​As the year draws to a close, we reflect on things that have attracted our attention and we add our thoughts. We’d welcome your comments.
 
Significance and engagement policies
A year ago amendments to the Local Government Act requiring New Zealand councils to have a significance and engagement policy in place came into effect. The purpose of this requirement was, presumably, to encourage greater public participation in local decision making. We have observed little change in council behaviours. Changes to this legislation have not changed the mind-set of many councils which still do not value meaningful public involvement in their decision-making.
 
New Zealand’s Flag
The first binding referendum on changing New Zealand’s flag is currently underway in spite of significant public support to retain the status quo. Any change appears unlikely. Perhaps if the engagement process had started at determining if there was any public appetite for change, then a process for finding an alternative flag that was acceptable to the general public could have followed.
 
Local government mergers
There appears to be a “slam dunk” here, as each of the proposals for change put forward by the Local Government Commission have been rejected by the communities involved. Northland, Nelson/Tasman, Wellington and Hawkes’ Bay communities have all overwhelmingly rejected plans to create “super cities” for each of those regions. The flaw in the statutory consultation process for local government reform, which results in this public rejection, is that the engagement starts far too late in the process and alienates the affected communities, guaranteeing failure.
 
Online voting
The government has authorised a number of councils to use online voting for the 2016 local government elections. It will be interesting to see how voter turnout in these districts differs from the rest, and whether or not any improvement is sustained in future elections. Our view is that low voter turnout isn’t about how votes are gathered, rather about the complexity of voting and the lack of value voters see their votes providing. Our views on online voting are in our November 2015 blog.
 
Engagement spectrum
IAP2 is currently reviewing its famous engagement spectrum. IAP2 Canada is leading this review. We believe that the language used to describe the current spectrum is flawed, compounding a range of other perceptions and misconceptions about how spectrums of this type may help to provide clarity. More detail about our thoughts can be found here.
 
Rugby World Cup
In 2011 organising committee chief executive Martin Snedden described New Zealand as a team of 4 million. That same team got behind the 2015 event in England and Wales with an outstanding outcome. This is a great example of engaging in a way where nearly everyone was on the same page.
 
Basin Reserve Flyover
It is hard to find words to describe the community engagement disaster that is the Wellington Basin Reserve Flyover project. There would be few projects that impact on a community the way that a Basin Reserve Flyover would affect Wellington city. In the face of this, the NZTA has steadfastly focused on using legal mechanisms to enforce its preferred outcome with disregard for the feelings of Wellington communities.
 
Invercargill’s caravan
It is great to be able to find an example of excellence in community engagement, particularly from local government. We believe that Invercargill City’s decision to invest in a caravan to enable it to reach out and connect directly and meaningfully with its communities is worthy of recognition. Learn more about this project here.
 
West Auckland trees
What stood out here for us wasn’t the final outcome or that both sides to the debate could have done things differently, or even that a protestor sat up the tree in question for a number of days. What really struck home was the reported statement from a council manager that the council’s actions were legal and therefore there was no need to consult with interested or affected communities. This is yet another example of organisations that engage only because they have to, rather than because they want to or need to.
 
LinkedIn questions
We have led a couple of discussions with international engagement professionals this year through LinkedIn forums. Interest in these has been considerable. We’re interested to learn from others’ experiences and to provide ways for these to be shared amongst the engagement community.

​2016 is local government election time in New Zealand, with a range of organisations required to elect councils and governing authorities at that time. Voting is done by postal ballot, where voting papers are posted to registered voters to be completed and returned by election day.
 
Voter turnout for local government elections has been declining for some years. In many parts of the country less than half of registered voters participate.
 
An interesting comparison is with voter turnout for New Zealand general elections. These are still conducted at polling booths, where registered voters must physically present themselves to cast their votes. These elections still poll quite highly – 77% at the 2014 election, in spite of inclement weather on election day in many areas. This number is less for the under 35s and higher for the over 50s. Indeed nearly 90% of those aged 65-69 cast a vote.
 
If ease of voting is seen as an issue affecting voter turnout for local government elections, why isn’t this an issue for general elections? In terms of voting ease, postal voting should be easier than having to physically turn up to vote at a polling booth on election day, and local government elections should have at least the same levels of participation as general elections.
 
