The New Laboratories of Democracy: How Local Government is Reinventing Civic Engagement

From Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement (PACE), this report discusses innovative methods that local governments in the United States (US) are using to increase civic engagement by the public. Combining original research with an overview of the literature and history of civic engagement and local government reform, the report highlights insights from foundation leaders, civic experts, scholars, local officials, and public engagement advocates.

The report traces a history of public engagement and cites examples of public discourse and decision-making. Neighbourhood associations are one of the first forms of engagement cited in the report. Continued changes in structural engagement between citizens and their government include: Chicago, Illinois'
Alternative Policing Strategy, in which neighbourhood groups help determine police priorities and planning; Seattle, Washington's "little city halls"; and citywide summits. Neighbourhoods can lose sight of being part of a larger entity, according to the report, indicating a need for stronger engagement mechanisms on a wider level. More interactive and engaging processes have been forthcoming from US cities and towns. The need to move from public hearings as a process to dialogue as a process is described here and exemplified by several forms of civic discussion. Citizen-based planning and design processes like the charrette - an intensive and interdisciplinary visioning or planning process - can engage a variety of stakeholders and achieve a level of "buy-in" or support that helps to realise the goals of the plan developed. Advocacy and practitioner groups can help communities hold more productive conversations. These can introduce candidate fora to move their agendas into the political arena of cities and towns.

A concluding section explores the next phase of local government innovation using the internet, new communications technologies, and social networking tools to move from "place-based" meetings and organising to the world of "Democracy 2.0." For example, ComNET is a programme to upload information to the internet from handheld computers. Citizen-generated photos taken with digital cameras within the handheld devices show unsafe public infrastructure like broken sidewalks or illegal garbage dumps. Citizens learn what agency has responsibility for what they find as they report on problems. City officials are learning about what is important to citizens from what they choose to photograph and report on. A programme called "Vital Signs" sets out citizen-selected community indicators that are quantitative measures of community well-being that help citizens track community progress or deterioration and judge government function in their communities. These might include the median number of days it takes to sell a house, or the rates of violent crime or teen pregnancy. Cities are also tracking the function of their agencies using computerised programmes like "CompStats", or "CitiStats", which tracks crime statistics. The Community Indicators Consortium (CIC) advances the use and improvement of community indicators in the US.

For helping communities envision change, the Orton Family Foundation has developed CommunityViz using geographical information software to display three-dimensional models of how places look today and how they might be in the future. It has also developed keypad polling software so that, through remote handheld devices, people at public meetings can answer multiple choice questions anonymously and see the collective results of the poll on the screen as the group enters them. Computerised communication could make local government much more interactive with its citizens using email, for example, or social networking sites like Facebook.

The internet is another communications venue for civic engagement including community websites, city managers' blogs, video streaming of public meetings, and information portals. Cable TV channels broadcast meetings, which are also featured in print media. Online fora are a way that citizens and public officials can meet and converse electronically. If the chat sites are hosted and monitored by an outside organisation, for example, E-Democracy.org in Minneapolis, MN, US, there is buffer of independence between self-interested parties.

Because, as stated by the author, there is no central clearinghouse or database of how community-level, local governments work to bring citizens back into public life, the report suggests the need for more practical research and dissemination on the effectiveness of different approaches. This might enable government leaders to be “better consumers” of civic engagement strategies. It also recommends finding a common language of civic engagement that resonates with ordinary citizens and busy public officials.