4. Useful resources
The OECD database of representative deliberative processes includes close to 600 examples from across the world.
OECD’s Observatory for Public Sector Innovation (OPSI) Case Study Library collects good practices of innovations in government including participatory practices.
Participedia is a collaborative repository of citizen participation case studies.
LATINNO database gathers more than 3744 cases of democratic innovations in Latin America.
People Powered Hub is useful to navigate participatory budgets examples and other citizen participation processes.
Gov Lab CrowdLaw Catalog is a repository of more than 100 cases from around the world using different methods such as co-creation, or open innovation.
CitizenLab publishes case studies of digital participatory processes at the local level.
How To Design And Plan Public Engagement Processes: A Handbook (What Works Scotland)
Guide to Public Participation (Environmental Protection Agency)
Open Policy Making Toolkit (UK Government)
Good Practice Guide for Community Engagement (New Zealand Government)
Enabling Active Citizenship: Public Participation in Government into the Future (New Zealand Government)
The Open Policy Making Playbook (Govlab)
Community Engagement: a Practitioner's Guide (Citizenlab)
Knowledge Base (Involve Uk)
Stakeholder Participation Guide (Initiative for Climate Action Transparency)
Citizens as Partners: OECD Handbook on Information, Consultation and Public Participation in Policy-Making (2001)
Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave (2020).
OECD Handbook on Open Government for Peruvian Civil Servants (2020)
Eight ways to institutionalise deliberative democracy (2021)
Evaluation Guidelines for representative deliberative processes (2021)
OECD’s Observatory for Public Sector Innovation on “Select a problem-solving approach”
New York University, GovLab's Public Problem Solving Canvas
OECD’s Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave section on Scope of the remit
Nesta’s Collective Intelligence Design Playbook includes a series of helpful tools to facilitate such a mapping exercise.
MASS LBP’s How to run a civic lottery provides guidance and practical support on random selection.
New Zealand Government’s Guide to Inclusive Community Engagement guides government agencies and policy advisors on how to increase inclusion in participatory practices.
Involve’s Who to Involve? highlights important questions for the participant selection stage.
People Powered Guide to Digital Participation Platforms is a practical guide on how to design a digital participatory process and select the right tool.
Involve’s Where do I start with digital engagement? Is a guide to help practitioners build a digital process, and digital tools database.
CitizenLab’s e-Participation canvas is short e-book providing a framework for internal use for the development of a digital citizens’ participation platform.
IBM Center for The Business of Government Using Online Tools to Engage - and be Engaged by - the Public is a practical report mapping and detailing how to best use online tools to engage with the public.
NESTA’s Digital Democracy: The Tools Transforming Political Engagement shares lessons from different experiences of digital democracy put forth by different European governments.
NESTA’s What is next for democratic innovations looks at barriers to embed digital participatory processes into institutions.
ERDF‘s Digital Democracy: A Guide on Local Practices of Digital Participation gives advice for implementation of digital tools for governance, specifically at the local and regional level.
NewDemocracy and Democratic Society’s Designing an Online Public Deliberation explains how to build tools for online deliberation that do not simply mirror offline deliberation, but that are better adapted for the digital space.
MySociety’s Digital Tools for Citizens’ Assemblies explores how digital tools can be used to enhance in-person CAs.
New Zealand’s How to engage with people online is a step-by-step guide to engaging with people online — from creating an engagement strategy to closing the engagement.
The Council of Europe BePART platform provides learnings for participatory formats and tools
The OECD Report on Public Communication: The Global Context and the Way Forward examines the public communication structures, mandates and practices of centres of governments and ministries of health from 46 countries.
The OECD and OGP’s Communicating Open Government – A How-To Guide is a resource for individuals tasked with explaining, encouraging, and building support for open government.
RSA’s Reporting on and telling the story of a Citizens’ Assembly helps commissioning bodies, including local authorities, to communicate, report the events, and tell the story of a citizens' assembly.
PB Outreach Toolkit is a guide to plan and execute effective outreach campaigns for participatory budgeting processes.
Simon Fraser University’s Beyond Inclusion: Equity in Public Engagement proposes eight principles to support the meaningful and equitable inclusion of diverse voices in public engagement processes across sectors.
OECD’s Evaluating Public Participation in Policy Making examines the key issues for consideration when evaluating information, consultation and public participation.
OECD’s Evaluation Guidelines for Representative Deliberative Processes
InterAct’s Evaluating participatory, deliberative and co-operative ways of working provides examples from experience in the field, and further development of criteria and indicators for good practice.
Institute on Governance’s Evaluating Citizen Engagement in Policy Making suggests a framework to evaluate participatory processes.
Open meetings and town hall meetings are participatory tools that can be traced all the way back to 17th-century New England meetings or colonial traditions in Latin America (cabildos). Now these processes are used worldwide, most often at local or legislative level, to foster information about public action, encourage citizen participation and to build a relationship based on accountability and trust.
Contrary to a public consultation, an open meeting or town hall meeting does not seek to gather inputs on a particular issue. These processes are rather a means for public authorities to start a discussion with the public, whether to understand their needs, present upcoming decisions or share advances of implemented actions. They also help maintain a direct channel for communication and be accountable to the public on certain actions or mandates. As open meetings and town hall meetings are not designed to be representative, they can be organized fairly easily in four steps.
