1. You have recently been promoted to “Director, Project Innovation”, with Ascentum. Can you give us some context on what this title entails? How is this new position different from your last? What new responsibilities/duties do you have?

The first thing people say when they hear my title is that they’ve never heard anything like it before! For me the new role is about always trying to be creative. It’s about building on tried and tested engagement approaches, but not being afraid to try new techniques or tools. I think the new role reflects my growth at Ascentum over the last five years. It’s an amazing place to learn, work, and have fun. As a Director, I’ll be working directly with clients and delivering projects, while coaching and supporting our really talented staff at Ascentum.

2. What are the highlights of your year, and what do you hope to accomplish in the next year with Ascentum’s clients?

Over the last year, I’ve been involved in some very interesting projects, working with adventurous, creative and smart clients.

One of our recent engagement projects was “Our Health Our Future”, Canada’s first national dialogue on childhood obesity. We used a blend of in-person, online and social media tools to foster conversations across Canada on healthy weights and about how we can all work together to address the growing health problem of childhood obesity. As part of our creative approach, I used social media to foster conversations on Facebook and Twitter about childhood obesity. We engaged hundreds of caregivers, youth and stakeholders across Canada and to hear how childhood obesity affected them and their ideas for making our kids healthier.

So that’s where I’ve come from over the last year. Where do I want to go? Well, I’d like to continue to use social media, to complement the engagement work that we do through in-person and online channels.

3. Why do you think public engagement is important?

I think public engagement is important because it helps organizations make more “sustainable decisions”. These are decisions that are durable and sustainable into the future, developed by involving the people and perspectives that are affected and need to be involved.

At the beginning of my career, when I worked for the federal government, I worked alongside people that were smart and passionate, but at the same time they didn’t have all the answers. For me, engaging the public means providing government and decision makers with those additional perspectives, ideas and experiences from those outside government. It’s these additional sources of evidence that organizations need to make more sustainable decisions on important public policy challenges.

4. You are well known at Ascentum for being very well-versed in social media and new technologies. How do you think we can continue to capitalize on these tools to perform better public engagement?

For me, social media is all a conversation. It’s about people sharing points of view, information and ideas. It’s tools that people can use to co-collaborate and co-create.

So, social media is a natural addition to many public engagement projects. Depending on the project objectives and target communities, social media may not always be suitable for every engagement project. But when it is, we tap into and join the conversations that are already happening or foster new ones aligned with the topics we’re engaging on. These can act as natural complements to other streams of communications we might be doing, such as online deliberation or dialogues.

Social media also allows us to broaden the scope of our engagement. By using social networking tools like Facebook, which has 17 million Canadian subscribers, we can help our clients reach more people, hear more stories, gather more ideas, and ultimately make more sustainable decisions.

5. Based on your experience of social media and its progress thus far, what do you see for the future of public engagement in relation to these new technologies?

I’m really excited about the possible application of social games in public engagement. Imagine if you could use an interactive tool to actually re-design your community park or your neighborhood services on an engagement website? You could choose the design and size of your local community centre. You could redesign the public transit routes that serve your neighborhood.

This idea reminds me of that popular computer game from the 1990s, Sim City. In the future, online engagement could take a similar form. The only difference is that it would be more interactive, more social and you could collaborate with others to co-design solutions to the problems we face in our communities, cities or our country.

6. What’s the most important thing you’ve learned in your experiences? How do you think this will see you through your future?

I’ve learned a lot over the past five years! But the most important thing is that, to help my clients get the insights they’re looking for, it’s my job to help them ask the right questions.

In planning projects, I always like to start working backwards from the end. I ask my clients, what would success look like? What do you want to know from the people you are engaging? And also, what information do we need to give to participants to make it deliberative, so that they can give you their informed perspectives?

If organizations don’t ask the right questions of the people they are trying to engage, they won’t be able to gather the experiences or ideas they’re looking for, as well as their broader engagement objectives.

