Public engagement in policy making - LGiU briefing

10 July 2013

Briefing Summary

The Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) published Public Engagement in Policy-Making in June 2013.
The report examines open-policy making – what it is, whether it is working, what are the risks and how it can be strengthened.
It analyses in particular the role of digital technology in engaging the public and experts in debates about policy and in the policy-making process itself.
This briefing will be of interest to councillors and officers in all tiers of council, especially to those involved in policy and public and community engagement and members and staff interested in the role of social media and digital technology in widening access to policy-making.

Briefing in full

Background

In its plan for civil service reform, published in June 2012, the government set out its proposals for improving the ways in which the public could be involved in the process of policy-making. It wants to see the civil service being more open to external influence and advice, stating, "open policy-making will become the default. Whitehall does not have a monopoly on policy-making expertise". This would require a different approach to working with the public and a new role for civil servants; the Civil Service would no longer to be the sole source of policy advice.

The public administration select committee is chaired by the Conservative member, Bernard Jenkin MP. PASC decided to carry out an inquiry into open policy-making which included the examination of the use of digital platforms to promote direct participation. The inquiry report was published on 3 June 2013.

Involving the citizen in policy-making

The report sees the government’s aim to widen open-policy making in the context of its trying “to reform the relationship between the state and the citizen” through ideas such as the Big Society.

Witnesses to the inquiry described how they saw this. Professor Beth Noveck, former US Deputy Chief Technology officer and author of Wiki-Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful:

“The future of Government looks like a hybrid between strong government institutions [...] and networks of people—groups and individuals - participating in helping to make those institutions work better.”

The National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) suggested that citizen engagement in the policy-making process "helps institutions to keep abreast of public concerns and expectations and supports real-world problem solving" as well as demonstrating accountability and leading to socially-grounded decision making.

Involve, an organisation that supports organisations in engaging citizens (not to be confused with us - Involve Yorkshire & Humber), suggested that:

“When done well, public engagement can have a number of advantages for policy-making, including strengthening the democratic legitimacy of policy, by ensuring that citizens are able to take and influence the decisions that affect their lives; increasing the accountability of government, by ensuring that citizens are aware and can respond to the decisions that government takes; and improving the quality of policy, by ensuring as broad a range of knowledge, views and values as possible are present in the process and ensuring that policy goes with the grain of public values”.

Witnesses echoed the criticisms made by the government itself of the current approach to policy-making:

policy is drawn up on the basis of a range of inputs that is too narrow
policy is not subject to sufficient external challenge before it is announced
the policy development process, and the evidence and data underlying it, is insufficiently transparent
policy insufficiently reflects the reality experienced by citizens
policy is often developed with insufficient input from those who will have to implement it.

Policy-making can be too often lacking in transparency and, according to Involve, government policy-making processes “typically treat public engagement as a nuisance at worst and an optional extra or nice-to-have at best”. The public is often cynical about public engagement undertaken by the government: The Centre for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics (Cesagen) at Cardiff University said that "public engagement continues to be blighted by a perception that it is a reactive or post-hoc exercise, where public participation is at a stage of decision-making where its impact is purposely limited and negligible".

The committee concludes that redefining the relationship between the citizen and the state requires individuals to be encouraged to play a more active and meaningful role and “it is right that the citizen and people with knowledge and expertise from outside government should have the opportunity to influence the decisions of government”.

Involving the citizen and experts

The civil service reform plan pledges two separate actions: "open" policy-making and "contestable" policy-making.

A "clear model of open policy-making" is explained in the plan as one that exploits technology and social media to engage the public in debates about policy and in the policy-making process itself. In an open policy-making model, it is understood that involvement of the public is sought before proposals have been formulated. As well as referring to "web-based tools, platforms and new media", the plan mentions "crowd sourcing" to help to define particular problems, instead of only consulting on solutions, and using "policy labs" to test policies with a range of people and organisations before implementation.

Contestable policy-making is one in which external sources are given the opportunity, through competition, to develop policy. To achieve this, the government has established a central match-fund, known as the Contestable Policy Fund, which is worth up to £1 million per year. The first contract under the fund was awarded to the Institute for Public Policy Research in September 2012 to carry out a review into how other civil services work.

The committee suggests that this change in approach means that there needs to be a change in how civil servants approach their role and that Ministers will also need to understand that engagement must become an integral part of day to day work. This will not be an easy change for them.

The report cites examples of open policy-making, such as the Red Tape Challenge which “crowd sources” views from business, organisations and the public and the Care and Support White Paper and Bill, where the Department of Health created two dedicated “engagement spaces” to invite public comments on the draft bill, with a dedicated twitter feed.