This isn’t the case, so voter turnout isn’t related to voting convenience.
 
Will making voting even easier by allowing registered voters to do this on their electronic devices increase participation? Perhaps at the first election where the new system has some novelty value. But that’s probably only likely to be what investment bankers refer to as a “dead cat bounce”. Online voting is no magic bullet that will solve the problem of declining voter participation.
 
The ease of voting shouldn’t be confused with the complexity of voting. Local government elections are complex. Voters are asked to cast their votes for candidates seeking election to a number of bodies: regional council local representatives; city or district council mayors and local councillors; community board members; liquor licensing authority members; district health board directors; as well as the occasional referendum.
 
So as well as having to elect candidates, many of whom will be unknown to them, local authority voters have to deal with two voting systems – First Past the Post (FPP) and Single Transferable Vote (STV). All of the district health boards and seven local authorities used the STV system in 2013. This meant that most electors had to contend with two different voting systems. This confusion leads to significant numbers of informal votes being cast – about 5% in the 2013 local government elections.
 
Low voter turnout isn’t simply an issue of elector convenience. It’s about voters being motivated to vote. The question in their mind is “What’s in it for me?”
 
The real challenge is to increase elector understanding of the importance of participating in democratic processes, and increasing their interest in learning about and selecting potential candidates, as well as making it much easier for them to unravel the plethora of forms they are required to complete. Too many registered voters give up on this process almost before they start because they struggle to see any benefit to them for the time that’s needed to participate. This won’t change by adding another way to vote.

At Engagementworks our approach to community engagement is based on some simple principles:

• Acknowledging the power of the community to help solve difficult problems
• Engaging as early as possible to get agreement on the problem and identify possible solutions
• Doing engagement because you WANT to, rather than because you HAVE to
• Aiming to make engagement processes as wide-ranging as possible in terms of affected or interested people – having a commitment to accessing “hard-to-reach” groups
• Striving to build trust and respect by having consistent, robust processes
• Underpinning engagement activities with open communication and feedback, so interested people know what’s happening
• Making engagement easy and on communities’ terms, rather than on the organisation’s terms
• Clearly identifying who is responsible for delivering different aspects of the agreed solution – usually the organisation, but sometimes in partnership with affected communities.

 
We believe that successful community engagement isn’t rocket science. Consequently we are sceptical of organisations that over-complicate what we believe is largely straightforward, particularly if the organisation that is undertaking the engagement has a good mind-set about managing projects and the relationships it has with communities and stakeholders.
 
For many years some organisations’ approach to community engagement has been to reference an engagement spectrum, usually one promulgated by IAP2 or the OECD. There is a number of these, usually quite similar in their purpose. However, as we have noted in a previous blog, the language used in these models can be confusing. Confusion shouldn’t be the core tenet of any measures to connect with communities or stakeholders, which is why we developed our own spectrum to describe the nature of engagement relationships that are possible. An engagement spectrum needs to reflect the ways communities see engagement, rather than the complicated way some organisations define it.
 
Recently we were encouraged to learn that IAP2 Australasia was looking to review the engagement spectrum that it had been promoting for many years, as we believed that this was confusing in a number of areas. IAP2 Australasia has now replaced its spectrum with what it calls a “community engagement model”. While we understand what this new model is trying to explain, we don’t believe that this is particularly clear or helpful to engagement practitioners or the communities and stakeholders with whom they seek to engage. It is an example of simple processes made to look complicated.
 
Re-using others’ good ideas makes a lot of sense. But cutting and pasting spectrums should mean that your organisation understands and embraces the mind-set and principles that underpins that content and also reflects what the community understands engagement to mean.
 
From a stakeholder perspective there are really only three types of engagement:

• The organisation makes the decision and informs the affected communities
• The affected community makes the decision, which is ratified by the organisation
• The organisation and the community work together towards a shared decision.

 
The best decisions involve the participation of as many of the affected community as possible – the wisdom of crowds.
 
So rather than being seduced by the power of Ctrl-C Ctrl-P, here are some steps to consider for a straightforward approach to building a community engagement strategy – either at an organisational level or for a specific project:

• What is the issue or problem? Define the problem from the organisation’s perspective.
• Who is impacted by or impacts on this problem?
• Are these impacts significant to the affected communities? If the problem is defined as significant, then involve these stakeholders in defining the problem.
• Having done that, then engage the community on developing options, then deciding on a preferred option.
• Get community feedback on the preferred option.
• Finalise and make the decision.
• Let communities and stakeholders know what the decision is and also how what you learned from their involvement shaped that decision.
• Outline the key project stages and what contributions may be needed from communities at each of those.