Some final thoughts…

It has been and continues to be an amazing experience at Ascentum. Every day, I get to work with really smart people who are passionate about public involvement. I get to work with all kinds of neat clients on interesting and important issues. All of that makes it easy to get up in the mornings and come to work, and I’m looking forward to the upcoming year and the future beyond that.

-Holly Clark-

To mark this promotion, I thought it might be a good time for reflection. I got a chance to sit down with Mary Pat and ask her a few questions about her new position, her ambitions, and her perspective on the world of public engagement.

What do you hope to accomplish this year in your new position with Ascentum’s clients?

There are three areas I would like to focus on in the year ahead.  I want to grow our portfolio of health and labour force related policy engagement work, while also target outreach to public and not-for-profit clients in policy fields that we’ve done less work in, but in which we have much to offer. These could include topics like demographic challenges of aging workforce, citizenship, newcomers’ integration, education and the environment. I think our engagement expertise and products really make a difference because we deliver integrated design, facilitation, analysis and reporting grounded in informed participation approaches that give our clients a return on their investment. Secondly, I’d like to explore opportunities for work in the international arena, building on my past experience and projects – I think it’s an area that holds some real potential. Thirdly, I’d like to think about innovative ways to integrate and scale up our online, social media and in-person engagement processes, drawing on the unique contributions of these three streams.

Why do you think public engagement is important?

I would break it down to three main reasons.

1. To revitalize democracy, which for me, means greater political accountability, greater legitimacy of public policies, all of which ultimately, strengthens citizenship.
2. To improve our quality of life. I think that public engagement should both define and sustain what I would call the public good. I mean, it’s the public that should get to decide what kind of society we want. To have sustainable policies, the public needs to play an important role in defining and sustaining them (beyond voting every four years, important at that is).
3. From a practical perspective, we need better public policies. This means we need more than technical expertise and top down decision making. So many ‘wicked’ problems are complex and involve a myriad of issues, involving critical value-based choices. Good public policy needs to incorporate various streams of evidence, including very importantly public policy preferences.

What do you think is the biggest challenge facing the potential for civic engagement in today’s world?

 I think there are several interconnected barriers. Too many decision makers fear losing power and control. There is an inherent reluctance to share power, and reluctance to engage the public in agenda setting. If you don’t give up a bit of power, it’s hard to have authentic engagement. Also election cycles and just in time policy making doesn’t allow for more innovative ways of engaging the public.

And it is also true that many people and decision-makers simply are not aware of what good public engagement looks like or how it can help address problems. Another barrier is the level of distrust and cynicism about government and the public sphere.  People wonder “What difference will my contribution make?”  Decision-makers conclude “People don’t care – look at the ballot box turnout.” I think people do care, they just need to be reassured that they have the opportunity to contribute. An even more serious problem is apathy. Apathetic citizens are a much bigger problem than cynics because they don’t care that they don’t care.

Which aspect of this work keeps you motivated?

 For one, its people. The public – Call me naïve –but all the dialogues I have been involved with tell me that most Canadians, at their core, are reasonable, fair and caring.  I really believe that there is a latent public desire to contribute more to community life. I don’t know if I am a pragmatic idealist or an idealistic pragmatist, but personally for me, it’s important to feel like I’m making a positive contribution to Canada. Being part of Ascentum’s team allows me to do that. Secondly, I love learning. The field of public engagement is more of an art than a science. I also find that working with my younger Ascentum colleagues really keeps me au courant!

What’s the most important thing you’ve learned in your experiences?

 The most important thing I have learned is that process is as important as content. I have come to believe that achieving the scale of changes we need for more innovative, empathetic and productive communities, knowledge is necessary, but not sufficient. We need to engage our values, our hearts and our heads to make a better community.

What are main issues with regard to civic engagement and citizen involvement at the various levels of government in Canada?