PASC welcomes the government’s stated support of greater public engagement and dialogue. It stresses, however, that ultimate responsibility and accountability for leadership must remain with ministers and senior civil servants. Despite this the committee is clear that:

Addressing the risks

This section examines what risks there are in open-policy making and how they can be mitigated.

Several witnesses said that open policy-making activity could become dominated by a single group or groups. There has been some concern that the move to contestable policy-making could result in undue influence over policy-making from private companies with vested interests or thinktanks with their own political views. To resolve this, Involve suggested that "the size of policy-making contracts will need to be large enough to support a rigorous process and public engagement must become an integral part of how proposals are assessed".

The committee recommends that :

“Care must be taken to ensure that open policy-making processes are not dominated by those with vested interests, powerful lobbyists or "the usual suspects" who are aware of policy "opportunities". This is particularly true for contestable policy-making, in which one group or organisation will be tasked with providing recommendations to Government on a particular problem. As a minimum, contracts awarded through the contestable policy-making fund must require organisations to undertake appropriate public engagement and demonstrate this influenced its conclusions”.

Another risk considered by PASC is that the expectations of those who choose to be involved are not managed, resulting in disappointment and a loss of enthusiasm if the process or outcome of engagement is not what was expected. To avoid this PASC says that the government must manage their expectations about public engagement:

“Open policy-making should empower citizens and make them feel their time and contribution has been worthwhile. This means being clear about the purpose of engagement and the limits of what the process is intended to achieve, as well as providing feedback on the findings of engagement activity and the reasons for decisions taken as a result. Departments should ensure that a mechanism for feedback to the public is built into all engagement activity, including reasons why choices and decisions have been taken, based on the evidence available”.

The committee looked at whether the public wanted to be actively involved in shaping decisions about public services, citing evidence from Ipsos-MORI, stressing that there is a difference between supporting the idea of involvement and the reality of getting involved with available structures for involvement.

Roughly a third of adults in England engage in some sort of "civic participation" (for example, contacting an elected representative, taking part in a public demonstration or protest, or signing a petition). Far fewer - only one in ten - are involved either in direct decision-making about local services or issues, or in the active provision of these services by taking on a role such as a local councillor, school governor or magistrate.

Redbridge Borough Council, in its written evidence suggested that:

“[...] the public is motivated to take part because they believe they have something to lose or gain, not because they want to help the democratic process. Therefore there has to be a compelling call to action, preferably with a 'burning platform' issue—the loss of an amenity or service”.

PASC concludes that:

"Citizens will be most likely to engage with Government if they believe they can make a real difference or where the issue affects them. We believe the Government has the difficult task of ensuring adequate public participation in open policy-making. Without this, the process will be of little value. The Government must take steps to build confidence in the open policy-making process and to ensure that participation is sufficient to make the exercise meaningful and worthwhile."

The role of digital technology

The civil service reform plan refers specifically to the role of technology and social media in delivering open policy-making. The government’s digital strategy also states that:

“Transactional services and information are the primary focus of our digital by default approach, but digital also provides ways to improve the broader policy making process, through better engagement and consultation. It has the potential to transform democratic participation in the policy process, and improve the design of policy itself. The Civil Service Reform Plan states "Open policy making will become the default" and we will use digital to achieve that outcome”.

Evidence to the inquiry reinforced the benefits of harnessing digital technology for the purposes of policy development. The report cites two examples that they were particularly impressed with – the first from Redbridge Council: they consulted the public on their budget in the YouChoose project, where they used a web based tool in conjunction with YouGov and the LGA which presented a simplified version of the council’s budget, with a series of graphical ‘sliders’ – users could adjust the budget but had to achieve a balanced budget. The second example was from the US Patent Office and the creation of Peer-to-Patent. A pilot project in the US, it enabled members of the public to expand the resources of the Patent Office in finding examples of 'prior art' - public information that might be used to decide a patent's claims of originality to tackle the backlog of certain types of patent.

The use of social media, such as twitter and Facebook, in engaging with the public, was discussed by witnesses. Evidence suggested that whilst digital technology represents an opportunity for successfully implementing greater levels of public engagement in policy-making, civil servants lack the skills to use it well. In considering the skills required to push forward innovation, Professor Nigel Shadbolt, of the University of Southampton, said that "The level of public technology skills across Government is simply not fit for purpose. Mike Bracken agreed, saying that "some departments and some big agencies have outsourced so much of their capacity over the last decade that they have no one to define their own technology architecture and also their digital skills". In considering digital skills and their link with policy, Simon Burrall, Director of Involve, summarised the main problem:

“One of the issues and one of the big skills gaps is the people who understand how to engage the public do not necessarily really get digital, and the digital people do not necessarily get public engagement. There is a real need to begin to find ways to get teams to work together and to begin to train across those teams in different ways”.

