Go Vocal’s blog—get insights, advice, and all the latest information on trends to help you foster meaningful engagement.
One of our Public Square podcast episodes takes us to the bustling metropolis of New York City, where the Public Engagement Unit (PEU), under the leadership of Adrienne Lever has developed an innovative approach to community engagement. Our conversation with her unveiled key insights and actionable strategies from their work, offering a blueprint for other cities and organizations aiming to enhance community engagement and public service effectiveness.
Scaling our impact while practicing transparency and equity
The terms “community engagement” and “community development” are sometimes used interchangeably. After all, both ideas are based on the strength and improvement of our communities. Nonetheless, there are a few key distinctions between the two concepts. Let’s take a closer look at what they are.
Participatory budgeting — or, in plain English, involving community members in the allocation of public funds —is a powerful tool for cities to empower communities and co-create more pleasant, accessible, and equitable cities.
When local governments tackle comprehensive mobility planning, they also undertake the important task of expanding and improving infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians. By ensuring that bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure is safe, expansive, and comfortable, cities can make these modes of transport more accessible.
COVID-19 forced us to evaluate how and when we share space, and nowhere was that more visible than on once-busy streets and sidewalks. Americans cut their driving in half, roads were closed to cars in order to create public spaces, and outdoor restaurants (or “streeteries”) popped up seemingly overnight.
In recent years, citizens’ assemblies, panels, and committees have increasingly been implemented at all levels of government across the globe. They’ve been particularly useful to address polarizing issues such as climate change, with the infamous Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat commissioned by French President Macron as a recent national-level example.
Whether it’s a commitment to sustainable urban development, waste and pollution control, managing biodiversity, or educating households and businesses on environmental policy, local governments play a critical role in moving forward environmental programs in their local communities. Because environment and sustainability projects are so complex and far-reaching, when creating plans to tackle these issues it’s important that local governments engage their communities to identify priority issues and co-create actional solutions.
Survey, idea collection, participatory budget… when launching a community engagement project, there are many participation methods to choose from.
Many local governments struggle to include more residents in their projects and often find that some voices are much louder than others, and many people aren’t heard at all. To remedy this, cities are trying to increase their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts.
In the aftermath of a polarising debate, public servants are expected to put the pieces of the puzzle back together. But how do you bridge this divide and inspire your community to move forward together? The answer could lie in citizen participation.
When it comes to community engagement, most governments’ first concerns are the associated costs. Large-scale projects involving thousands of people must be incredibly costly, right? Well… not always. An online community engagement platform can reduce the cost of participation drastically. Let’s dive deeper into the investment and what you get in return.
Trust is a two-way street. To convince your community that your engagement efforts and digital community engagement platform are trustworthy, they need to feel heard and included. In our experience, it takes time to build trust, but there are several good practices to help you get started.
In a time where problems with governance can be overwhelming, governments are frantically searching for a solution. There is a constant debate about how exactly a government should go about facilitating change, whether that be with incremental improvement or radical change.
Oftentimes it can feel like your community engagement project is just one of the many things competing for your residents’ time. As a result, you’ve probably found yourself wondering how you can make engagement more appealing and participation more exciting. The good news is that there are plenty of creative ways to engage your community members! While we always encourage local governments and organizations to run meaningful engagement projects, that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for fun and lighthearted activities. After all, your community engagement platform should be a space where your residents and other stakeholders want to return to when there are opportunities to provide input and deliberation.
If you’re reading this post, chances are you’re probably already convinced that citizen participation is a good thing. However, what you might not be so convinced about is that involving citizens in decision-making can be done without huge amounts of resources. And yet, it’s true thanks to digital participation!
Local governments are tasked with some of the toughest decisions for future-proof policy and program planning. Making those decisions behind closed boardroom doors, in silos, is not the solution. Turning to community members and tapping into real-time community data is a better alternative. A digital community engagement platform will get you more data, speed up data processing, and makes it easier to extract actionable insights.
When we’re juggling work, school, hobbies, chores and family time, participating in your local government seems like a great idea in theory. But how do you possibly make time for it? The good news is that participation doesn’t have to be difficult or time-consuming. There are many things you can do as a citizen to uplift your community and the people in it. Some of them will cost you little to no effort, but with such a tangible impact on your neighborhood, how could we ever call them ‘small things’?
From shaping the future city of Lancaster to improving parks and rec in Carlisle, PA, surveys are used across our platforms to gauge a community’s opinions on specific topics. Surveys and polls are easy to set up and provide a low-threshold way for community members to weigh in on policy topics, which explains their popularity as a participation method. Still, they only scratch the surface of what community engagement can really accomplish. Let’s examine a survey tool’s main strengths and limitations.
Below, we are listing 5 metrics, tools, solutions and frameworks which are useful to measure how governments are performing when it comes to implementing e-participation initiatives. This article is the second of our e-Participation series. If you haven’t read “The Framework That Will Make You Understand E-participation” yet, hop over there and read it first.
Peñalolén (241,599 inhabitants), a Chilean commune in the province of Santiago, launched a participatory budget to give citizens a say in their neighborhoods’ urban planning projects. In each neighborhood, citizens could voice their opinions and vote on what they think deserves the municipality’s investment. Over 24,450 inhabitants participated in this project via the online platform.
At Go Vocal, we believe that a combination of synchronous and asynchronous participation opportunities makes for the most qualitative processes. Before COVID shook the world, these synchronous opportunities were mostly happening offline. Public engagement sessions, town halls, focus groups, and citizens’ panels were almost entirely organized as in-person events. However, the past year has shown that we can – and should – reconsider.
At last year’s COP26 – the United Nations Climate Change Conference – countries agreed to address coal’s role as the most polluting fossil fuel. But not before the wording was watered down from “phasing-out” to “phasing-down” coal power. Since then, the UN’s António Guterres warned in April that “governments and corporations are…adding fuel to the flames by continuing to invest in climate-choking industries” and yet, just this month – on the heels of this year’s COP27 – the UK approved a new coal mine. One step forward, three steps back? Unfortunately, this is just one example from many governments’ missteps on climate action. If the world’s democracies are failing on the climate crisis, how can we motivate them to step up to the challenge? In our experience, participatory democracy is up for the task.
You know that your residents want to be more involved in local decision-making, but how do you involve them both meaningfully and efficiently? Community engagement can help by facilitating more active collaboration with the residents, businesses, visitors, and other stakeholders in your community.
In recent years, “Civic Tech” and “GovTech” have become popular catchphrases, often loosely used to describe innovations in the field of government and citizen participation. But are they really the same thing?