 I think the main issues are commitment and resources.  If governments could view the public as a source of imagination and innovation, rather than seeing them as a stumbling block and hurdle, we would see the scale and scope of public engagement swell. Conversely, the same is true for the public – government is not the enemy – it is us! And we need to take responsibility to make it as good as it can be, acknowledging that we are imperfect beings in an imperfect but precious world.  As Tony Judt puts it in Ill Fares the Land, “if we feel excluded from the management of our collective affairs, we shall not bother to speak up about them. In that case, we should not be surprised to discover that no one is listening to us.” (132, 2011)

What do you see for the future of public engagement?

I don’t have a crystal ball and am long in the tooth to be confident in predicting the future. So often we are wrong. But I think if you look at the trends over the past decades, it is unlikely that governments, not-for-profits and private sector organizations can ignore the impetus for citizens, stakeholders/shareholders, customers and employees to demand greater control of their private and public lives.

Do you think advancements in technology and social media have impacted this push?

I do. Four decades ago, even a decade ago, we had engagement, but we didn’t have the potency and immediacy of social media. It can be a very strong tool for positive change. But it’s not so much the tool itself; it’s how we use it. I think Ascentum uses those tools in a responsible way.

How do you think new technologies and online engagement are affecting in-person engagement at events? Have you noticed a change in human interactions since this technological era?

Well I think human nature doesn’t change, but the ways in which people learn, process and interact definitely is reshaping the social sphere. Technology is way ahead of us and we need to learn how to use it effectively and responsibly. I think we’re still learning, and it’s very exciting and challenging and intellectually stimulating….. So coming back to the future of engagement, I think we have a bigger toolbox to engage far more breadth. The challenge is how do we get depth? The future is not going to be linear. We will have to be more vigilant against simplistic populism, where leaders and people are rushing to simplistic answers to complex problems. The world is not simple; shortcuts, while seductive, can also be dangerous. We need to figure out how to manage the ‘distraction’ reality and cultivate more mindful reflection of what really matters- and to do this online and in-person.

- Holly Clark -

It is never too late to make a New Year’s resolution.  We at AmericaSpeaks and Ascentum thought it might be helpful if we proposed a resolution focused on Open Government that federal managers can adopt to start the year off right: Resolve to make a specific, concrete commitment to enhance citizen participation in your agency.

(Note: Ascentum and AmericaSpeaks are partners in offering online public engagement services to agencies in the US Government in support of the White House’s Open Government Directive)

Public commitments can be scary, exciting, and newsworthy, but the healthy pressure they generate often proves transformative.  This “open government resolution” includes two elements: a pledge and a relationship.

An example of a pledge might be an organizational commitment to public participation, perhaps a commitment to two large-scale public participation projects in a year.  It could mean capacity building and training of staff in public participation theory and techniques.  It could also cover the development of an Agency framework or standards for public participation.  It can be many things.  But it has to be clearly articulated, or rather, pledged.

The second part of the pledge centers on a relationship.  This is the relationship between your Agency and the public, whether it is individual citizens, nonprofits, stakeholder organizations, academic institutions, small businesses, or multi-national corporations.  Public participation builds relationships of real value to an agency.  This isn’t merely democratic governance theory; relationships established through public participation generate public support for actions an agency takes.  Public participation can ensure that new policies and programs are sustainable and robust because the public’s perspectives have been considered and taken into account.

This isn’t devolution of decision-making to the public.  Rather, agencies must incorporate public input into the decision-making lifecycle along with other inputs and evidence.

The decision-making lifecycle, from our perspective, is the cornerstone of public participation.  By understanding the current position within the decision-making lifecycle, you can better decide where and when it is appropriate to ask the public to make a contribution.

A key component of the decision-making lifecycle should be established at the outset: true participation cannot occur after a new policy has been finalized. Faux participation impedes the positive momentum of genuine participation as the last conclusion a policy maker wants to convey is that citizen perspectives don’t matter.  From time to time, we see requests for public input made in instances where a decision has already been made.  This is more a communications or public affairs effort to spread the word disguised as an opportunity for public input. Of course, ultimately, an agency always makes the decision.  Accountability always remains with government. However, citizens and stakeholders can always make a contribution to different points in a decision-making lifecycle.

