This article is written by Don Lenihan and Damian Carmichael, Co-Chairs of the OGP Practice Group on Open Dialogue and Deliberation and Iain Kendal, Federal Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources, Government of Australia

A recent article in Apolitical grabbed our attention – Alice Whitehead’s ‘There’s a reason not everyone loves citizen engagement’. If you haven’t read it yet, you really should.

It neatly captures some of the tensions public servants feel when it comes to co-design. Alice describes four “common objections” that policymakers raise when she calls for more co-design in the policy process.

These objections certainly hit home with us, and not just because we worked on the Open Government Partnership report that Alice’s article cites. Rather, we have heard these objections before. We want to give you some answers that can help change people’s minds and offer practical ways to engage citizens to improve policy advice to government.

We’ll start by distinguishing between two kinds of issues.

Expert vs. Values Issues

An expert issue is one that can be solved mainly by evidence and/or expertise. Creating safety regulations for public buildings is an example.

This kind of problem-solving relies on information, methodology, and expertise, and officials usually don’t need the general public’s help in formulating advice to government.

By contrast, a values issue requires trade-offs between subjective f_actors_, such as values or priorities. People’s views are usually grounded in values. Take poverty. Setting objectives for an anti-poverty programme will involve value judgements, and these values will have to be balanced if they conflict.

In reality, many issues are a mix of the two and require an understanding of both values and factual evidence.

The lesson, we think, is that public servants can no longer make these trade-offs alone and behind closed doors, as they used to.

Imagine making a choice between several proposed sites for a new hospital. The process will include a series of studies (traffic, environmental impact, and so on) that highlight the pros and cons of different option. Yet, despite this effort, the results may be inconclusive. There may be several sites that are equally suitable. In the end, the outcome may be decided by how high a particular priority turns out to be, for example, protecting an endangered species versus avoiding heavy traffic flows. People will invariably disagree on this.

To be clear, Government has the final say in these decisions. Public servants assist this decision making by providing advice. However, we think the public can play a very constructive and meaningful role in informing this advice. Indeed, we believe public servants need the public’s help to deliver the very best advice_._ In the rest of the article we will focus on practical steps to counter the objections that Alice highlights.

These are based on the Informed Participation method, which was developed by our Open Government Partnership Practice Group. The Group includes government and civil society experts from around the globe and was created to encourage the use of co-design (or “deliberation,” as we call it) among OGP member countries.

The Objections

Common Objection 1 – “It’s not a good use of my time”

As Alice notes, some public servants are unsure of the value in co-design. They are often “well aware of the trade-offs,” so why bother bringing the public into the discussion that informs their advice to government? The risks often seem greater than the benefits.

In our experience, this is a common view. Nevertheless, we think the benefits outweigh the risks – sometimes greatly. To see why, let’s consider how conventional consultation works. Suppose a government is developing an anti-poverty policy. It might release an issues paper, and get submissions from citizens and stakeholders. Public servants then retreat behind closed doors to read the submission, analysing the risks and the trade-offs. They then formulate their advice to government, which later makes its decision.

The public is increasingly sceptical of such processes. From their perspective, the trade-offs made behind closed doors often seem arbitrary or, worse, they reflect the values and priorities of the officials analysing the trade-offs. As a result, stakeholders with competing values find themselves on the losing side of the process and are likely to see it as biased and unfair. It’s a recipe for "Us" versus "Them".

Officials, it seems, are worried that an open process will reveal how the policy sausage really gets made – and it will not be flattering.

Someone might reply that, if the department has a mandate to make such trade-offs, or has existing legislation that establishes the priorities, why shouldn’t officials rely on them?

It’s a fair point. Except, issues today are often far more complex than this suggests. Many involve clashes between different policy areas_,_ such as climate change and energy or immigration and jobs. When this happens, the departments involved may have no clear mandate or legislation for realigning their respective priorities.

The lesson, we think, is that public servants should no longer explore these trade-offs alone and behind closed doors, before they advise government. The public want a more meaningful say and we should take the time they need to get the process right.

Common Objection 2 – “It does not produce good ideas”

The second objection is that dialogue processes are too easily hijacked by activists or result in solutions that aren’t acceptable to the government. We have some sympathy with this. However, we think the way to prevent it is to ensure the process is neither badly designed nor poorly run. Informed Participation relies on four basic design principles:

  • Deliberation should be used only where a win/win is possible, typically, through the balancing of competing values or priorities.
  • The process must include “rules of engagement” that will ensure the dialogue is transparent, inclusive, evidence-informed, and fair.
  • The scope of the task must be clearly defined. For example, if the task is to find a better balance between competing priorities, the planning team must set clear boundaries around the space for trade-offs before the process begins.
  • The process should be led by a skilled, impartial facilitator, whose job is: (1) to keep the participants focused on their task; and (2) to interpret and enforce the rules of engagement.

In our experience, these four conditions should ensure that dialogue steers away from binary debates over right/wrong, win/lose, and towards a collaborative search for win/win solutions. That is, towards mutually acceptable ways to balance competing values.

We should underline that win/wins involve trade-offs between competing values or interests. Win/wins are about finding a balance that is acceptable to both sides. But not all issues involve this kind of balancing. Sometimes the choice really is between mutually exclusive options, such as whether to close a community hospital. In such cases, there will be winners and losers.

Where this is the case, we believe deliberation often is not the best option (see Getting Policy-Making Out From Behind Closed Doors, page 17).

Common Objection 3 – “It does not build trust”

Objection 3 worries that if (when?) deliberation fails, members of the public will be disillusioned. We certainly agree that engagement processes can undermine trust, but our question is, why?

We believe a key reason is that processes are held out as “meaningful and fair”, then arrive at decisions that seem arbitrary or pre-determined. Building on the four conditions in the last section would go a long way to ensuring that deliberative processes arrive at legitimate and practical solutions, and therefore rebuild trust.

Common Objection 4 – “It is personally humiliating”

Lastly, Alice cites an unspoken objection to deliberation, namely, that failure will “expose our impotence or our contradictions.” Officials, it seems, are worried that an open process will not reflect well on them, or on the government.

We agree that poorly designed processes are risky, and that messy processes can happen despite the best of intentions. We are certainly not advocating that all processes be deliberative, either.

But where a deliberative process is possible – for example, where ministers have agreed to it – we think the best way to minimise risk and avoid humiliation is to design good processes that are fit for purpose. That is, processes that are in line with the design principles we’ve suggested above. Our experience shows that, far from humiliating public servants, they become a source of credibility and pride.

Trust the process

In sum, we think Informed Participation provides some answers to the four objections. The key challenge is to get the participants to move beyond the competitive, win/lose culture of conventional public consultation, and begin to experiment with a collaborative search for win/win solutions.

In the end, this comes down to two basic points: 1) Public servants must recognise the important contribution citizens can make to improving their policy advice – especially where key values have come into conflict; and 2) participants must be able to see that the process is based on rules that are effective and fair, and that they will be impartially applied, from start to finish.

While an ideal win/win is not always possible, participants are still far more likely to accept the final decision if they’ve meaningfully participated in the deliberation that helped inform advice to government, and better understand the trade-offs.

You can find out more about Informed Participation here or get in contact with us: — Damian Carmichael, Don Lenihan and Iain Kendal

(Picture credit: Unsplash)