Citizen Engagement – Democracy arrives in the 21 Century!

I was delighted this week to receive an email from Rep. Mike Capuano. He’s asking his constituents for their opinion about health care reform, specifically in regards to the legislation proposed in the House this week. When Obama came into office, his administration initiated a call for Transparency and Open Government. They invited recommendations from professionals in the fields of deliberative democracy and civic engagement re. the principles and implementation of this initiative, focusing on how the federal government should go about including citizen input into public policy.

Obama’s initiative is still in its first stages and implementation hasn’t begun yet – so I was delighted to see Rep. Capuano’s email, as if he has caught the bug of civic engagement. I wonder if there are other Congress-people who have sent out similar letters asking for their constituents’ opinions….

As a facilitator of civic engagement and large-scale change, I strongly believe in the need to involve the public in government decisions, at every level: city, state and federal. “The public” includes the general public, who can express their values (what’s important to them), as well as stakeholders with related expertise, whose opinions might carry more weight in the decision-making process. There are several models of citizen engagement, from Study Circles to America Speaks, which are facilitated discussions for the purpose of creating action plans re. local, state, or federal policies or activities. My city, Somerville, used to host yearly Study Circle conversations, on Racism, Youth and Adults, Sept. 11, where every group developed recommendations for city officials to improve city governance. American Speaks created the “21st Century Town Meeting”, and they engaged 4,000 people in Manhattan after 9/11 in a discussion about the future of Ground Zero.

Enhancing Citizen Participation in Decision-Making – or Not…

Or not, as in the case of the Health Care hearings on Capitol Hill.

The conversation sponsored by the Obama administration about “Open Government Brainstorming” is continuing, as people continue to post comments about civic engagement – engaging citizens in public policy decision-making, at the local, state and federal levels. I’ve posted a few comments, about best practices. But the recent news raised a flag for me about this invitation for input, as I remarked in this post:

We’re all talking about how to engage citizens in the government’s decision making process – yet, there have been hearings this month on Capitol Hill on health care, convened by Sen. Baucus, where public input on single-payer health care has not been welcome, and has been obstructed. There were many doctors and nurses who wanted to participate and be heard, but they were excluded, and escorted out of the room. So I’m confused why we’re giving suggestions for models and tools, when there appears to be a basic question about the premise: to what extent is public input being invited?

Training on Facilitative Leadership

Shortly after his administration began, Pres. Obama issued a document stating his commitment to open government and transparency. In May, the administration invited recommendations to their new website “Open Government Brainstorming”. The organizations who have been involved in the planning of this include NCDD, National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation, America Speaks, International Association for Public Participation, and others. Anyone and everyone can post suggestions on this website. Here’s my recommendation on “Training for Facilitative Leadership”.

In order to create a program of dynamic public engagement, elected officials and government staff need training in the process and skills required to be successful – and this is a great opportunity to develop such trainings.

In order to support effective public engagement, leaders from federal, state and city government need to learn best practices for engaging the public, to understand:

* Facilitative leadership: they are the conveners of a process, whose purpose is to gather wisdom from many people. They need to identify and include the stakeholders who have a stake or interest, to help solve a problem that no one agency can solve by themselves. Government officials shouldn’t feel the need to have all the answers.

What if they held a Civic Summit and… People Came?

Last year, the president of the City Council convened the Boston Civic Summit, with the builder of the Boston Convention Center, whose center has increased visitor traffic to Boston. It was an exciting event with 400 attendees, and could have been a kickoff for energetic action. It was wonderful to see people get excited, brainstorm and share their vision for the city – the kind of discussion that generates great energy that can be funneled into action teams. Unfortunately, there were several problems, with the design and with the follow-up, that could inform future efforts of civic engagement activities.

For example, the Summit wasn’t sponsored by the city, nor by the city council, nor by the mayor – so it didn’t really have legs: No money, no ongoing support, no connection to projects other organizations were already working on. While the event generated 4 action groups to work on 4 identified action items, those groups needed ongoing support and guidance, not to mention resources. They needed to identify their goals, prioritize them, figure out how they were going to work together, and so on. Without that support, 3 of the 4 groups did not continue to meet, and the fourth group lost participants as they continued to hold meetings.

Accessing the Realm of Possibility

Bill Moyers recently hosted a conversation on his PBS program with Parker Palmer, author of “The Courage to Teach”, and “A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life.”  Palmer was describing how the Obama campaign engaged people, the electorate, in telling stories, and in thinking about the possibilities of his campaign. It was, Palmer said, the first campaign where he didn’t feel that the candidate was being “sold” to him.  “I was not asked, to buy a presidential candidate as a commodity in a consumer culture… It asked me to tell a story.”

I’m interested in the use of stories in organizations and communities to discuss values, visioning, and determining impact.  For example, employees’ stories that can tell us about the values of the company, and how they fit with the individual; stories that reveal people’s hopes and aspirations; client stories about the impact that an organization’s services have had on them. Stories about hopes and dreams take us beyond the “actual”, they give us access to the right-brain and to our emotions, and they generate energy for future actions. So I was struck by the Telling of Stories, and the Questions about Possibility, that the Obama campaign asked people.