​Early in September, Hastings District Council passed a resolution declaring the district a “GM-free” food producing area by banning the growing of products that may contain genetically modified material. This decision was greeted with cheers by those who believe there are commercial benefits from such a declaration.

Like decisions made by other councils around New Zealand, such as those involving the removal of fluoride from drinking water, this is another example of decision-makers being captured by emotions, prejudices or religious beliefs that are not backed by sound science.

The council has probably assumed that this decision will not cost ratepayers anything and unlock unrealised wealth for the district’s food producers. If such a scheme is to be credible and robust, then it should involve a rigorous testing regime imposed on all food products entering and leaving the Hastings District. After all, imported cotton, soy and canola products used and consumed in the Hastings District by people and farm animals probably already contain GM material. Some food growers may also decide to import and grow GM produce regardless of any local ban.

Banning the production of GM food products in this manner makes several assumptions. 

Firstly it assumes that GM food products are bad or harmful. There is no scientific evidence that suggests this. Indeed there is much credible evidence that shows that the human health impacts of GM foods are no different to the original products on which they are based. GM products also allow more, better quality foods to be grown on less land with fewer applied herbicides and pesticides, and lower carbon emissions. Some also have better drought tolerance – a feature that may be of interest to many Hastings district growers and farmers facing the rigours of climate change.

Secondly, it assumes that GM products and foods are somehow new and untested. While some plants modified using biotechnology may be new, there are conventional methods of genetically modifying plants, animals and micro-organisms which have existed for hundreds of years and not caused any harm to human health or to the environment. It is unclear as to whether this latter group of products is included in the Hastings District Council’s ban. International companies that are in the business of modifying plants using biotechnology invest hundreds of millions of dollars in technology and the testing of modified plants before these are commercially released. Despite what “big pharma” conspiracy theorists believe, such companies are unlikely to risk the significant legal challenges and costs involved by taking risky short-cuts.

Thirdly, this decision assumes that GM “residues” can get loose in the environment and contaminate other living organisms. That’s a bit like believing that throwing a banana out of a car window will lead to the establishment of wildling bananas or banana genetic material being absorbed by roadside grasses and weeds.

Fourthly, it assumes that products will be tested to see whether or not they contain genetic material not found in their unmodified forms. It is unlikely that Hastings District Council has any intention of doing this as part of its new by-law. It is also unlikely that anybody who buys food produced in Hastings District will do any testing either. Why? It’s expensive, unlikely to find anything significant and the costs of paying for that would have to be met by the district’s ratepayers who have not been presented with this option.

Fifthly, it assumes that Hasting District councillors know more about the risks associated with genetically modified foods than do government agencies like the Environmental Protection Authority, Ministry of Health, Ministry for Primary Industries and the Ministry for the Environment.

The only “standard” here is a political decree that Hastings District is GM-free. Whether that claim is true cannot be proven. No basis of local enforcement is being proposed. It remains to be seen whether anybody will ever challenge this by-law’s credibility.

The recent U-turn on the future of Wellington’s Town Belt by city councillors makes a mockery of the Local Government Act. On 1 December last year a number of changes were made to this Act. One of those changes was a requirement for councils to adopt a Significance and Engagement Policy.

The purpose of a Significance and Engagement Policy is to enable councils and their communities to identify the degree of significance attached to particular issues, proposals, assets, decisions and activities; provide clarity about how and when communities can expect to be engaged in decisions about different issues, assets, or other matters; and inform those local authorities from the beginning of a decision-making process about the extent of any public engagement that is expected and the form or type of engagement involved.

Most councils met the legislative requirement to have their new policy in place by the 1 December 2014 deadline set out in the revised Act. Very few took on board the intention of this new consultation requirement when introducing this change and did little more than minimum engagement with their communities. Some councils chose to bury consultation over their proposed significance and engagement policies in their Long Term Plan consultation, a process that generates little interest from communities other than regular council contributors.

