RecommendationsRecommendations set forth in the report entitled Assessing Public Participation in an Open Government Era: A Review of Federal Agency PlansAfter reviewing existing agency Open Government Plans against criteria commonly used by the professional association of experts who conduct public participation activities, the authors found that most agency plans did not fully meet the standards conducive to high-quality public participation. The authors recommend a set of actions by the White House, agencies, and the cross-government Open Government Working Group that will improve the quality of participation activities and lead to a broader change within agencies to embed a culture of including the public in their planning, policymaking, and implementation activities.AmericaSpeaksAS_18a7823e-6e71-11df-a8b5-98647a64ea2aCarolyn J. LukensmeyerCo-author Joe GoldmanCo-authorDavid SternCo-authorJonathan D. BreulExecutive Director, IBM Center for The Business of GovernmentMelissa MarrosoSocial Media Consulting, IBM Global Business Services_36a001b2-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2a_36a0103a-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aStandards[Develop] standards for what constitutes high-quality public participation._36a01206-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aFinding OneThe Open Government Initiative and most federal agency plans have failed to offer standards for what constitutes high-quality public participation. While some agencies do include commitments to establish more robust measurements for participation, few plans include indicators that would measure meaningful progress toward becoming more participatory. Few agency plans define what “good public participation” looks like or provide meaningful measures of the progress agencies are making in meeting the president’s commitment to become more participatory. The Environmental Protection Agency’s plan does the best job of defining quality participation. The agency’s standards include provisions about when the public should be involved, how it should be involved, and what connection participation should have to decision-making. While the Open Government Directive requires agencies to establish a system to measure progress toward reaching goals of greater transparency, participation, and collaboration, the directive provides little guidance about the types of measures that should be included. Generally, measures of participation set out in the plans involve the number of comments received through online crowdsourcing tools, the number of opportunities provided to the public to provide input to a department’s work, and the number of employees who are trained in open government principles. Measurements offered in plans tend not to reference the quality of participation, the degree to which public input is being responded to by an agency, or the impact that participation may have on policy. Several agencies, like the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Department of Agriculture, and EPA, do suggest that more robust measures will be instituted in the future to provide more meaningful indicators of progress.Public ParticipationThe Open Government Working Group should develop guidance for agencies about what constitutes high-quality public participation._36a01486-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aRecommendation 1Open Government Working GroupThe Open Government Working Group is comprised of senior level representatives for their respective departments and agencies who focus on transparency, accountability, participation, and collaboration within the federal government. Any standards that are developed should build upon those created by institutions in the public participation field, including the International Association for Public Participation, the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation, and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (see Appendix II). Standards should relate to key aspects of successful participatory initiatives, including the selection of policies or programs for input, public education, project management and staffing, timing, issue framing, outreach, linkages to decision-making, and post-input communication.MetricsThe Open Government Working Group should provide agencies with guidance about the types of measurements that should be used to assess progress toward the goal of becoming more participatory._36a01544-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aRecommendation 2Open Government Working GroupIn developing the measures, the working group should consult with federal employees with the greatest experience with public participation.PublicationFederal agencies should publish and regularly update their standards and metrics so that the public and employees can use them to evaluate the quality and impact of public participation efforts._36a01602-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aRecommendation 3Federal AgenciesWhite House Open Government TeamThe White House Open Government team should assemble and aggregate measures of agency progress.Experimentation[Pursue] greater experimentation to enable regular, meaningful public input opportunities._36a016ac-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aFinding TwoThe public engagement activities described in open government plans display an admirable willingness to experiment with new tools and techniques to involve citizens with their decision-making processes. Nonetheless, even greater experimentation will be required to enable regular, meaningful public input opportunities. If the risks involved with public engagement are significant, they are even greater online. They include the possibility that the input gathered may not be useful or well-informed; that transparent, democratic processes may reveal underlying conflict between the public, stakeholders, and policymakers; that new, unproven technologies may fail; that those who participate will become vocal opponents when their input is not incorporated; and that the initiative may be embarrassingly unable to attract a critical mass of participants. On the whole, agency plans display remarkable tolerance for such risks, and