In the first of a series of three Blog posts about the new UK Government Consultation Principles Edward Andersson looks at the initial reactions from the engagement community.
The Cabinet Office launched their new Consultation Principles on the 17 of July (Which replaced the old Code of Conduct for Consultation) while I was on holiday and it has taken a few weeks for me to find the time to write about the changes. In this first blog post about the principles I’ll look at stakeholder reactions. A second blog post will provide some Involve commentary and a final post will provide links to further guidance to support civil servants. The Principles received a mixed reception. They were welcomed by The Consultation Institute who said it would help make consultation “fit for purpose and not unnecessarily onerous”. Online Engagement expert Steph Gray was cautiously optimistic but worried that civil servants might choose a simplistic interpretation that minimized their interaction with the public and stakeholders. He also said “‘digital by default’ is at risk of becoming a weasel phrase akin to ‘evidence based policymaking’ or ‘social marketing’ which can be met with a nod to a SurveyMonkey response form or a tweeted launch.” He also mentioned the excellent Participation Principles written by Participation Cymru for the Welsh Government. “Compact Voice” was critical of the new principles and felt they might prevent organisations from responding or engaging with policy decisions which affect them and Chris Whitehouse characterized the new principles as “an incredibly arbitrary system that will result in too little time being given to consultations on key policies and will severely limit the opportunities charities have to engage in public policy development”. In our next blog post I will provide some Involve commentary on the new Principles. Edward Andersson discusses what digital technology means for engagement and what the strengths and weaknesses are of engaging online. A week ago I gave a talk at Government Digital Services on Digital and face to face engagement. This post is a summary of what I said.
First of all I acknowledge that Involve is different from many others in the digital engagement field; we’re not software producers, we’re not trying to sell software and we focus on engagement as whole rather than digital engagement. Our mission is to make the public sector into better commissioners of dialogue and engagement. I’ll start with the question to what degree digital technology represents a breakthrough? Two quotes illustrate how differently new technology is interpreted: “The world is poised on the cusp of an economic and cultural shift as dramatic as that of the Industrial Revolution.” Steven Levy (Wired journalist) “The Internet is a telephone system that’s gotten uppity.” Clifford Stoll (US Author and astronomer) My view is that both quotes are true, in their own ways. We tend to overestimate changes in the short term (where many people hype up relatively mundane technologies) and underestimate the shifts in the longer term. There is a tendency among consultants to create artificial distinctions between digital/online engagement and face to face engagement. Human nature is the same in both settings and of course a badly designed online consultation without a clear purpose is just as much a waste of time as a face to face process without a purpose. I think people get excited about digital for the wrong reasons. People often think that the key defining characteristics of digital are: Speed –The internet is making things go faster, but the obvious question is ‘so what?’. The really big qualitative differences in terms of speed of sending messages happened in the 1860s. Nowadays the speed of communication is already faster than human beings can react to. Scale –The internet does allow a larger number of people to take part than was possible before. It is a great thing but it can also lead people to focus too much on the number of people taking part. Many of the websites or articles which have attracted the most number of hits do so for the wrong reasons; scandals are great for hit rates but not for much else. Cost–The Internet does have the possibility of reducing the costs of engagement; while this is true it is often oversold by consultants. There are also very good reasons for shifting to Digital which are often overlooked: Enabling -Digital technologies allows the third sector and individuals to self-organise and do things that in the past the council would have to do. This opens up tremendous opportunities (if we are willing to give up some control). Networking –the Internet opens up possibilities of networking people who wouldn’t normally meet, for reasons of time, space and who they are. Flexible -finally the nature of digital information allows comparison, aggregation, mashing up data, and ability to make it easily accessible. And to make lots of different sorts of outputs which would not be possible using pen and paper. There are of course areas were online engagement doesn’t work as well as face to face, for example:
But of course it is not an either/or. In many cases face to face and online complement each other; and of course let’s not forget that digital technology can be used in face to face meetings as well. Adding digital technology to face to face engagement allows:
The award winning Geraldton 2029 process in Western Australia has made use of a wide array of face to face and digital processes in determining the future of the town. 4000 people have been actively involved through world cafés, online surveys, online moderated deliberation, 21st century town hall meetings™, community events to celebrate milestones including BBQs. They have also used the local Newspaper facebook page heavily. What I like about the Geraldton process is how they have understood the strengths of face to face and online and worked with both. - The Crowdsourced Icelandic constitution has been in the news a lot over the last few months. The Constitutional council has drafted and posted clauses each week open for public comment, and has live streamed their proceedings. The focus has often been on the online elements but it was made possible by in depth face to face deliberation, both from the elected Constitutional Council and a randomly selected national forum. So to sum up my key points from my presentation:
Happy New Year! I thought I’d take the opportunity to reflect on where we are heading and what we might see in the next 12 months. 2012 as a year has been associated with all kinds of vague and misleading theories about Maya prophesies of impending apocalypse. Even though we are unlikely to see the end of the world, 2012 is still very likely to be challenging.