So the brave new world of council community engagement began with more of a whimper than a bang.

Since 1 December there have been several instances of councils making decisions that are clearly in breach of their published Significance and Engagement Policies. Wellington City Council’s recent about-face on protecting its Town Belt is a good example where councillors, with no community engagement whatsoever, have made a decision that affects the future of a significant community asset. Whether a central government agency put the hard word on councillors to make this change, as some critics allege, is immaterial. In making this decision, council has breached its Significance and Engagement Policy with little explanation as to why.

Yes, councillors are elected to be “representative” of their communities and to make decisions on their behalf. Councils also have requirements to consult, as outlined in the Local Government Act, Resource Management Act and other legislation. These are the minimum levels of engagement that councils should do. Communities often expect more and councils themselves should engage because they want to, not because they have to.

The intention of the requirement to have a Significance and Engagement Policy was that councils should engage willingly and openly with their communities about significant matters – including deciding what issues were “significant”. Yes, there will be occasions, such as civil emergencies, where decisions need to be made quickly and there is no time for engagement. Communities will generally accept the need for urgency in such situations. At other times there should be no excuse for “significant” decisions being made to the exclusion of community interests.

Disturbingly there is no formal mechanism in place for councils to be held accountable for decisions not made in accordance with their Significance and Engagement Policy. Financial management decisions and decisions around other matters such as health and safety practices are scrutinised in some detail. This scrutiny, often by reputable independent authorities, means Councils go to considerable lengths to ensure that they comply with those policies.

So why isn’t Significance and Engagement subject to the same rigor? Probably because councils know that the Office of the Auditor General’s annual inspection will go no further than checking that they have a policy in place. The Audit Office does not have the capability to look deeper than that.

This means that it falls on communities to stand up for their own rights to be engaged with on significant decisions, rights that are enshrined in legislation. And that’s really sad, because isn’t that what they have elected councillors to do for them?

You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Community engagement and communication are no exception to this generally accepted management belief. But just because it’s possible to measure something, is the information gathered going to be of any real use? Will it be able to contribute to organisational success? Are we becoming too focused on capturing information just because it’s readily available, rather than because it allows us to learn if we’re getting closer to our goals?

Why is community engagement important? The answer to that question will be different for any organisation. For example a monopoly service provider, such as a council or a government agency, will see engagement quite differently to a business that depends on selling goods or services. Councils are not required to have a measurement for customer loyalty and their consequential reputation, whereas customer loyalty and reputation is mission critical for most businesses reliant on selling goods or services.

Public sector organisations can learn much from their counterparts in the private sector when it comes to understanding and managing their reputation and influence. In the private sector, reputation has everything to do with profitability and business success. In today’s online world an organisation’s reputation can be destroyed in the blink of an eye, which makes monitoring it and managing it carefully absolutely critical.

In the public sector, where organisations have a mandate to operate that is enshrined in law, the attitude towards reputation is somewhat different. They can still operate, irrespective of the views of their customers. This often leads to a very blinkered approach to any consideration of how customers feel about decisions made by public sector organisations and their ongoing impacts on people affected.

Reputation and influence are things that elected members rarely focus on at a governance level. Some sort of crisis requiring a reactive response is often they only time such governance groups focus on reputation. Once that matter has been “sorted” it drops off their radar, sometimes with little thought given as to why it occurred in the first place and what can be done to stop it happening again.

Sadly a lot of organisational focus for public sector engagement and communication is on what it costs. This is generally a good signal that reputation enhancement is not a priority and the value or benefits to that organisation from having a good reputation that’s worth investing in have not been thought of in those terms. In other words the organisational mind-set is in a wrong place.

Things like trust, respect and credibility should be part of a reputation KPI for any organisation, whether public or private. There are other high level outcomes that could be added to that list. Other measures, like sales made or return on investment will be shaped by those high level outcomes being achieved and should not be thought of as KPIs in themselves. While they may be easier to measure than things like trust, respect and credibility, just because something is hard to measure doesn’t mean that it can’t be. If that were true, then those things wouldn’t be able to be managed. And if that were true, then organisations that have great reputations and who are highly trusted and respected must have achieved that position by good luck?

