Key engagement issues
The project is current being rescoped
Previously
Here are some of the issues and themes emerging from discussions
Learning about public engagement
- Learn from other fields - engagement marketing, good customer relations, e-democracy
- Learn from past experience - evaluate previous engagement programmes
- Map who is doing what in Government and elsewhere
- Explore what changes in style and approach are needed within government. External engagement requires internal collaboration.
- Learn from yourself and the way that you behave. Should we consider our own engagement with issues that affect us? Should our *espoused* views on engagement and participation be explored in contrast to what we *enact* ourselves?
Engagement basics
- Ask yourself at the outset - why are we promoting engagement? What’s it for?
- Think about the whole system of interests - what does engagement mean for citizens, service users, politicians, intermediaries
- Take problems seriously - what is participation fatigue and why does it occur
- You can’t engage externally if you aren’t engaging internally as an organisation
Engagement process
- Clear objectives for yourself in promoting engagement
- Being clear about expectations of participants
- Initial creative stages
- Segmenting the market, identifying stakeholders
- Maintaining a dialogue, providing feedback
- Enough resources
- Understanding personalities and differing agendas
Not
- Lack of focus
- Failing to implement
- Jargon
- One size fits all interests
- Excluding key interests
- Consulting after the event
- Paying lip service
- Failing to feedback, respond to views
- Leaving until the last minute
Engagement methods
- Use trustworth intermediaries, and provide them with support
- Match methods to objectives
- Face to face interaction
- Inclusiveness
- Ministerial endorsement
- Not white papers
- Evidence
- Using different channel
- Using scenarios
- Using themes
- New ideas, new media
A-Z
An emerging A-Z of topics
- Accountability
- Awareness – increase awareness of services
- Benefit – what is the evidence
- Bridging them and us gaps
- Budgets – how to tailor
- Change
- Clarity
- Charities – improving services to them, increasing public confidence in them
- Citizens and democracy
- Communication
- Competition
- Consultation with general publics and stakeholders
- Consumer strategy
- Cross-government relationships
- Culture change within government
- Delivery following engagement
- Embedding engagement in organisations
- Enabling people
- Energising and engaging with individuals
- Engagement; what is it, why do it, how to do it
- Engagement strategies
- Equality of partnerships
- Evaluating involvement
- Events techniques
- Influencing service delivery
- Innovation
- Joining up engagement
- Knowledge sharing and capture
- Learning from others
- Learning – new approaches
- Listening
- Local involvement
- Methods for engagement
- Methods for networking
- Neighbourhood level engagement
- Networking
- Network learning
- Online methods
- Outcomes – measuring them
- People – what works for them
- Policies – getting right from the beginning
- Relationships
- Reaching hard to reach
- Resources
- Self-reliance and how to build it
- Success – what is it, how to measure
- Sustaining involvement