Go Vocal’s blog—get insights, advice, and all the latest information on trends to help you foster meaningful engagement.
Climate change, social equity, affordable housing, and sustainable mobility top the list of priorities for local governments. To address these effectively, there's an urgent need for better planning tools to meaningfully engage residents in the decision-making process. That’s why we’ve recently released a significant upgrade of our platform's interactive Mapping suite, turning it into a powerful toolbox for local governments and planners to harness collective wisdom and foster collaborative problem-solving.
Ensuring equal participation in decision-making processes for all community members is paramount. Digital accessibility stands at the forefront of this inclusive approach. By embracing accessibility, we help you unlock the potential for diverse voices to contribute, fostering a more representative and dynamic democratic process.
While the full participation ladder is made up of various methods for community engagement, sometimes local government projects simply necessitate a fast and decisive turnaround when consulting residents and other stakeholders. And that goes two ways, with residents also wanting options to engage with fellow community members’ ideas and see a more direct line of influence on local decision-making.
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.