Organisational performance is never straightforward and measuring success requires more than one source of reliable data. For example: Working out the fuel efficiency of a motorcar requires data from two sources – the car’s odometer and a fuel retailer’s pumping device. Working out the running cost of that vehicle requires the per litre cost of fuel to be known. This combination of reliable information can then shape decisions about whether driver training is a worthwhile investment to help reduce vehicle running costs.

Enhancing reputation and influence and the benefits that great engagement and communication practices can add can only be appreciated if there are clear outcomes set which can be supported by reliable information. That sounds easy but it’s really hard to do, even when an organisation’s mind-set is in the right place for that to happen. It’s impossible to do if it isn’t.

A recent front-page article in the Kapiti News (Wednesday, August 12, 2015) highlights the problems created when a local council limits its engagement with its community to the minimal requirements of local government law and its associated plans and policies.

In this case the Kapiti Coast District Council has riled the Waikanae community over a proposed medical centre in Te Moana Road, a major arterial street in Waikanae. The council decided that only a limited notification resource consent would be required, rather than a fully notified resource consent. This limited the need for public input to a few immediate neighbours of the subject property and eliminated the need for wider public consultation. The reason given for this approach was that this was in compliance with the Resource Management Act.

This has angered the Olde Waikanae Beach Preservation Society which has concerns about the wider future implications of the proposal.

Relevant to this decision, in addition to the Resource Management Act requirements, is the Council’s Significance and Engagement Policy, adopted under recent changes to the Local Government Act.

Under its Significance and Engagement Policy the Council commits to engaging with communities on issues of concern to them, and especially when they are directly affected by an issue, matter or proposal. But the policy also expressly excludes any engagement process that may be required under the Resource Management Act. This creates a potential conflict.

One the one hand the council can argue that as the medical centre proposal is subject to the Resource Management Act, then the commitment made in the Significance and Engagement Policy does not apply. End of story.

But hang on a minute, the community, beyond the limits set in the Resource Management Act, has expressed a concern. So how is that going to be taken into consideration?

In most cases, consultation requirements in statutes are minimum compliance standards which an organisation can exceed. In other words the Council could both comply with its Resource Management Act obligations and engage with the wider Waikanae community at the same time.

Many significant decisions will, by their very nature, involve the Resource Management Act. Having this exclusion clause in its Significance and Engagement Policy seems to run completely contrary to any reasoned desire to involve the community in public decisions. Tragically, both the council and the community lose out because all of the statements and commitments made by the council about community participation in decision-making are seen to be false by the community which misses out on an opportunity to contribute to a decision that affects them.

The Kapiti Coast District Council is not alone on using minimal legal obligations as the maximum amount of consultation it is willing to undertake. Other councils have also adopted this practice. The irony in this is that councils loudly proclaim the importance of engaging with communities but seldom follow through and walk the talk. The wider issue is that relationship building between councils and communities is undermined and mistrust of councils by communities continues to prevail. A radical change of mind-set by councils is needed to really make a difference.

There has been quite a lot of discussion recently about levels of engagement, or more specifically the language used to describe the various levels. There is no doubt that language is important. In the English language words are often used inter changeably to mean similar things which can be very confusing and even misleading.

Take the engagement spectrum for example. The most commonly referred to model in this part of the world is the (International Association for Public Participation) IAP2 version:

Inform – consult – involve – collaborate – empower

And there is the OECD version:

Information – consultation – active participation

And there are others:

Passive – reactive – participative – empowerment – leadership

Inform – consult – partner- empower

Announce – inform – consult – involve – collaborate – empower

What we have here is organisations creating their own spectrums using language they feel most comfortable with. However, this can all be very confusing.

The problem, in my mind, is that these references mean different things to different people. In addition the diagrammatic representations used create a common perception that the spectrum is a hierarchy, which it is not. In reality, it is, or should be, a set of clearly defined and different states.

The IAP2 spectrum is an interesting example of potentially confusing language. The inform level must be an element of all five levels. To inform is to impart information or make aware of, which is a necessary prerequisite for any of the other four levels. Consult, involve and collaborate all involve empowerment. To be consulted or to be invited to be involved or asked to collaborate on something is very empowering. Empowerment is a process that fosters power in people, for use in their own lives, their communities, and in their society, by acting on issues that they define as important. Consulting is involving someone in something in which they have an interest. So to consult is to involve or include. It means working together, which can also be described as collaborating.

