Public Engagement That Works
Interview with Geoff Wilson
Last updated 23 July 2026
ETHOS Issue 12, June 2013
What is distinctive about public engagement in the public sector?
There are some basics common to all public engagement activities no matter which sector is undertaking the work. However, I believe there are some important fundamental differences.
Motivation is one important difference. Public accountability, acting with public good in mind, public ownership, democracy and citizenship are unique priorities in the public sector environment. These will have an impact on the kinds of issues or problems that are addressed through public engagement as well as the approaches and intended outcomes of such activities.
Confidentiality is also a limiting factor to an extent. In my experience, however, governments sometimes use confidentiality as an excuse for unnecessary secrecy or to control an issue, the public discourse around it, or to achieve a predetermined outcome.
But open and transparent information is a critical component of meaningful public engagement, especially if the engagement process seeks significant decision-making input from citizens. The best decisions are made when decision makers and their advisors have the best possible information. If government information is opaque, there will be a lower quality outcome from public engagement precisely because people will not have all the information they require to have well-informed views.
Notions of privacy and confidentiality are changing dramatically, especially for those of the younger generation who live their lives very openly in the world of social media. This demographic is unlikely to share the same devotion to confidentiality and privacy as previous cohorts. This will continue to challenge more traditional and conservative government practices around privacy and confidentiality.
How should public sector agencies decide when and how best to engage the public?
I am an advocate for meaningful and appropriate public engagement. I do not believe public engagement is relevant or useful for every situation, and discerning when it is appropriate to engage with the public is an important skill for the public sector to master.
There are many situations when it is inappropriate to engage the public in a conversation or decision:
When a decision has already been made and there is no opportunity for the public to influence the outcome
In situations where rapid decision-making and action is critical, such as emergencies
When there is not enough time to allow for thoughtful public deliberation of an issue: for example, if a quick decision is necessary to take advantage of an opportunity
If the outcomes of the public dialogue are unclear
If the public is not ready (i.e., they may not have the information they need to participate)
If the public does not see the issue or decision as important or relevant to them
In circumstances where the subject or issue is so esoteric or highly technical that the dialogue and decisions are rightly in the domain of technical experts. That is not to say that the public cannot engage in issues that involve complex ideas or technical information, but it requires much more effort on the part of the public body to help citizens prepare and build knowledge and understanding. In these cases, it will take more time to plan and educate participants and careful, focused attention should be paid to the specific input that is being sought from the public.
Some basic questions I always ask when I am assessing an opportunity to see if public engagement is an option:
Is the decision or issue one that affects peoples’ lives directly?
Is it something people care about?Is there opportunity for the public to influence the decision?
Can the public body undertaking the engagement take the time and devote the resources necessary for meaningful public engagement?
Will people have all the information they need to participate in the discussion? What information will they need?
These are just some of the basic considerations when judging the rationale for public engagement.
Discerning when it is appropriate to engage with the public is an important skill for the public sector to master.
Like any tool we would employ in policymaking, programme design and for deciding public issues, public engagement has both great potential and great limitations. It is not a panacea or the solution to everything wrong with government or public decision-making. However, it can uncover hidden knowledge and motivations around an issue. It can generate new and creative approaches to problems; it can repair relationships between the public and the public sector if done well and thoughtfully; it can build trust; it can lead to productive collaboration. But there are also many risk factors that need to be carefully weighed in every situation or decision before public engagement is undertaken. This is as much about skill and knowledge of good public engagement practice as it is about experience and applying sound judgment.
What kinds of structures and approaches might help public organisations leverage public engagement more effectively?
There is a debate about whether or not governments should have in-house, paid public engagement staff designing and facilitating public engagement, or whether it is better to contract external consultants. The only reasonable response to this question is to take the approach that best fits the context in which the public engagement is taking place.
The approaches to take and structures to employ can also be informed by other contexts (e.g. cultural, operational, etc.). However, I find the approach to public engagement advocated by the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2)1 to be the most flexible and adaptable that I have come across, and it seems to work well within a public sector context.
Regardless of the approach adopted, however, it is important for there to be a well-established base of understanding among both public servants and politicians of the advantages and limitations of public engagement in general before embarking on any process.
For any government or organisation, it is important to truly embrace engagement in the right spirit. Half-hearted efforts or superficial engagement processes will only alienate the stakeholders with whom you are trying to build a rapport. Meaningful engagement involves being genuinely interested in and taking account of the ideas, opinions, beliefs, aspirations and values of the stakeholders you are engaging.
Public Engagement: How To Promote Inclusive, Balanced And Constructive Conversations
Begin the dialogue by exploring and celebrating points of agreement among the parties, including shared values and beliefs that may be at the heart of the issue.
Be deliberative in your approach to these kinds of conversations. Put in place ground rules and practices for holding people accountable for engaging respectfully.
Acknowledge the diversity of viewpoints without judgement or preference. Ensure fair and balanced information, facts and perspectives are welcomed into the dialogue.
Assert equality of perspectives involved in the issue, and their validity.
Take steps to design a process that allows for open dialogue and the exploration of healthy tension among the varying views. Create the conditions for people to “see the issue though another’s eyes” or create opportunities for participants to share in another’s perspective or experience of the issue.