even exuberance for utilization of new online tools and processes in spite of them. This is evident from the rapid uptake of social networking platforms, crowdsourcing tools, blogs with open comments, and other new online platforms as described in the plans. The agencies that strive for a high rate of low-cost failure seem to have achieved the greatest successes. They establish systems for approving and incorporating innovative tools, attempt to remove legal and administrative barriers, and build internal awareness about ways to invite public input. They have taken advantage of government-wide infrastructure like the e-rulemaking platform at Regulations.gov and the participatory tools at Apps.gov and the GSA toolkit. They experiment with new, externally developed participatory platforms and find external partners willing to cooperate on outreach efforts. Perhaps the most significant experiment currently under consideration is ExpertNet. Proposed by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy six months after the plans were published, ExpertNet would be an online community and network of input providers. ExpertNet would build a permanent online community of citizens and subject-matter experts that could be approached for input on a recurring basis. As of May 2011, the funding and implementation of this initiative remain uncertain.EmpowermentAgencies should empower and encourage their employees to experiment with participatory projects, platforms, policy areas, and outreach strategies by streamlining bureaucratic hurdles and approval processes._36a0176a-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aRecommendation 4Online and Mobile ApplicationsThe GSA should encourage software developers to create new online and mobile applications that would enable agencies to solicit meaningful input from the public on policy._36a01832-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aRecommendation 5GSAOne tactic to achieve this would be to launch an application development contest (“Apps for Participation”) in which the winners are invited to present the tools they develop to the Federal Web Managers Council and/or the White House Open Government Working Group. One approach might be to use Challenge.gov as the platform for this initiative.ExpertNetThe Office of Science and Technology Policy and General Services Administration should build the proposed ExpertNet platform._36a018fa-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aRecommendation 6:OSTGSAIt is difficult for agencies or political leaders to launch standalone public engagement projects within the unpredictable policymaking timeframe. ExpertNet would be a turnkey input-gathering mechanism through which input initiatives could be created on an as-needed basis on nearly any policy issue, drastically lowering the expense and time required for outreach and promotion. This would increase the rate of experimentation for input solicitation; new issues and situations would likely increase significantly with this new platform in place.Assessment InformationProvide additional information to assess whether the public’s input will be incorporated into plans, programs, or decisions._36a019b8-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aFinding ThreeWhile some agency plans describe how staff will respond to the public and include its input, most plans do not provide enough information to assess whether the public’s input will be incorporated into plans, programs, or decisions. It is often unclear what the relationship is between participation activities discussed in agency open government plans and actual decision-making taking place in agencies. In some cases, agencies describe intentional efforts to ensure that ideas submitted from the public are routed to appropriate staff or otherwise appropriately considered. More often than not, however, agency plans are silent on this question. In general, many common public participation activities found in the plans fall on the educational end of the participation spectrum. Most uses of social media and some forms of public forums primarily focus on informing the public about issues, giving people a chance to ask questions, and building a relationship between citizens and government officials. Some crowdsourcing, public forums, and town halls provide the public with an opportunity to share ideas, feedback, or opinions, but few agency plans provide any detail about how data from these forums will actually be used to influence decisions or the degree to which the public is asked to respond to choices that can be influenced. Many contests or more collaborative activities involve citizens in solving problems, but generally do not provide the public with an opportunity to influence actual decisions or policies. Formal participation mechanisms like federal advisory committees and e-rulemaking processes tend to be more closely connected to the policymaking process. Unfortunately, rather than involving the general public, these forums tend only to provide influence for experts, advocates and organized stakeholders. A few innovative efforts, like those at HHS, are exceptions. Hopefully, innovative improvements to the rulemaking process will increase the number of people who have an opportunity to weigh in on new rules and policies over the Internet. Negotiated rulemaking has been the most likely to provide stakeholders and citizens with a significant degree of influence over policies and decisions. Few agencies, however, refer to this practice in their open government plans, and there is little evidence to suggest that this type of practice is expanding through the Open Government Initiative.Planning, Policies, and Program DevelopmentAll federal agencies should establish policies to make every effort to link participatory processes to actual planning, policies, and program development._36a01a8a-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aRecommendation 7GSAGovernment is only truly open if public participation activities are transparently linked to decision-making. Input processes must align with policymakers’ internal timetables; the questions posed to the public should correspond with those being wrestled with internally; and