While the use of these terms can be defended on grounds of it’s a question of degree, this is not particularly helpful for either the general public who have a very real interest in public decisions or engagement practitioners trying to figure out the appropriate level on the spectrum and later having to defend their choice.

So, what should the spectrum look like? How could it be described so as to be easily understood by both sides?

I tend to think about is as three different states; inform, involve and delegate.

This is what I mean –

Inform – in this state the communication is one-way only. What I think of as inside-out communicating. The organisation concerned pushes out information, probably in its own language, with no opportunity for a response from the target audience. In this state the organisation concerned remains accountable and responsible for the consequences or outcomes.

Involve – here conversations take place and real listening occurs. This could embrace, for example, all of the steps of the IAP2 spectrum. The organisation works actively with its communities of interest to achieve, as far as possible a mutually acceptable solution. The parties actively strive for consensus. This is very much a two-way approach where accountability and responsibility for the outcomes is shared. It is a state that builds trust and respect.

Delegate – in this outside-in state, the stakeholders or community develop their own preferred solutions which are then implemented by the host organisation, subject to any legal compliance obligations. Where for legal reasons the organisation needs to own the decision, it takes the necessary legal steps. In other words if, say, a council needs to make a formal decision, it simply passes the necessary resolution in compliance with relevant law. Accountability and responsibility for the outcomes rests with the community or stakeholders.

A recent LinkedIn discussion questioned whether inform is a legitimate engagement level. However, setting aside the word itself (for which there may be a better one) the key is that inform is a one-way communication from the host organisation outwards, irrespective of it being either positively or negatively motivated. Involve, on the other hand is two-way, with a free flow of information and conversation with the public able to influence the outcome. The direction of flow changes with delegate because it is the community feeding the solution into the organisation for adoption and implementation.

I began this discussion by referring to the importance of language. For each of these states the language used is likely to vary depending on the parties involved. In inform, for example there could be the language of the host organisation which could be incomprehensible to the target audience, whereas with involve plain English is more likely to prevail.

Background
On 16 July 2015 I asked LinkedIn’s Community Engagement forum the following question:

There’s a bit of discussion going on at the moment about engagement spectrums. Some organisations (such as local government councils) choose to remove the “empower” section from their spectrums, which is probably worth a conversation in itself.

For the purposes of this conversation, I’m looking for some opinions and a discussion about the “inform” end of the spectrum and whether you think that that is actually “engagement”.

The responses posted to this discussion suggest that I am not the only community engagement practitioner around the world who has been thinking about this issue.

The results
As at 30 July (New Zealand time) there had been 74 posted contributions to this discussion (LinkedIn’s count of 77 includes several repeated posts). Some contributors posted more than once, sometimes responding to comments made by others. 21 people had also “liked” this discussion by that time. Subsequent contributions made since 30 July but have not been materially different to earlier ones so have not been included in this analysis.

Feedback was multinational (note that the count reflects the number of contributions made, not the number of contributors).

• Australians: 24
  
• Canadians: 10
  
• Americans: 9
  
• British: 24
  
• New Zealanders: 1
  
• Koreans: 2
  
• Irish: 2
  
• Tanzanians: 1
  
• Belgians: 1
  

So what did people think about the proposition under discussion? Opinions were evenly split between two clear camps.

• 32 contributions said Yes – “informing” was part of engagement
  
• 27 contributions said No – “informing” was not part of engagement
  
• 10 contributions were ambivalent and not able to be interpreted as a clear “yes” or “no”.
  

What did the yeses say?

• The “spectrum” (presumably one of many engagement spectrums) doesn’t have a beginning or an end.
  
• It needs to be done properly to support other engagement processes that may be in play.
  
• Informing and engaging are different colours on the same spectrum.
  
• Informing and engaging need to happen together.
  
• People can be engaged without requiring them to respond.
  
• Yes, but informing cannot be the only component of engagement.
  
• Yes, provided it is done in good faith and allows for feedback.
  
• Yes, provided feedback received is heeded.
  
• Yes, people can’t be made to participate.
  
• Yes, depending on how the informing is done. It must be done at every stage of an engagement process.
  
• Informing rarely stands alone from other engagement components.
  
• Yes, if it is intended to elicit a response.
  
• Yes, but it has to meet a community’s needs.
  