Take my predictions with a pinch of salt. As Niels Bohr quipped: “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future”. It is humbling to remember that in 1962 the Decca Recording Company rejected the Beatles because “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.”. Let’s hope that my predictions are more successful. Turbulence is almost a given; it is instructive to reflect on where we were a year ago. None of the big events of 2011 were ones that we could have predicted. The Arab Spring has toppled seemingly unmovable dictatorships, seemingly calm streets in England erupted in riots and City centres of financial capitals around the world are occupied by disparate and angry protestors. What we expect of democracy is likely to be in transition. One thing is sure for 2012 –we’re bound to be surprised. Another prediction is we are likely to see frustrations with democratic decision making spill into violence in parts of the world. For states in Middle East and elsewhere the coming year will be dangerous (as recent clashes in Tripoli and Cairo shows). Dictatorships seem to be less dangerous than the transition period to democracy and there is plenty that can go wrong. On a lesser scale communities in the UK and the rest of Europe are experiencing similar transitions and the corresponding risk of violence. We are also likely to see increased non-violent conflict -2011 has seen a record number of court cases around engagement and consultation, from the Royal Brompton Hospital to London Councils. This is a development I view with unease. Judges are in no way equipped to rate the quality of consultations. It is also likely to encourage Councils to take a ‘back covering’ strategy, rather than focussing on a genuine conversation. We’re likely to see more court cases, and more conflict about engagement, consultation and the big society. The economy will continue to be a problem. With fewer staff on hand the need to build skills in conflict resolution and facilitation will become acute in many areas. Funding engagement work with clear links to efficiencies and savings won’t be a problem; funding work which makes economic sense over the longer term and where investment is needed will. Politicians will still mention and support engagement, at least on paper. There seems to be cross party agreement that politics is broken. Expect at least a few high profile initiatives around this topic launched by politicians. Innovation. The flip side of all this turbulence is that there is a willingness to challenge old ways of working. We’ve seen Councils willing to embrace new ways of working, for example through the NESTA Creative Councils programme (which we are assisting on). Involve and RSA will shortly publish a pamphlet looking at examples of Radical Engagement –genuinely different approaches to citizen influence and we hope we’ll see many more new examples in the year to come. 2012 probably won’t bring a Maya Apocalypse. It will however be a year to remember; difficult but ultimately worthwhile. So what about New Year’s Resolutions? For myself as a democracy practitioner I’ll suggest the following:
Here’s a presentation I did for the Alberta Climate Dialogue back in September. It is on ‘nudge, think and shove‘ and how these three concepts impact on citizen engagement in climate change policy and mitigation. Sept, 2011 – ABCD / Centre for Public Involvement / City of Edmonton meeting Edward Andersson wonders if we’ve focused on the wrong duty. Should we worry about losing the Duty to Prepare Sustainable Community Strategies?