PASC agreed that digital technology has a significant role to play in opening up policy-making. They wanted to see, however, this go further and “embrace radical and innovative approaches which support the genuine and continuing involvement of citizens in policy”.

Their conclusion here was:

“In order to use digital technology effectively in open policy-making, digital experts within the Civil Service and outside should work more closely with policy teams to explore opportunities for digital engagement and to provide support in carrying out digital engagement activity. For example, the Department of Energy and Climate Change could trial the use of eBay, Amazon and supermarket websites to open up the Green Deal and allow residents to access this offer through established retail channels. The same approach could be tried using the Right To Buy, and the Help To Buy programmes”.

The committee did not want to see digital engagement tools used to the detriment of other forms of engagement. Digital technology should be considered within, not instead of, a particular engagement exercise.

Those that were supportive of digital technology also warned against the dangers of relying too heavily on digital platforms to improve engagement. The National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) stated in written evidence that "While digital platforms can help to achieve a greater volume of responses with fewer resources, many topics require longer-term engagement and the kind of deliberation that can be achieved through a well-managed public dialogue”. The UK Association for Science and Discovery Centres in their written submission agreed, stating that "social media is only part of the answer as it appeals to only a subset of people, with a subset of interests”. Involve suggested that:

“While digital engagement has a number of benefits and should certainly play an integral role in public engagement in future, it also has a number of comparative weaknesses (e.g. deliberation, conflict and ownership) and should therefore not be used to the exclusion of other methods where they are more appropriate”.

And some citizens could be excluded from engagement if there is too much focus on digital means, given the numbers of people not accessing government information or services online. The digital strategy says that those in higher socio-economic groups (ABCs) are more likely to be online, with 92% regularly or occasionally accessing the internet. 28% of disabled people are not online (rarely access/have never used the internet), and older people are more likely to be offline than other age groups (however 59% of people aged over 65 are online).

PASC warns that the proposals within the civil service reform plan do not appear to give equal weight to other forms of engagement in open policy-making and they are concerned that given the proportion of some groups that do not use the internet, such as the disabled and elderly, the government risks excluding many people from policy-makingprocess. They recommend that:

“The Government should be able to demonstrate that digital methods used in engagement exercises are suited to the needs of those they are trying to engage. Concrete goals should be set, relative to the importance of digital platforms in peoples' lives. For example, if 50% of Britons have a Facebook account, Whitehall interactivity via Facebook should reflect this. Clear guidance should be set for the wider public sector”.

Measuring success

The importance of understanding and measuring the success of engaging the public in policy-making was summarised by Cesagen:

“Evaluation [...] is required not just for public engagement activity but the means and process thereafter where the outputs of public engagement translate into outcomes for policy. This requires substantial investment in tracking and mapping the travel of public engagement outputs and their impact in policy contexts. A cartography [map] of public engagement policy impacts would endlessly improve the value attributed to public engagement among public cohorts and also provide a manual for publics in maximising their influence”.

The Cabinet Office referred to a number of factors that could be used to judge the success of a public engagement exercise, including the number of responses received, perceptions of the Government's responsiveness, and the avoidance of dominance by a single-interest group.

However, PASC received little evidence from the Cabinet Office specifying what management data the Government intends to collect in practice to assess the implementation and effectiveness of different approaches to public engagement in policy-making. Even more disturbingly, when asked whether there should be some baseline data against which to measure the success of open policy-making, the Minister for the Cabinet Office replied "I do not know how you would measure it". When pressed on this issue, particularly as to how success could be determined, the Minister responded "I am not aware of any means of measuring it".

The difficulties of determining measures for success were recognised by witnesses and in written evidence. Sciencewise argued that:

“The assessment of the success or failure of public engagement must be based on the purpose of the exercise. An engagement process which primarily aims to make better informed decisions will have to be judged differently to one which primarily aims to simply provide information[…]The success or failure of engagement goes beyond the choice of method and often depends on the principles that underlie the process”.

A number of submissions did, though, provide some suggestions as to how success and impact can be measured. In oral evidence, David Babbs of 38 Degrees said that it was "worth looking at numeric statistics in terms of the number of people who are engaging in different ways. It is also worth being able to point to examples of where public engagement has improved and transformed government policy. In contrast, Tom Steinberg of MySociety suggested that success should be measured through "data recorded around things like the proportion of people who report that they believe they can have some impact on the world around them and that they have any say whatsoever in the country they live in". Stephan Shakespeare of YouGov argued that, ultimately, the success of a public engagement process should be judged by the officials on the "demand side":

PASC says that they are concerned that the government has not given more thought to measuring the impact of open policy-making, and that it will not be able to demonstrate value for money and improved outcomes in this new approach:

“While we recognise that it is not an easy task, some form of measurement or assessment needs to take place. The Government should come forward with details of how the success of engagement efforts across departments will be measured. These indicators or measurements, and the progress against them, should be shared between departments and made available in the Cabinet Office annual business plan”.

