Go Vocal’s blog—get insights, advice, and all the latest information on trends to help you foster meaningful engagement.
Engaging the public on the complex topic of local planning poses significant challenges. To explore how a well-crafted communications strategy can help overcome these hurdles, we sat down with Mark Prichard, the Head of Communications for West Oxfordshire, Cotswold, and Forest of Dean Councils (UK) to talk about their recent success.
Our local governments are becoming increasingly more tech-driven, yet digital participation isn’t always growing at the same speed. So, what are the main barriers to participation and how can digital tools help?
Running inclusive and participatory community engagement projects requires meeting people where they are. In part, that means having a plan for multilingual engagement to ensure that everyone in your community has the ability to participate. By removing language barriers, your community engagement efforts will be more inclusive, participatory, and representative.
Whether you’re working in the public or private sector, you’ll inevitably find yourself needing buy-in from community members and other stakeholders. Comprehensive plans, economic development plans, strategic plans, climate action plans, mobility plans – whatever your mandate, most planning processes share the same core components and necessitate public engagement.
Anonymous participation can be the key to unlocking engagement on topics that your community is divided on. We’ve helped clients host their fair share of such projects on CitizenLab platforms, and we heard the desire for an anonymous participation option loud and clear. Read more to learn how this latest feature can help increase engagement rates.
Born in 1981 in Taiwan, Audrey Tang has made waves as a software programmer and civic hacker-turned-Digital Minister.
An effective community engagement team, similar to a well-tuned orchestra, relies on a mix of diverse roles each playing their unique part in harmony. As for most teams, the key to success lies in bringing together people with different personalities, skills, and abilities. During his time as Go Vocal's Government Success Manager, Hugo De Brouwer explained which roles and skills an organisation needs to take participation to the next level.
Are you a firm believer in the offline old-school? Or do you choose the digital route whenever you can? Good news: when it comes to community engagement, you don’t have to pick one.
While citizens’ assemblies and panels have been around since the dawn of democracy, they’ve recently received increased attention as an effective means of resolving polarized debates and restoring public trust in democratic institutions.
Three years ago we asked ourselves, “How can natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning technologies help digital democracy platforms?” CitizenLab developed a feature that realizes just that.
When it comes to engaging with the public, social media is often a first instinct for many government officials. It is easy to access, widely utilised, and is often the first place people go to share their opinions on trending issues or topics in their communities. In fact, according to TechCrunch, 62% of adults now get their news from social media. But when it comes to meaningful and effective community engagement, especially if it’s in pursuit of inclusive and equitable policy-making, social media lacks the moderation, security, and deliberation required for officials to make truly representative decisions.
We’ve had a year of extreme weather. Around the world, cities of all sizes were ravaged by natural disasters.
Ever wondered how you match up on your community engagement efforts? We’ve got just the quiz for you. Answer a few questions, get a clear score of your efforts, and get resources to support you as you level up.
It sounds like a contradictio in terminis, like ‘sound of silence’ or ‘sensible Twitter debate’. But ‘slacktivism’, a contraction of ‘activism’ and uh, ‘slacking’, has become a widespread phenomenon that urges us to reflect on the nature of activism and participation.
Digital community engagement can complement offline engagement, but it doesn’t replace it. Offline participation methods are still widespread, as they’ve proven their value for many communities by allowing for deliberation and debate.
By engaging their communities and tapping into collective intelligence, cities across the globe can set better priorities and facilitate sustainable development on a local scale.
This article was first published on Apolitical
A comprehensive community engagement strategy is key to ensuring the smooth launch of – and satisfying outcomes for – projects. Before initiating a project, it’s best to set clear objectives, define roles and responsibilities, and select the most promising communication channels. Looking for some guidance? Discover CitizenLab’s Online Engagement Canvas and how it can help you design your strategy.
Community engagement platforms can increase civic participation, improve trust between residents and governments, and can help collect data that increases the impact of your projects. When you optimize the way you use social impact data, there’s a real opportunity to assess a project’s performance and outcomes, improve future processes, and run more efficient and ethical projects.
Objectively, climate change and environmental issues affect everyone. It’s also undeniable that marginalized groups are affected disproportionately by them, having traditionally lived and worked closest to pollution hazards such as hazardous waste facilities or in communities with a lack of clean water.
Deliberation and participation may seem like similar concepts. At their core, they kind of are: both deliberative and participatory democracies are systems that include community members in governance.
Have you ever logged into an analytics dashboard and felt daunted by all the numbers on your screen? You’re not alone. When trying to measure the effectiveness of your online community engagement efforts, the challenge is to sift through numerous available metrics and analyse the relevant ones so you can get to actionable insights.
When setting up a participation platform, the matter of trust is something that pops up quite often.
Participatory budgeting can be a powerful tool for local councils to educate, engage, and empower communities. As one of the methods ranking highest on the participation ladder, this kind of engagement project transfers considerable decision-making power to residents and stakeholders and thus maximises the many benefits of community engagement. But what does it all entail? And how do you get started?
Ensuring that your community engagement is successful and worthwhile requires full buy-in and continuous support from all levels of the community, starting with your organisation and eventually also your residents. It comes down to creating a culture of engagement. This doesn’t have to be daunting, and in the long run it will save you time, money, and headaches.
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 councils to empower their community members and co-create more pleasant, accessible, and equitable places.
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, local governments can make these modes of transport more accessible.
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 polarising 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.