those with decision-making authority must be informed about the outcomes of participatory initiatives with a fairly significant degree of detail in order to understand public priorities. While we would not propose that policymakers base their decisions solely on public input, well-designed processes to solicit informed, shared priorities from the public must provide citizens with an authentic opportunity to shape plans, decisions, and programs.Response to InputAmong the standards for quality public participation, the Open Government Initiative should require agencies to respond to public input._36a01b98-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aRecommendation 8In doing so, agencies will display a commitment to taking public input seriously. When citizens observe that their input has (or might have) impact, they will be more motivated to participate in future efforts. Whenever possible, federal agencies should commit to having a high-profile official offer an explicit, public, well-considered, and specific response to citizen input. Agencies should clearly describe examples of public input that have been incorporated into policy or otherwise acted upon. Not every comment can or should be responded to, but there should be a clear effort to explicitly reply to those that achieve a threshold level of popularity. Other metrics, such as those relating to quality or source, may also be used to identify input deserving of a response.InputContinue to solicit public input on issues the public cares about._36a01c88-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aFinding FourOpen government plans include participatory activities on a wide variety of topics and programs. Little is included in most plans, however, to ensure that agencies will continue to solicit public input on those issues that the public cares most about. Few clear examples exist of efforts to incorporate participatory activities throughout the agency. Several agencies describe efforts to invite comment on agency-wide strategic plans or other key agency-wide initiatives. Although it is not always clear that the public was able to have influence on these broad strategic issues, this is an encouraging precursor to what will hopefully grow into regular opportunities for the public to influence the fundamental direction of federal agencies. However, opening core strategic issues to public comment was not the norm among the projects described in agencies’ plans. Within many plans, the majority of the engagement opportunities are focused on a limited number of specific program areas. This is not to imply that such efforts are ultimately less valuable or participatory; on the contrary, in the short term, they may be more effective than cross-departmental efforts because the input gathered tends to be more narrowly targeted and can more easily be incorporated. Unsurprisingly, the topic on which agencies most commonly describe seeking input is open government itself. This is a requirement of the Open Government Directive; it is unfortunate that the directive does not require public participation on other topics that are more central to agency missions and core programs.Programs, Activities, and PoliciesAgencies should continue to seek public input on individual program areas, while expanding requests for input related to agency-wide activities and policies._36a01de6-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aRecommendation 9Over time, selection of areas for input should be based both on areas of greatest public interest and areas where the likelihood of policy impact and improvement is greatest. Toward the same end, the Open Government Initiative should require agencies to solicit public input in the development of plans and programs that influence or span the entire agency, not only those relating to a single department or initiative.DiversityIncrease the diversity of those who participate in public engagement initiatives._36a01ef4-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aFinding FiveAgencies appear to be moderately increasing the number of people who participate in public engagement initiatives. However, few plans include strategies to increase the diversity of those who participate. One of the most basic indicators of whether the Open Government Directive is producing a more participatory government is the amount of participation taking place and the diversity of who is able to participate. Policymakers will be better able to justify the inclusion of public input if they can point to the diversity of participants and the size of the group engaged through the input process. While there are no baselines with which to compare, it certainly appears that agency plans are committing to more opportunities for engaging with the public, which presumably should enable engagement of larger and more diverse groups of people. It is, however, helpful to look more closely at the forms of participation in use to determine who is likely to participate. The most prominent form of public participation found in the plans is online forums. At least in some instances, these online forums seem to be creating opportunities for much broader participation among federal agencies. For example, the Department of Veterans Affairs reported that it received a record level of public comments for its Gulf War Illness Task Force Report (150 new suggestions, 300 comments, and 2,100 votes). Where there are well-organized constituencies involved, online forums may be especially effective at opening up the policymaking process and reaching people who otherwise would not be heard. On the other hand, many online forums created by federal agencies have experienced relatively low levels of participation. For example, the Department of Commerce’s OpenCommerce forum received 38 ideas.75 The Small Business Administration’s forum for feedback on its open government plan received 32 ideas.76 The Department of the Treasury’s forum for feedback on its plan received 55 ideas.77 Without significant marketing and outreach, the potential of online forums to involve the public will not be realized. Unfortunately, very little is written in the open government plans about how agencies will work to