Comment

Although the PASC report focuses on policy making in central government, it is very relevant to local government. Not that the environment is the same of course, but many of the issues raised by the committee are pertinent to local government: why engage the public; how best to do it; what are the risks; and what is the role of digital technology?

Involving the public – residents and service users – in developing policy and decision making – is not new, and it is far more developed in local than in central government or the NHS. It isn’t easy and successful engagement takes time, resources and political leadership. Is PASC right to say that there is a developing new approach to open policy-making? The report does show that the government is committed to opening up policy making (even if there are questions about the extent of and approach to it). The NHS too wants to get in on the agenda (beyond Healthwatch and Local Healthwatch) with a recent paper to the NHS England Board proposing to set up “a design group to explore the creation and development of a citizen and community assembly”.

It is also clear that the rapid development of digital technology and social media is changing the context across the public sector.

Why policy-making should be opened up should be self evident. Simon Burall from involve wants to see a step change – especially around the culture of leadership:

“As I said in my oral evidence to the committee, we are now in an era where macho leadership from the front is no longer appropriate in most cases. We need leaders who can identify critical, strategic issues and hold open a space long enough for relevant voices to be heard before assessing the available evidence and making a decision”.

Digital technology has the potential for widening the ways that people can interact with government. There must be a growing number of examples from local government of this – which is not reflected in the report, as only Redbridge provided evidence. The committee is right, however, to stress that digital engagement tools should not be used to the detriment of other forms of engagement and should be considered within a particular engagement exercise. Councils need also to remember that there are still significant numbers of residents who do not have access to the web or find difficulty in using online tools.

The committee, despite this caution, wants to see more radical and innovative approaches. The Guardian labelled this a ‘wiki-style’ approach to policy and it was this section of the report that got the most media coverage. It was perhaps unfortunate that the examples the committee gives are rather ill thought out, particularly suggesting that an ebay type scheme could be used for the right to buy: how can you bid for your own home? The examples are also not really about promoting engagement, but are about providing wider access for information – fine in itself, but not really about strengthening democracy or open policy making.

What key messages should we take from this report? First that genuine engagement in policy should mean the public being included from early on and in all stages of the policy cycle. Not all of this needs to be direct participation. Social media here can sometimes be a strong tool – creating data that could help to inform policy at an early stage.

Local authorities will know through experience that they will be consulting and involving different audiences – experts, community representatives, interest groups, service users, residents in general, front-line staff – different tools and approaches will be needed. Using new techniques and digital technology should mean varied and sometimes new voices are heard in this process. The report is right to stress that there are clear benefits here – crowd sourcing, for example, can bring in new people and those who really care about an issue, but, like public engagement generally, could be dominated by vested interests and those with the loudest voice.

Simon Burall, commenting in a blog on the involve website welcomed much of what is in the PASC report but had some criticisms:

“There is no direct recommendation that policy making will have to slow down if opening policy making is really to result in new voices being heard as part of the policy process. There is also no recommendation that ministers, subject to adequate justification, spend more resources to ensure that voices that otherwise would not contribute are supported to do so…The section on measuring success, while strong on the need to do so, is particularly weak on how to do it. I think this is an area where government could really do with opening up the debate in order to understand how to strengthen its own practice in this area. In the end, unless government can measure the success or otherwise of opening up policy making, it can’t learn from its mistakes and feed that learning back to improve future processes”.

There are lessons here for local government, although spending more on engagement will be extremely hard for councils currently.

What else? Government and local government should be building on what already exists, and in the government’s case and the NHS, they should be working with local democratic structures (the NHS design group proposal, for example, seems to be ignoring what already is happening locally, led by councils). This was not mentioned by PASC, but it must be right that national bodies do not impose engagement ‘solutions’ from above, but use those institutions closest to communities to widen open policy making.

Finally, collecting data, understanding public opinion and involving wider audiences will mean little if nothing changes as a result. Of course, political leaders in local and central government will make the final decisions, but the public has to believe they are being listened to and they require feedback about the outcomes of engagement, or cynicism about government and politics will only get worse.

For more information about this, or any other LGiU member briefing, please contact Janet Sillett, Briefings Manager, on janet.sillett@lgiu.org.uk

This briefing can also be viewed on the LGiU briefings site or downloaded as a PDF