Public and community engagement, involvement and participation is what we are doing as consultants. It is also what we help others do most effectively. We work with teams, companies and agencies on reaching consensus through public participation and collaboration. We usually find ourselves bridging divides by creating spaces where people are willing to participate to build solutions. Community engagement builds consensus. And below you have some of the best of the news and tips that we have found about how to engage communities. Or what happens when you do not. The latest news handpicked by our public sector consultants, all wrapped up with a sometimes snarky – yet always informed – perspective. Enjoy!
The world has changed. Maybe you like it better now; maybe you don’t. In either case, most people are feeling a bit out of sorts as we observe how things have changed and consider how to recalibrate to interface with the new reality.
Of course, it’s not just about how ...
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Social facilitation, or the audience effect, is defined as the tendency for people to act differently with an audience than when they’re alone. With social media, people always have an audience. Media and politics are giving us permission to act – online and in person — in ways that we ...
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Although federal agencies can be reticent to convene advisory committees (in part due to restrictions posed by the Federal Advisory Committee Act), municipal governments routinely employ citizens advisory committees for issues ranging from parks and recreation and solid waste management to business recruitment and retention, libraries, and the arts. Well ...
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As the principal government agency responsible for enforcing federal law around our environmental health – clean air, water and waste – the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has protected and prolonged the lives of people in the United States since late 1970 – and, because of the EPA’s work with ...
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Much of our public engagement practice over the decades has been woven into environmental reviews and issues. The recent spate of Executive Orders from the new White House have reminded me of one of my favorite hit oldies, Environmental Justice, or EJ for short. What a great concept – Justice. ...
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Digital communication has truly transformed public participation, from risk communication to online town hall meetings. However, it is not an automatic or comprehensive solution to working with the public. Agencies would like it to address everything they want to do with the public, but it just doesn’t.
When I ...
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The Town Hall Meeting format will need to be thrown on the scrap heap for the next four years. It’s deadly if you’re trying to control the message and this President and this congress clearly need to control their messages. In their defense, controlling messages and the public narrative is ...
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There are many terms for a community advisory board. These boards can be called citizens’ working committees, public reference groups, stakeholder task forces, whatever. They go by many names – but what are they, and why are they used?
A community advisory board can be a viable alternative to engaging ...
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Election winners frequently tout their success as a mandate to do as they choose, suggesting that they have been ordained to represent and act on overwhelming public opinion. This is generally the argument regardless of the winning party and it’s generally wrong.
I have to think that this is something ...
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What if you were in a coma for six years and woke up to the social media apocalypse of 2016? Ask blogger Hossein Derakhshan. He was jailed from 2008 to 2014 in Tehran for his online activism about Iran. In his November article for MIT Technology review, he writes:
“when ...
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