Much has been written on this website and others about the Duty to Involve and its repeal. However as I pointed out in one of my previous blog there is much besides the Duty to Involve that is being scrapped in the new statuary guidance. One of these requirements that is being abolished is the Duty to Prepare Sustainable Community Strategies. In many ways it has been the neglected step child of the debate whilst the Duty to Involve has hogged most of the attention; at least in our little corner of the world. Henry Peterson who has advised the LGA on localism recently sent me an email about the two duties. He said (and I quote): “Personally, I would not argue against the repeal of the Duty to Involve. More important and worrying, in my view, is the proposed repeal of the Duty to Prepare a Sustainable Community Strategy. It can be argued that this is a ‘red tape’ duty, and that councils who find SCS preparation and publication a useful exercise will continue to carry out this activity. But repeal of the duty takes away one of the few exercises which have been common across all English authorities for over a decade, and which the public had begun to connect with.” So is Henry right? Will the Duty to Prepare Sustainable Community Strategies be the duty we will actually miss? Has Involve been distracted needlessly by the focus on the repeal of the Duty to Involve? To answer this question we need to ask ourselves what the duty does and how it does it. The duty came into being with the Local Government Act 2000; for a more detailed description we can look at the now defunct 2008 ‘Creating Strong, Safe and Prosperous Communities’ guidance document: “The purpose of a Sustainable Community Strategy is to set the overall strategic direction and long-term vision for the economic, social and environmental wellbeing of a local area – typically 10-20 years – in a way that contributes to sustainable development in the UK. It tells the ‘story of the place’ – the distinctive vision and ambition of the area, backed by clear evidence and analysis.” The guide goes on to instruct that the council needs to seek the participation of ‘named partners’, including health and police partners. The duty is vague on how to implement the strategy and on what the strategy should look like. Depending on your view this might be a good or a bad thing; leaving space for local initiatives or a meaningless paper exercise. Some of the same criticisms of the Duty to Involve can probably be levelled at the Duty to Prepare Sustainable Community Strategies:
As a local resident or civil servant
Edward Andersson reflects on what the new version of the Best Value Statuary Guidance means for engagement and consultation.
The government has now developed its new Best Value Statutory Guidance to replace the 2008 statutory guidance “Creating Strong, Safe and Prosperous Communities”. The new guidance is a very short document and the government has retained its intention to repeal the Duty to Involve. The consultation on this a few months back prompted vigorous debate on our blogs here, here and here as well as on the wider web . In large part this was because the government proposed to repeal the 2009 Duty to Involve. The guidance is only two pages long. It does cover a lot of ground in those two pages. For those who worried that the government was intending to roll back engagement completely there is encouraging news; the document does mention the 1999 Duty to Consult and expresses that “Authorities must consult representatives of council tax payers, those who use or are likely to use services provided by the authority, and those appearing to the authority to have an interest in any area within which the authority carries out functions. Authorities should include local voluntary and community organisations and small businesses in such consultation. This should apply at all stages of the commissioning cycle, including when considering the decommissioning of services.” Davy Jones has written a good blog on what the Guidance says on engagement; including the full text of the law which is very useful. Personally I’m worried by where the guidance takes us, purely from an involvement and engagement practitioner.
I’d like to see government as a whole shifting more towards ongoing, relationship driven engagement, as opposed to short term, one off issues driven consultation. I don’t think this new guidance does this. It does say that “authority should actively engage the organisation and service users as early as possible before making a decision” and hopefully they will make use of the excellent Engagement Cycle to make sure that consultations around commissioning are part of an ongoing dialogue as opposed to one off effort. Realistically though I do worry that a narrow duty to consult may mean more last minute rubber stamp consultation and less of what we actually need: genuine dialogue between public services and the people that use them in a locality. That’s my take on it; I’d be very interested to hear your views on the government’s new guidance. |
Edward Andersson
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