation and the chain of transformations which condition long-term impacts. In this way one can, not only, move from outputs to impact but also select different evaluation criteria depending on purpose/stage.” This is a paper that should prove very interesting.

One of the difficulties in the debate is the difference in political structures between the US and the rest of the democratic world. My own view is that in representative democracies, participation is difficult to deliver without potentially tilting the balance of the representatives power, so they don’t tend to be in favour of it – something I labelled in my dissertation one of the ‘antinomies of e-government’. The issue of definitions is not unusual, again in my dissertation I spent a number of pages going through a range of definitions of ‘e-government’ before even trying ‘e-democracy’, which is equally debatable, as will be ‘e-participation’.

P.S. My apologies if I’ve missed or misquoted people – it did go on for pages…and its all here on Democracy Online.

• No single body is responsible for coordinating means testing across government
• At present there is no clear picture of how the entire benefit system affects claimants’ incentives to work
• Departments do not understand the impact of administering more means-tested benefits locally
• The benefit system is difficult to understand and places a high burden on claimants
• administrative costs of means-tested benefits vary so significantly
• Real-time information systems will be difficult to implement

So, if we have got an unmanageable set of legislation that makes life difficult and expensive for all levels of public service, who is going to sort it out? This self-induced complexity has been frequently discussed here, especially around the ‘New Conditionality’ covered by Paul Henman in Governing electronically - we make processes and systems complex because we believe that ICT will sort it all out for us – it may, but at an enormous cost, especially if the systems are outsourced or poorly designed. Let’s keep it simple or pay the stupid price!

1. If you ask for feedback, present a summary when and how you say you will – if you are not going to feedback be prepared not to get any!

2. Don’t treat it as a short term project – if the citizen is being expected to expend time, be committed

3. Present the results within a reasonable timescale. Politicians can some times make this difficult, but if so, explain this too…

The post concludes that “Citizen involvement isn’t simple, but neither is it rocket science. An epic fail from what I can see.” As the author says its not rocket science. Imagine you are in the citizen’s shoes when you design these exercises – wouldn’t you want to know that someone was reading your feedback and actually doing something with it?

A key conclusion of the report is that “internet non-use is not related to infrastructure or to having the right “materials” as the majority of non-users are yet to pass the first barrier of recognising the benefits and need for the internet. The review concludes that actions should be focusing attention on “older people, those of low incomes, those who are not working and those with low levels of educational qualification”. This may provide some further guidance to those working with Race Online 2012 to increase the education around the benefits of being online. It also states that “The Carnegie UK Trust is proposing to carry out research in 2012 to explore in greater depth the reasons why some people may not take up digital technology; and highlight effective interventions which have been successful in encouraging and supporting more people to get online”, which may further assist the educational work.

Whilst this is not a reason to stop developing online government services, it does mean that multiple channels will have to continue until mediated provision (which has its own cost) or 100% shift is enabled by increased participation.

The reports produced a very healthy debate on UKIE-EDem and DW-X,not just in the UK and Scotland but across the world, which I hope to summarise in due course since there were some very interesting points made by the people who know!