The Department of Lawns and Gardens

Let’s illustrate the process of identifying potential contributors at other stages of the decision-making process using an example at the fictitious Department of Lawns and Gardens (DLG).

DLG wants to implement a new national regulation on lawn watering.  Scientific surveillance data from every region of the country has shown that the use of water over the summer months is having a negative affect on the regional, state, and national water fresh water supply.  Policymakers are exploring new regulations on residential and commercial lots.  This will not affect the agriculture industry.

So let’s see where this DLG policy sits within the decision-making lifecycle.  It is clear that officials have moved beyond monitoring and have defined the issue with a degree of specificity.  The Department also has collected a wealth of data on the issue, and believes public input on these first three stages is not required.  The Department has formed a Public Participation Committee (PPC) and they are thinking through the plan for public participation across the decision-making lifecycle.

Pre-Decision Participation

Establish Criteria To Inform Development of Alternatives

The Department’s PPC decides to convene a series of panels with experts from across the country, including a healthy mix of academics and government scientists.  The intent of this session is to focus on generative dialogue by asking, “What are the key criteria for developing lawn watering regulations that are flexible to meet our regional needs and local variation?”  The DLG will then analyze the outcomes of these conversations to assist in developing alternatives.

Develop Alternatives For Broad Consultation

Based on its external expertise and the input received from experts, the PPC then decides to develop and articulate three different alternatives.  This was a difficult decision, but the PPC felt that it would be a better use of resources to engage the public during the evaluation of alternatives and in the implementation stage.  Having been trained, they know that they must present a balanced positioning of the alternatives, including arguments for and against each position.  The public would cry fowl if the presentation of alternatives were skewed toward one position or another.

Evaluate Alternatives

The Department and the PPC feel strongly that a national conversation on lawn watering regulations is necessary to choose the correct path forward. The PPC believes that residential and commercial perspectives must be gathered in large-scale, integrated conversations.  They decide to use a series of networked and 21st Century Town Meetings to identify which alternative would be the best fit for all.  These sessions are to be held in 10 different locations, each of which will include 50 to 2,000 participants.  All sessions will be linked to the primary session to be held in Las Vegas, NV.  The participants must represent the diverse cultural and social-economic perspectives of their region.

Participants would spend 4 hours hearing about the three different options and engaging in deliberative dialogue.  Participants would discuss the benefits and drawbacks of the different approaches and what each option would mean to them personally with others at their tables.  Table conversations are submitted and synthesized by a centralized team of thematic and process experts. Participants would then use electronic keypads to automatically register their perspective at different points in the conversation.

The PPC knows that organizing this process would be a lot of work.  However the outcome would provide a meaningful sense of what participants believe the most feasible alternative is.  The PPC also knows that participants’ preferences might include small modifications or dramatic, fundamental changes to the alternatives under consideration. But the PPC understands how important this process is.  If participants reject the alternatives, then the lawn watering regulation would not be viewed as acceptable when launched nationally.  If, on the other hand, participants endorse an alternative, then there would be a good chance that it would have national buy-in.

Closing the Decision Making Model

Making the Decision

The leadership of the Department of Lawns and Gardens feels at ease when the time comes to actually make a decision.  The PPC has provided them with a solid foundation of input from their public participation initiatives to help inform policy.  A particular alternative was selected, but it was accompanied by a commitment to public participation once the regulation came into force.

Implementing the Decision

One of the key pieces of feedback the PPC received was that the public is passionate about this issue and that it wants to continue contributing to lawn watering regulations implementation.  Participants have suggested that residential and commercial interests could share their best practices and experiences for conservation.  The PPC considers this and suggests to the Agency leadership that an Idea Crowdsourcing campaign be launched once the regulation comes into force.

The public would use the crowdsourcing tool to share their ideas and tips on working with the lawn watering regulation.  Others would read, comment and vote up or down the ideas they liked the best.  The PPC also receives permission to provide awards to the top 10 ideas.  These awards would take popularity into account, but would also weigh the PPC’s expert assessment regarding which ideas could have the greatest impact in making the regulation a success.

