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?

One of my colleagues noted that the guidelines are almost a website in themselves, being rather substantial. Whilst I can understand the need for guidelines, much of the guidance within them already exists, as the Canadian ones demonstrate by the links provided to ethical ones and many other government policies as their context becomes appropriate. Will anybody seriously read such a dry and very lengthy web page, without even following the links?

One of the main difficulties in my view is where the responsibility for the maintenance of social media lies. Often media relations people lack the ‘nous’ to use them efficiently, sometimes the web or IT staff take a too dry or technical approach for them to be employed successfully. Some government bodies have transferred the web to a front-facing customer service, which if not sufficiently linked to the media staff or public relations, could also create issues. Similarly staff need to be reminded that comments on Facebook and elsewhere may land them in hot water with their employers, and may even cost them their job, as the recent Apple employee case emphasises!

This is the reason why I am for promoting Canadian practice. The Canadians went through a recession some years ago and as a result they looked at government services in-depth and how they might improve them. As a result they developed guidance and a sample was in one of my blog posts in January 2008. In June 2011 the White House issues its own. These are some of the key demands -

“Establish mechanisms to solicit customer feedback on government services and use such feedback regularly to make service improvements, such as:

Collect ongoing, timely, actionable customer feedback to identify early warning signals of customer service issues; and conduct customer satisfaction surveys and report the results publicly to provide transparency and accountability.

Improve the customer experience by adopting proven customer service best practices and coordinating across service channels (including on-line, phone, in person, and mail services), such as:

Develop a process for evaluating the entire customer experience, ensuring consistency across service channels; coordinate with other agencies serving the same customers, identifying opportunities for using common forms and application materials and processes; analyze customer preferences for interactions and redirect resources from less preferred and more costly channels (such as printed materials) to preferred, less costly, and more widely accessible channels (such as Internet and mobile services), where appropriate and applicable; and ensure access and usability for people with disabilities and hard-to-reach and disadvantaged customer populations.”

I have often heard it said in central government that local government is frequently more advanced than central government. I think that these six pages demonstrate that local government (including in the USA) is further advanced in serving the citizen than central government.  So why do we keep looking west, when locally or north-west may better provide solutions? In fact Lisa Nelson who is responsible for Research and Strategic Partnerships within Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies at the American GSA has pointed the W3C e-Government Interest Group towards a new Deloitte report for the Canadian government “Innovation in government – Conversations with Canada’s public service leaders“. The report spells out what are essentially cultural changes to the way government behaves, not unlike the recently published Socitm strategy for UK public services – “Planting the flag“.

Ian Watmore, Chief Operating Officer at the Cabinet Officer is one of those involved in this production, along with former Government CIO John Suffolk. Ian was reported by Computer Weekly welcoming the report at the launch event.

The word that reverberates through the report is ‘agile’, but also we are finally being expected to consult the user. The nature of agile is that it encourages ‘commoditisation’ of applications, and if the government were to follow the suggested Australian route of ‘opt-out’, there is more chance of not re-inventing wheels.

There appears to be a lot of buy-in across central government to the report, so perhaps we should wait and see what happens. However, I gather the ‘skunkworks‘ is in operation, so the fruits of their labours may soon be evident!

This turned out to be extremely appropriate, since all three papers in the stream my paper was in identified the missing link between academic research and the e-government practitioners.  In this excellent, small and readable 46 page guide, what Marson and Heintzman conclude is the key to Canadian success, it is the implementation of “action research focused on obtaining feedback from citizens that can be quickly translated by public managers into service improvment that citizens want and notice, including single windows, electronic gateways and service clusters.”  They also list “service improvment methods that focus rigourously on the drivers of citizen satisfaction with government service delivery.” 

Their documenting of the last ten years in Canada reinforces what this blog has been saying, that is, the need for web managers, IT managers, customer service managers and service managers to focus upon citizen satisfaction, but not as interpreted by by annual surveys or ad-hoc measurements, but instead by the continued monitoring of service delivery across the multiple channels.

The Canadians employed their academics and practitioners to prove that the customer is always right – but as to how far one takes their advice is down to the politicians and their budget management.