Services
There’s a reason online participation processes have yet to fundamentally alter the way policy gets made: they’re hard to do right. How does a government agency comply with legislative and executive mandates? How do you ensure that people show up and participate – and that the people who do show up represent your intended targets? How do you get the leadership of your agency to listen to the public’s voice? How can you balance the institutional incentives to minimize risk with the goal of offering citizens a genuine opportunity to shape policy?
There are so many decisions to make and hurdles to surmount when it comes to meaningful citizen involvement with government decision-making. AmericaSpeaks can help. We design and manage all aspects of online participation projects with the goal of giving citizens a real voice in the decisions that shape their lives. Together with our technology partner, Ascentum, we have a quarter century of combined experience working through the challenges of public engagement.
Take advantage of our experience. Here are some of the services that we provide.
Online Engagement Strategy & Planning
Beginning with an analysis of your particular communication assets, history, present circumstances, and needs, we’ll develop an appropriate framework and implementation plan for your participation projects. Before project work begins, we work closely with the appropriate internal stakeholders to identify the right issues, process, timeframe, target groups, outreach strategies, and messaging to orient the team from the very start around achieving explicitly articulated, intended outcomes. In tandem, we work to ensure that key decision makers buy-in to and participate in the process, without which citizens will be unable to have a meaningful impact on policy.
Technology Selection & Implementation
Selecting the appropriate tool from among the long list of online participation platforms available for any particular set of circumstances requires considerable time and expertise. An idea crowdsourcing tool launched in imitation of another agency is unlikely to give citizens a real voice in policy development. The platform you choose will influence nearly all other aspects of the engagement effort – timing, cost, outreach strategy, staffing requirements, and integration with traditional policy development processes. A number of platforms offer advanced features and customization, like the ability to upload your own Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), use domain mapping to place the site on your URL, integrate with Facebook’s login system, or incorporate additional functionality with a third-party plugin.
AmericaSpeaks and Ascentum have experience with every platform category that you should consider. We have existing vendor relationships, and understand the advantages and disadvantages of each tool. We evaluate all the options and then implement the one(s) that will add value to your effort.
Framing Issues & Developing Content
The language you use to introduce policy issues will influence the way the project is perceived and will likely shape its outcomes. This is a meaningful opportunity to educate citizens about real policy trade-offs, and if citizens fully understand the issues, they are more likely to offer feedback you can use. On the other hand, wonky-sounding issue content can scare people away. Maintaining a transparently neutral perspective is critical; the right partners can offer engaging content while offering a stamp of intellectual objectivity. We can help you strike a suitably delicate balance.
Marketing & Communications
Web-based engagement projects occur within a broader, controversy-driven online media ecosystem that can upend months of work within a few minutes. It is important to develop messages that will earn the right kind of attention, to get it out via the appropriate channels to inoculate against potential attacks, and to be ready for partisan opposition. Once a project is complete, its outcomes must be framed and publicized. Participants and observers should understand the impact they have had to increase the likelihood of participation in future efforts. Similarly, agency leaders should be made to understand the value of the project in both policy and public relations terms to encourage future similar projects. We’ve learned these lessons well and can help you use the media to your advantage.
Targeting, Recruitment & Outreach
In online citizen involvement projects, the two most common sources of failure are (a) lack of participation and (b) non-representative participation. Breadth and diversity will grant the results far greater legitimacy. The approach used to reach citizens also is nearly as important as the policy issues being considered are; the right partners in civil society, media, and elsewhere in government, together with the right advertising strategy and channels, will enable engagement with the appropriate target groups. For example, there are a number of ways to compensate for online demographic inequalities (the “digital divide“), ranging from working with libraries to incorporating SMS input channels to advertising against the right search keywords. AmericaSpeaks and Ascentum have the relationships, background, and participatory values to negotiate this difficult terrain.
Moderation
The risks of open dialogue online are well understood. Citizens may attack each other personally, use inappropriate language, or engage in a variety of other behaviors that diminish the tone, quality, and ultimately, the output of the project. It is important to remove very damaging content, of course, but when conversation flows freely and transparently it is seen as far more trustworthy and engaging. Sometimes responding to an inappropriate or off-topic comment is better than simply removing the content completely. In some cases, it may be necessary to moderate all comments before they are published, but more often it is advisable to focus moderation efforts on those submissions that have been flagged by the community. We can help you strike the right balance by managing the process directly or identifying the right personnel, processes, and policies for you to manage it internally.
Reporting & Analysis
One of the primary challenges of incorporating citizens’ voices into decision-making is understanding what they have said and how it fits into the broader policy context. A concerted effort to analyze and synthesize the input citizens provide is necessary at the end of an engagement project, and sometimes on an ongoing basis throughout the project. AmericaSpeaks digests the input provided using a combination of the platforms’ administrative tools, expert manual analysis, automated semantic analysis technology, and site analytics data. We produce a concrete, actionable summary report, including policy recommendations, which may be made public or kept private.
Training & Capacity Building
AmericaSpeaks and Ascentum seek to build the human and institutional infrastructure that will support participatory democracy over the long term. Toward this end, we view our relationship with government officials and civil servants as one of partnership. We aim to help government agencies to internalize the participatory processes, tools and policies utilized during particular citizen engagement efforts so that they may be more easily incorporated in the future. Throughout the project, we endeavor to transfer our knowledge to the client – from rank and file employees to top decision-makers, both explicitly through training sessions and tacitly via close collaboration during implementation. Our clear, consistent aim is to leave behind an institution that is better able to incorporate citizens’ voices into the important decisions it makes.
Become a Fan!