We need to be driving change in this area, fast, right now. It is imperative that government (both politicians and bureaucrats) change their model of engagement with citizens – and increase the range of modes for this engagement.

The capacities and tools for citizen engagement are widespreading right now*

Going forward expert knowledge will remain vitally important, but can now be used together with socially agglomerated knowledge to provide a much richer foundation for decision-making. Governments need to change their mindset from consultation to conversation – and beyond this, they need to rethink who has to initiate and organise the conversations. As well as setting up open discussion places and inviting citizens to come to them, governments can also go to where citizens are having these conversations for themselves and join in as participants – not as convenors or controllers.

And yes – integrity will become crucial. Alongside the now familiar notions of personal integrity and corporate integrity, we will need a third dimension of integrity – “integrity of practice”, where there is no separation between what is done, why it is done and how it is done – a complete integration of process, principles and purpose. Engaging with citizens in ways that claim, but do not allow full participation will no longer cut the mustard.

The Secondary Futures project (the New Zealand arm of the OEDC Future of Schooling initiative) is an example of a recent experiment in a different way for government to engage with citizens. A reflection on some of the project practices and lessons can be seen at: http://www.secondaryfutures.co.nz/pdfs/AQuestio...

Although the nationwide conversation was focused on the future of Secondary Education, the model could be used for engagement on any issue.

N.B. The project has ended: the website is still up but the e-mail contacts are no longer connected.)

*The use of ‘widespreading’ as a verb is deliberate – to describe the perfusion of change through systems and societies when it’s gone beyond the early adopters, but is not yet ubiquitous.

The capacities and tools for citizen engagement are widespreading right now*

Going forward expert knowledge will remain vitally important, but can now be used together with socially agglomerated knowledge to provide a much richer foundation for decision-making. Governments need to change their mindset from consultation to conversation – and beyond this, they need to rethink who has to initiate and organise the conversations. As well as setting up open discussion places and inviting citizens to come to them, governments can also go to where citizens are having these conversations for themselves and join in as participants – not as convenors or controllers.
And yes – integrity will become crucial. Alongside the now familiar notions of personal integrity and corporate integrity, we will need a third dimension of integrity – “integrity of practice”, where there is no separation between what is done, why it is done and how it is done – a complete integration of process, principles and purpose. Engaging with citizens in ways that claim, but do not allow full participation will no longer cut the mustard.

The Secondary Futures project (the New Zealand arm of the OEDC Future of Schooling initiative) was an experiment in a different way for government to engage citizens.. A reflection on some of the project practices and lessons in the paper “A Question of Voice” at http://www.secondaryfutures.co.nz/pdfs/AQuestio...

Although the nationwide conversation was focussed on the future of Secondary Education, the model could be used for engagement on any issue – and be integrated into the social media tools that appeared during the lifetime of the project.

N.B. The project has ended: the website is still up but the e-mail contacts are no longer connected.)

*The use of ‘widespreading’ as a verb is deliberate – to describe the perfusion of change through systems and societies when it’s gone beyond the early adopters, but is not yet ubiquitous.