reach out to the public and raise participation in these forums. Perhaps more important, little data exists about the diversity of participants in most online forums. It is difficult to ascertain how well those who participate represent the citizens and organizations with a stake in the agencies’ core issues. Most agencies say relatively little in their open government plans about taking steps to recruit representative or diverse groups to take part in public processes or reaching out to harder-to-reach groups like immigrants, low income residents, and young people. Without extensive, proactive outreach, it is reasonable to assume that only those who are highly motivated and invested will be aware of and motivated to participate in these forums. In some cases, more detail is provided about efforts to produce diverse participation in faceto- face forums than online ones. For example, a listening tour by the secretary of education explicitly reached out to teachers and students in communities across the country. The Department of the Interior’s plan says that listening sessions for the agency’s America’s Great Outdoors program are reaching out to ranchers, farmers and forest landowners, sportsmen and women, state and local government leaders, tribal leaders, public-land experts, conservationists, recreationists, youth leaders, business representatives, and heritage preservationists.Best PracticesThe Open Government Working Group should convene federal managers and other experts with deep experience in public participation to assemble best practices in outreach and recruiting diverse public participation and disseminate these to federal agencies._36a01fee-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aRecommendation 10Best practices should address: * The factors agencies should consider in deciding what fraction of an input project’s budget should be allocated to marketing and communications * How to explicitly target those most likely to be affected by the particular policy in question * Specific traffic-generating tactics like paid advertising, posting links on agency homepages and popular government websites, and developing outreach partnerships with external stakeholders, the media, and technology companiesGoals and MetricsAgencies should set clear goals regarding the diversity and size of the groups that participate in public input initiatives, increase employee capacity to reach them, and measure the degree to which they are reached._36a0219c-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aRecommendation 11Agencies should be required to take the following steps to implement the recommendation: * Set clear goals for the size and diversity of the groups that participate in developing plans, programs, and policies. * Collect information to provide reasonable estimates regarding the diversity and size of participant groups, thereby establishing a baseline by which future progress can be measured. * Develop training programs to increase the capacity of federal employees to recruit diverse participants and ensure that adequate resources are available to recruit representative individuals to participate.Policy IssuesProvide descriptions of programs that educate the public regarding policy issues._36a022be-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aFinding SixOpen government plans provide few descriptions of programs that educate the public regarding policy issues under consideration, although this may simply reflect a lack of detail in the plans themselves. Many agency plans include a significant focus on stand-alone public education efforts, but provide little detail on efforts taken to ensure that citizens will be informed when they provide input or feedback at agency forums. While it may be the case that educational activities are left out of participation process descriptions, it seems more likely that this was not an area focused on by the authors of the open government plans. Without explicit criteria that specify the importance of informed public participation, it may be unlikely that significant efforts will be put into linking high-quality educational processes with forums that are connected to decision- making.Best PracticesThe Open Government Inter-Agency Working Group should convene federal managers and other experts with deep experience in public participation to assemble best practices in developing educational resources to support public participation exercises and disseminate these to federal agencies. _36a023d6-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aRecommendation 12Open Government Inter-Agency Working GroupBest practices might address the involvement of issue experts in developing educational content, as well as strategies to ensure that it is neutral, entertaining, accessible, and as easy to understand as possible.TrainingAgencies should develop training programs to increase the capacity of federal employees to design participatory processes that adequately incorporate educational components to ensure informed participation._36a024f8-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aRecommendation 13GoalsAgencies should set clear goals for incorporating educational components into participatory processes._36a02624-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aRecommendation 14Deliberative ProcessesIncorporate into online and face-to-face forums deliberative processes, in which citizens learn, express points of view, and have a chance to find common ground._36a028e0-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aFinding SevenAgencies use a variety of online and face-to-face forums. However, deliberative processes, in which citizens learn, express points of view, and have a chance to find common ground, are rarely incorporated. The types of forums agencies use to engage the public have a significant impact on the character of the input that the public offers. Some forms of town halls produce only questions to be answered by public officials. Hearings or public forums that feature testimony produce formal statements from experts and interested parties. Crowdsourcing platforms generate lists of ideas ranked by popularity. Deliberative forums produce statements of