Embrace and acknowledge the conflict that is inherent in these situations. With skilled facilitation, conflict can be turned into a creative rather than a destructive force in public discussions.
Cultivate compassion among the participants.
Be prepared to make compromises.
Take the time to build trust among the dialogue participants.
Collectively define what success looks like.
Know when it is time to take a break.
Be prepared to let go.
Go slow in order to go fast. Plan and prepare well. Invest in participant learning. These will accelerate people’s ability to engage in the issue.
Do not be afraid of emotion. David Brooks, New York Times columnist and author of The Social Animal (Random House, 2012) makes this point in a Ted Talk: “Emotion is the foundation of reason because it tells us what to value”.1 That is, we can learn about peoples’ values and what they value by paying attention to the tone and tenor of emotions during such dialogues. This can lead to a deeper understanding about the values that are involved in the exploration of an issue.
Notes
http://www.ted.com/talks/david_brooks_the_social_animal.html (posted March 2011).
Towards More Effective Public Engagement: Strategies For Success
Go slow at first and take the time to build understanding about public engagement within the public service and its agencies, but also among the public. Understand its limitations.
Set reasonable goals for early public engagement initiatives. Do not try to tackle the biggest issues early in your learning and skill-building phase of development.
Be clear about the appropriate role of citizens in public engagement on public issues.
Be forthright about making mistakes: make mistakes, and learn as much as you can from that experience. This is particularly difficult sometimes in public sector environments, which tend to be highly risk-averse.
Set reasonable expectations for public engagement.
Public engagement supplements, but is not a replacement for, democratic process.
Take time to train staff, and build skills and capacity to conduct public engagement properly. Create understanding and support for public engagement at senior levels within the public service.
Put policies and frameworks in place to provide consistent guidance for public engagement, such as defining accountability, defining circumstances of appropriate use, and establishing guiding principles, procedures and accepted models or approaches.
When designing engagement initiatives, use methods that are appropriate for the issue and the participants, and that will satisfy the needs and style of the organisation. For example, don’t use online engagement tools if participants cannot easily or comfortably use online tools to engage.
Notes
https://www.ted.com/talks/david_brooks_the_social_animal?subtitle=en (posted March 2011).
Leadership is an incredibly important component of public engagement.
Some key leadership attributes I believe are necessary for the practice of public engagement include:
being fully present, open and available to others
compassion
enabling learning, growth and meaningful contributions
deep listening
effective communication with diverse stakeholders
self-reflection and awareness
ability to recognise, identify and challenge assumptions (including your own)
ability to explore without jumping to solutions
ability to let go
accountability for actions
honesty, integrity
fulfilment of promises and commitments
Some other fields worth exploring in terms of skill-building for public engagement include:
negotiation
group facilitation
project management/planning
mediation and conflict resolution
public relations and communications
social media
community development
How might we best evaluate the success of public engagement initiatives?
Evaluation is an evolving and emerging field within the practice of public engagement, and it is most certainly the aspect of public engagement practice with the most work yet to be done.
As in many fields, the measuring process is much easier to conduct than the measuring of outcomes. As a practitioner, I am very interested in knowing from participants what they learned through their involvement in an engagement exercise. I also try to understand how they perceive an issue or a topic at the start of an engagement process, and then how they perceive that issue at the end of the process. Furthermore, identifying how public engagement may have affected decisions or key outcomes during engagement is an important factor.
Public engagement supplements but is not a replacement for democratic process.
From a public perspective, a successful project is one in which the public can see that they have had a visible or demonstrable impact. Being able to ask participants at the start of a project about how they believe their input will influence decisions, and then asking them at the end of the project if they think they did influence the decision is an approach that will help gauge the overall success of public engagement efforts. I want to emphasise however that it is still very important to evaluate the public engagement work itself and to recognise the significant measurement challenges involved in doing so.
Standards of practice are beginning to appear in various places around the world, and these can offer guidance and insight into some of the appropriate process and outcome measures common in the field. The IAP2 will soon have practice standards based on their approach. However, there are many organisations and jurisdictions that have created practice standards, for example, Scotland, the AA1000 Standards Board in the UK2 and Australia,3 to name just a few. The Brisbane Declaration on Community Engagement4 also outlines a set of general principles that can be readily adapted into a standards or evaluation framework.5
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Geoff Wilson was President of the International Association for Public Participation International (IAP2) from February 2010 to November 2012. He is Director of Patient and Public Engagement in Capital Health, Nova Scotia’s largest provider of health services in Halifax, Canada. Wilson last spoke in Singapore at the 2012 MICA-CSC Public Communications Conference on “Public Engagement and Organisational Culture”.
NOTES
http://www.iap2.org
http://www.accountability.org/standards/aa1000ses/index.html
http://www.acelg.org.au/upload/program1/1320191471_Community_Engagement_web.pdf
http://www.qld.gov.au/web/community-engagement/guides-factsheets/documents/brisbane_declaration.pdf
http://www.iap2.org.au/sitebuilder/resources/knowledge/asset/files/40/undecevaluation frameworkforcommunityengagement.pdf