10 Principles of Local Government Public Engagement

Local governments provide essential services and make important policy decisions that affect their residents.  But—after years of  senior government downloading and fiscal contraints—many cities and regions are finding that their budgeted have been stretched to the limit and local governments are looking for ways to maximize the impact of their programs and policies.

One way to do so is through effective public engagement. The Institute for Local Government (ILG) offers the following 10 principles of local government public engagement.

These principles build on the principles and values developed by the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD) and the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) but focus specifically on local governments. They are offered as helpful indicators of effective and ethical public engagement practices.

10 Principles of Local Government Public Engagement

1. Inclusive Planning: The planning and design of any public engagement process should include input from appropriate local officials as well as from members of intended participant communities.
2. Transparency: There is clarity and transparency about public engagement process sponsorship, purpose, design, and how decision makers will use the process results.
3. Authentic Intent: A primary purpose of the public engagement process is to generate public views and ideas to help shape local government action or policy, rather than persuade residents to accept a decision that has already been made.
4. Breadth of Participation: The public engagement process includes people and viewpoints that are broadly reflective of the local agency’s population of affected residents.
5. Informed Participation:  Participants in the public engagement process have information and/or access to expertise consistent with the work that sponsors and conveners ask them to do.
6. Accessible Participation: Public engagement processes are broadly accessible in terms of location, time, and language, and support the engagement of residents with disabilities.
7. Appropriate Processes: The public engagement process utilizes one or more discussion formats that are responsive to the needs of identified participant groups; and encourage full, authentic, effective, and equitable participation consistent with process purposes. This may include relationships with existing community forums.
8. Authentic Use of Information Received: The ideas, preferences, and/or recommendations contributed by the public are documented and seriously considered by decision makers.
9. Feedback to Participants: Local officials communicate ultimate decisions back to process participants and the broader public, with a description of how the public input was considered and used.
10. Evaluation: Sponsors and participants evaluate each public engagement process with the collected feedback and learning shared broadly and applied to future engagement efforts.

The ILG also offers advice on measuring the success of local government public engagement, so local bodies and other stakeholders can determine if their efforts are effective, or if they need tweaking.

Via GovLoop.