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Never mind the service delivery, feel the citizen engagement

By Martin Stewart-Weeks - posted Thursday, 24 May 2007


When managers are in “active listening” mode, they should be using the technologies of engagement to discern ideas and values within the community, to get a sense for the shifting attitudes towards existing policy priorities or more importantly, towards issues that might become priorities in the future.

“Cultivating” and “steering”, by contrast, tend to be more instrumental, providing citizen and customer feedback to specific proposals or policy initiatives. The key management decision is to select from a range of electronic engagement methods to suit the changing demands for input and deliberation across the policy cycle. Appendix B of the book provides a helpful catalogue of e-engagement tools according to complexity and interactivity and their respective strengths and weaknesses.

Talk of e-democracy and using new technologies for citizen engagement has prompted mixed reactions, ranging from renewed bursts of unsustainable techno-hype to deep scepticism.

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So let’s be clear about what this is not. It is not a call to live in a state of permanent and pervasive plebiscites where the community is polled on every decision and where a careless click of the mouse ends up delivering some kind of crude majoritarian judgment.

It is not about subverting the institutions of representative democracy or the call for courage, judgment and leadership by which they are sustained. Nor are the familiar techniques of engagement - the letter to your MP, a phone call, protesting on the streets - rendered either irrelevant or less useful simply because you can now blog your way into a debate or leave a pungent comment on a wiki.

What this timely guide suggests is that we need to confront, in an intelligent and practical way, the possibility that the tools and capabilities of “electronic engagement” are making new demands on all who are involved, in some way or another, in the business of governing and in nurturing a resilient public realm. And that should mean all of us.

This is an issue that doesn’t just affect perplexed politicians and public sector managers wondering just how far they should go in embracing technologies that disrupt settled traditions of policy making. It is as much a challenge to the rest of us as we work out how we might harness the potential of these new technologies to renovate the instincts and practices of self-governance.

In true Web 2.0 fashion, those who are keen to advance the discussion are not waiting for an invitation. In this world, fewer and fewer people are prepared to stand around waiting for the announcement of a public meeting or a new website where they can be “consulted” by a system that can sometimes appear to be either dismissive or uninterested. They will start a blog, create their own website or community of interest or set up a wiki where they will collaborate to fashion new principles of behaviour and culture to suit the possibilities of this new more open, user-driven and networked age.*

These are developments which bring the e-government project back to its original promise to not just improve but, in some cases, transform the way we govern. We will have to live with the unsettling ambiguity of making much of it up as we go (which actually turns out to be quite a good thing). But however we choose to respond - as politicians, as public managers, as citizens - these new capabilities for engagement, participation and trust can’t be ignored.

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* Here’s some examples you might like to explore - this is a New Zealand blog developing some operating principles for public managers using the new social networking tools: the Network of Public Sector Communicators. For example, “Openness: share content that is an honest reflection of your thinking and position. Don’t set up a social media channel to broadcast your risk-averse, legal-approved and comprehensively qa’ed copy. Remember, this is about engaging people, not boring them into apathy …”

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About the Author

Martin Stewart-Weeks lives in Sydney. Previously, Martin held positions with the Liberal Party of Australia, the NSW Cabinet Office and was Chief of Staff to a Minister in the Fraser Government.

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