• Yes, it has to be part of a wider engagement approach.
  
• Yes, it’s a key part of an engagement process throughout.
  
• Yes. It’s central to all levels of engagement.
  
• Yes, informing is a key part of widely accepted engagement spectrums.
  
• Yes, informing is key to generating a reaction from citizens.
  
• Yes, informing is a legitimate engagement objective and needs to be done well.
  
• Yes, it’s a necessary first step for engagement.
  
• Yes, you cannot engage unless people first receive information.
  

What did the noes say?

• Thinking of “informing” as engagement is a slippery slope.
  
• No, but it’s an important adjunct.
  
• No, but it’s important for scene setting.
  
• No, “inform” implies one-way information exchange.
  
• No, engagement requires active involvement.
  
• “Informing” can only passively seek feedback.
  
• No, but informing is a key component of an engagement process.
  
• No, as it can lead to tunnel vision.
  
• No, it’s a key component but not in itself legitimate engagement.
  
• No, informing is transactional and not interactional.
  
• No, a ladder approach to engagement is too linear. Engagement is more complex than that.
  
• No, “informing” has no associated interaction.
  
• No, informing is an engagement outcome not an objective.
  
• No, through engagement organisations should seek to engage, listen and empower.
  
• No, informing doesn’t engage people in thoughtful decision-making.
  
• With no response mechanism, there is no engagement.
  
• No, “engagement” is democratic and participatory.
  

Comments

1. Opinions about the legitimacy of “informing” as an engagement tool, based on the views expressed by contributors to this discussion, appear to be clearly and evenly split. While diverse, the sample of contributors should not be interpreted as being representative of the universe of community engagement practitioners.
   
2. Engagement spectrums, such as the ones published by the OECD and IAP2, are well used by many practitioners. Other visual tools, such as Arnstein’s Ladder, are also used and were referenced by several participants. Some people see these and use these differently to others, which was clear in several of the responses made.
   
3. Some people, particularly ladder fans, see engagement processes as linear, moving up or down, or from left to right across a range of engagement options. Others see these processes or objectives as being integrated. These perspectives clearly shape the value or legitimacy that practitioners attach to “informing”.
   
4. Words also mean different things to different people and, without clear context, can sometimes confuse, rather than clarify. “Inform” in this context appears to be such a casualty. Some participants have imbued their definition of this word with tinges of “collaboration”, others have taken a clear dictionary-based approach. That, combined with how people overlay the context of an engagement spectrum, seems to be the major contributor as to whether they then see “informing” as a legitimate part of engagement processes, or not.

The Basin Reserve Flyover is back in the news. A flyover was put forward by the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) as a solution to a traffic congestion problem on State Highway 1 near the centre of Wellington. After lengthy and fractious legal issues, the court ruled in favour of the objecting parties who then assumed that by winning their day in court this proposal would be abandoned. Little did they know…

This prolonged and expensive tale of divisive woe is a good case study for how not to go about engaging with a community that will be significantly impacted by a major capital works project.

The first step in any good practice community engagement process should be to identify and prioritise problems that need to be fixed. By drawing on the knowledge, experience and skill of the public to identify and quantify the problem to be solved, and then overlaying technical elements, the NZTA could have produced a sustainable and workable solution acceptable to the majority of the affected communities. This solution could be significantly different from the flyover proposal currently on the table but would have required a completely different approach to that being followed by the NZTA.

The NZTA appears to have identified some technical solutions to a traffic congestion issue around the Basin Reserve and then dumped these on the affected communities with little context provided. Clearly the NZTA is seeing a problem that community groups cannot. This makes it quite difficult for them to sell their “solution”.

The single-mindedness of the NZTA in pursuing its preferred solution through legal channels shows just how little it values the input of communities in good decision-making. These communities not only have very real concerns about the impact of this purely technical solution on the long-term future of the iconic Basin Reserve and the surrounding area but will also be meeting a large part of the project’s costs through their taxes.

Rather than relying on a judicial decision to get its own way, the NZTA would be better served by restarting an engagement process, beginning with listening and responding to community views about the problem to be solved as well as the social and cultural, and economic values those communities attach to the Basin Reserve and its surrounding areas. Restarting this process could save some costs and time and also do much to rebuild the NZTA’s now badly tarnished reputation.