shared priority among diverse groups of citizens. Negotiation enables compromise between different interests. Most instances of public participation included in the plans fall into three categories: (1) forums that produce questions from the public to be responded to by officials or experts, (2) forums that generate prioritized ideas for responding to a type of problem, (3) forums that produce formal or informal statements of policy preference or need by inviting participants to testify, write comments, or otherwise share relevant opinions and experiences. While public deliberation may be incorporated into some activities described in the plans, there is little explicit evidence that is the case. Similarly, few agencies described the use of any mediated discussions or negotiations.ExamplesThe Open Government Initiative should highlight those agencies that have done more to incorporate robust forms of public participation in order to encourage other agencies to learn from their examples._36a02a16-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aRecommendation 15Face-to-face public deliberation, negotiated rulemaking and other types of forums can be very effective at identifying areas of shared priorities, securing deeper buy-in from participants, attracting media attention to an issue, educating people about other points of view, and building trust in government leaders. As appropriate, agencies should follow the lead of peers who already have excellent engagement programs in place that use face-to-face participation, to experiment more with this type of public engagement.Public Deliberation, Negotiated Rulemaking, and Face-to-Face EngagementAgencies should expand the use of public deliberation, negotiated rulemaking, and face-to-face engagement._36a02b4c-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aRecommendation 16While agencies should be congratulated for their experimentation with online tools and encouraged to build upon progress to date, it is essential that their efforts not be confined to online forums.CultureCelebrate, replicate, and expand steps to embed a culture of participation._36a02c8c-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aFinding EightMany agencies are taking important initial steps to embed a culture of participation into their organizations, including recognition, training, and the creation of new units and positions. These efforts should be celebrated, replicated, and expanded. Many agencies clearly have taken the directive to change agency culture seriously. Crossagency committees established in many agencies to manage open government often incorporate the range of key departments that will be necessary to create significant change. Some agencies are experimenting with interesting programs and structures, like incentives, new positions and units, and training for staff, that will be important to shift how agencies approach participation and open government. Still, several of the leading agencies have reported encountering major challenges in convincing their colleagues. They describe a lack of motivation to contribute to open government activities and an aversion to the risks associated with tinkering with the status quo. One official blames the fact that employee performance evaluations do not include any open government-related metrics. Going forward, it will be important for agency officials to learn from peers who are doing the most innovative work in culture change. It will also be essential to place more effort on specific culture-change activities that can foster public participation among open government priorities.RecognitionThe Open Government Working Group should brighten the spotlight on best practices to change agency culture and publicize these practices across the federal government._36a02dd6-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aRecommendation 17Open Government Working GroupEveryone acknowledges that realizing the goals of open government will require culture change, which will only be possible through intentional efforts to create well-targeted incentives and infrastructure to support greater transparency, participation, and collaboration. Several agencies profiled in this report have pioneered these types of efforts. The White House Open Government team should raise awareness about and evaluate the impact of these efforts, but primarily it should fall to agencies to follow the lead of their peers.Training and IncentivesThe Office of Management and Budget and Office of Science and Technology Policy should specifically work with agencies to identify those types of training and incentives that will be most important to promote public participation._36a02f34-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aRecommendation 18OMBOSTThis will ensure that culture change efforts are not solely focused on increasing access to data.Resources, Training, and IncentivesAgencies should provide more resources, training, and incentives for federal employees to incorporate public participation into their work._36a0307e-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aRecommendation 19Teams and Working GroupsAgencies should create strong, well-funded central teams and formal and informal agency-wide working groups and networks to serve as open government ambassadors throughout the agency._36a031d2-ce7e-11e0-bf4a-330c7a64ea2aRecommendation 20These groups should include high-level officials and significant numbers of policy and project staff from outside the information technology, public affairs, communications, and/or social media functions in their ranks. Members of these groups should report to top management within the agency. Their leading members should be granted the responsibility of leading and incorporating participatory values into key training, knowledge management, research, and other infrastructure-building initiatives within each agency. If necessary, agencies should create new positions that have significant authority to improve public participation efforts throughout the government.2011-08-24http://www.businessofgovernment.org/sites/default/files/Assessing%20Public%20Participation%20in%20an%20Open%20Government%20Era.pdfOwenAmburOwen.Ambur@verizon.net