Evaluate the Decision

The PPC advises the Department’s leadership that a comprehensive formative and summative evaluation of the regulation should take place five years from its launch.  This would serve as a public commitment to evaluate the regulation’s effectiveness and to consider whether it had had any unintended outcomes.  The evaluation would be undertaken by external experts and reported back to the Department’s leadership through the PPC.

Is This Possible?

The Department of Lawns and Gardens is patently fictitious, but an agency commitment to public participation isn’t.  Many government agencies in the US and around the world could undertake a project like this with considerable success.  This type of process – one that generates sustainable and robust decision-making – does not happen accidentally.  Two ingredients are essential.  The first is trained, resourced staff with a mandate for public participation.  The second is an agency public participation framework with standards for engaging the public.  A framework must be adapted to the agency’s specific context and should address 9 key questions.  What are these 9 key questions, you ask?

Our Commitment

Our commitment to you, borne of an interest in establishing a relationship between ourselves (AmericaSpeaks and Ascentum) and our visitors, is to publish a blog post elaborating on each of the nine questions here at asonline.org.  We hope you’ll return as we lay out our thoughts on the critical ingredients for an agency’s participation framework.  You can search for 9Qs on the site at anytime to see the latest blog posts on the subject.  We hope you’ll visit, comment, and share our 9Qs.

Your Resolution

It is never too late to decide on your New Year’s resolutions.  We have made the commitment to you to publish our 9Qs.  We only ask one thing of you: Consider how making a commitment to public participation could be the next step in your agency’s contribution to Open Government.

- Joseph Peters -

The Vientiane Youth Leaders’ Forum gathered 42 youth from around the world to engage in dialogue. The Forum organizers, Mines Action Canada, invited me to design and facilitate the final session of the week. Working closely with others on the Ascentum team (Manon Abud and Mary Pat MacKinnon) as well as the conference organizers, I designed and facilitated a generative dialogue and planning session on the Annual Plan for the newly-formed “Youth to Youth Network”.  The intention is that this network will sustain Forum momentum and relationships into the future.

Designing and facilitating the session was no walk in the park. Challenges included extremely limited time (2 hours, for a session that would normally require 4-6 hours), varying levels of English language skills, and differing political, economic and cultural realities in each of the delegates’ home countries.

To try and overcome these challenges, I met delegates in smaller groups in the days leading up to the session to review the process, and answer any lingering questions. I also identified ‘champions’ – delegates passionate enough to adopt particular action items and could encourage others to join them to discuss them further during the dialogue. By employing a modified “Open Space” format, participants were able to identify and discuss actions that were most important to them. People could take part in English or by engaging with others who spoke a different language. Dialogue was supported by three multilingual facilitators who helped foster small group dialogue. Despite the challenges of a short event, participant delegates produced and prioritized a rich list of activities on which youth across the Network should focus over the coming year, including the development of an interactive and comprehensive online space for collaboration.

- Stephan Telka -

Ascentum employs a variety of integrated online, social media and in-person tools, techniques and technologies to apply their philosophy of informed participation to public involvement. Through our flexible, comprehensive approach to knowledge-gathering, we aim to enrich public involvement and reveal the ideas, perspectives and values that empower our clients to make sustainable decisions on complex issues.

If you are the ideal candidate, you have a structured approach to problem solving and creative mind.  You are also able to work with Web-based technology, interpret technical documentation, develop creative client solutions, and consistently deliver exceptionally high quality work.  You are a strong team player, but are also a results-oriented self-starter, capable of demonstrating initiative and working independently. You enjoy the variety and the opportunity to continuously expand your skill and knowledge base offered by project-oriented work. Finally, you passionately believe in the importance of giving people a voice in decisions that affect them.

The full job description is available here.

We’re looking forward to hearing from you…!

To view the Open Government Directions site, go to:

http://opengovernmentdirections.org