The Paperwork Reduction Act requires approval by OMB of most government requests for information from people who are not in government. This can be a lengthy and cumbersome review process and tends to discourage agencies from seeking outside feedback from stakeholders and the public on the performance of public outreach and engagement efforts(be they meetings, hearings,dispute resolution efforts, consensus building, dialogues, etc).
Not only should the Information Collection Request (ICR) procedures be streamlined, but there should be development of standard and tailorable performance evaluation tools for widespread use by agencies. These should be both paper and web-based evaluation tools.
The U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution developed evaluation tools over several years in collaboration with other agencies and now those tools can be used with permission by multiple agencies to assess processes used for collaborative problem solving or resolution of environmental conflicts. The information gleaned from these evaluation data are useful for performance feedback to managers, contractors, and participants. It is also very helpful information at the case and aggregate level for training purposes.
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