When designing planning and decision-making processes, one of the criteria should be “does this support the level of collaboration to which we aspire?” If differing planning or modeling approaches score similarly for cost effectiveness, relevance, and planner or scientific acceptance, then the approach that lends itself more readily to wider collaboration (and if wider collaboration is a goal), then that approach should be chosen. Likewise, once a planning or scientific approach is chosen, thinking early about each step “how will this support various levels of participation?” will provide for a much stronger synergy between good science, good planning, and good collaboration.
Design Planning and Decision-Making Processes with “Outreachability” in Mind
Tags: foxandmurphy
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Really! Public participation always seems to be treated as a "bolt-on" item. And you may be able to get away with that as long as we don't need to deepen the degree of public involvement. However, when we try to achieve "collaboration" there's no way to consider this as a "bolt-on". It's more useful to think of collaboration as an "emergent quality" that will manifest in a policy-development process if you have designed the process with the appropriate features. So you're right.
BTW: also interesting to see that the Organizers omitted any subcategory for Collaboration between Agencies and the public. Is there some sort of message there?! *Sigh*