Use Government Agencies Need to be Connected With Experienced Private Third Party Facilitators for Deliberative Public Partcipat 

Hmm, I can't edit the title of my posting with this system! If I could I'd like to call this idea "Yelp for Public Engagement."

When I think of public-private partnerships and public engagement, I think about the fairly common practice of government agencies hiring a consultant or a private or nonprofit organization to facilitate, and sometimes to conduct outreach and/or assessment of, a public engagement process. While some cities are beginning to embed deliberative public engagement into their everyday practices to the extent that it makes sense to hire and train their staff to carry out these duties, many other cities and counties are in early stages of experimenting with this form of participatory democracy. Hiring experienced consultants, firms, or nonprofits to help out is a great way to bring in experience necessary for successful public engagement projects. It can also help to set residents minds at ease to talk with a professional and independent consultant, rather than a government agency staff person who people might tend to be more suspicious of.

There should be a mechanism for federal, state, and local agencies to get unbiased information about all of the public engagement providers and facilitators who are out there. Maybe something like Yelp (the website) for public engagement, where users can rate and comment on providers? The field has a wide range of practitioner to offer and its important for there to be a good fit between the community and the practitioner. I suggest it would serve government agencies well to have some tools for being able to shop around to find the best fit in terms of public engagement consulting.

Make Posts on this Website Anonymous and Listed in Random Order 

Let me first say this is website overall is a great idea well implemented.

That said, I had an idea to share: I think this website would function better in terms of giving unbiased input on what the most individuals feel are are the most promising ideas if you make the posts anonymous (assign each participant a random pseudonym?) and list them in random order. The idea is to make it more difficult for organizations to "stack the deck" by asking their members to vote for something en masse, which will dilute the votes of people who actually take the time to read and think about all or many of the postings. Also, random ordering of postings would give a more scientific measure of public preference, as the newest postings would not get "first look" and therefore be more likely to be voted on.

Research and share best practices for targeted outreach to involve more than the usual suspects in public decision making 

As Marcella has pointed out in an earlier post, one of the biggest and most important challenges facing anyone seeking to create a meaningful public engagement process is how to include more than "the usual suspects" in public decision making. Typically underrepresented groups of people in public decision making and planning include immigrants, renters, young families, teens, people with low or no income, disabled or differently-abled people, people with limited English language skills, etc. It takes significant forethought and investment of time and resources to effectively involve these underrepresented demographics in a truly inclusive process that brings all voices affected by a decision or plan to the table.

There is a need for research to identify and share the best practices in the outreach and implementation stages of public engagement. Specifically, what are the best practices for reaching out to and including specific underrepresented groups of people? I have conducted research on best practices for including immigrants and Latino Americans in public meetings, and I encourage others to fund, conduct, and share similar research projects in order that we as a nation might build our capacity for a more democratic and participatory system that represents everyone's voice.

While I am very impressed and thankful that the Obama administration is making this effort to explore new opportunities for deliberative public engagement, I am concerned that there seems to be such a heavy emphasis on online interaction and input. While this technology can certainly be a great way to get lots of people in communication, it tends to leave out many of the underrepresented groups of people I listed above. We need a variety of different models and opportunities for public engagement to remove as many barriers as possible to broad participation for all of us affected by important government decisions.

You can read about strategies for including immigrants in civic engagement efforts in "A Local Official's Guide to Immigrant Civic Engagement," available for free download from the Institute for Local Government at www.ca-ilg.org/cgi

I also worked on a research project for the nonprofit AmericaSpeaks on best strategies for including Latino Americans in deliberative democracy. The findings are published in the Winter 2008 issue of the National Civic Review, please email me at gregkeidan@gmail.com for a copy.