A more detailed description can be consulted in Chapter 2.
Involve’s Guide to 21st Century Town Meeting provides practical information to support public authorities in organizing public meetings using digital and in-person mechanisms.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Guide to Public Participation provides guidance to organise successful public participation, with specific elements on open meetings.
CIVICUS published factsheets on Public Forums and Town Hall Meetings, providing guidance and important information for public authorities interested in organizing public and open meetings.
A consultation is a two-way relationship in which citizens provide feedback to a public institution (such as comments, perceptions, information, advice, experiences, and ideas). Usually, governments define the issues for consultation, set the questions, and manage the process, while citizens and/or stakeholders are invited to contribute their views and opinions.
A more detailed description can be consulted in Chapter 2.
More on focus groups
The European Commission’s Guidelines on Stakeholder Consultation provides definitions of key terms, motivations for consultation and a method for doing so.
The OECD’s Background Document on Public Consultation provides definitions, methods and examples from OECD countries, along with good practices.
CitizenLab published two short e-books on public consultations, with special emphasis on digital engagement: The FAQs of Digital Consultation and 6 Methods for Online Consultation.
Consultation Principles utilized by the UK Government (2013).
BRE UK’s Code of Practice on Consultation includes seven criteria to guide policy makers on when and how to conduct stakeholder consultation.
The Irish Governments’ Consultation Principles & Guidance provides principles and also advice on practical issues that may arise throughout a consultation procedure.
There are several types of open innovation methods available for public authorities.
Crowdsourcing usually involves a digital platform where participants can publish ideas or contributions to answer the organizing authority’s request or question. In-person alternatives can be put in place, such as workshops or boxes to gather ideas.
Hackathons are usually in-person events organized throughout a weekend, in a shared space where all participants can work and share ideas. Hackathons are sprint-oriented events, so the goal is to allow for a collaborative work environment with technical facilities and usually involve a setting the scene moment and a pitch session where participants present their ideas and solutions. Participants work in teams to solve one or several problems and mentors with strong expertise on the policy problem or the type of solution expected can be assign to each team. In some occasions, public authorities might consider rewarding the winner(s) with a prize or the recognition that comes with the implementation of their idea as a policy solution. For a hackathon to be productive, public authorities should put data and information about the problem to solve at disposal of participants.
Public challenges are usually based on a digital platform where public authorities publish a public problem to solve and call for citizens or stakeholders to propose a solution. In some cases, public authorities can organise in-person sessions to answer questions or provide coaching and support to improve the participants solutions.
Mozilla Foundation’s A Framework of Open Practices describes and provides guidance on how to use open and collaborative innovation methods based on the experience of Mozilla and other innovative organisations.
The United Kingdom’s Open Policy Making Toolkit includes information about Open Policy Making as well as the tools and techniques policy makers can use to create more open and user led policy.
The Power of Hackathons: a roadmap for sustainable open innovation by Zachary Bastien provides an overview of hackathons and offers practical guidance as well as good practices from successful experiences.
The United States’ 21st-Century Public Servants: Using Prizes and Challenges to Spur Innovation presents results and experiences from the Obama Administration approach of using public challenges to solve complex public problems and other innovative methodologies. Better
GovLab’s Open Policy Making Playbook offers case studies and guidance for policy-makers to include collaborative and innovative approaches to policy making.
Citizen science is an involvement of citizens in scientific research. By doing so researchers, citizens, and sometimes policy makers come together to tackle scientific and policy problems. Through citizen science, citizens can participate in many stages of the scientific process, from the design of the research question, to data collection and volunteer mapping, data interpretation and analysis, and to publication and dissemination of results (eu-citizen.science, 2022[1]). Citizen science allows researchers to tap into scientific curiosity and resources of citizens to achieve scientific results, all the while creating opportunities for citizens to learn about a specific issue or research question and discover scientific processes.
SCivil Guides and manuals includes a guide to getting started with citizen science, explaining all the most basic details and also a manual on communication around a citizen science project.
GEWISS Citizen science for all presents a guide for citizen science, both its practical and theoretical aspects in fields ranging from education to arts and humanities.
Digital Tools is a compilation of useful resources, including software, academic literature, links to conferences, among many other practical tools.
Public institutions can largely benefit from creating feedback channels for citizens to provide inputs, comments and complaints to improve the decisions, actions, and services. When involving citizens and stakeholders in the oversight and evaluation of decisions and actions, public authorities can create virtuous circles and healthier relationships that can contribute to the overall trust in government.
Civic monitoring can be implemented using a diverse set of methods, such as:
The steps to implement can change significantly depending on the chosen tool. The table below suggest some general steps to implement a civic monitoring process:
NYU’s Crowd Law Guide includes a section on how to involve citizens and stakeholders in the evaluation of policies and legislations, including through social auditing and online tools.
CIVICUS published a series of fact-sheets providing guidance and important information for public authorities interested in implementing participatory processes in the evaluation of policies and services:
International Budget Project’s Citizen’s Guide to Monitoring Government Expenditures is a useful resource to support civic monitoring of the budget cycle.
There is not a one-fits-all solution for participatory budgets, as each public institution can accommodate the process to fit its desired purpose, timeline or legal requirements. However, there are certain stages that all participatory budgets should include:
UN HABITAT’s 72 Frequently Asked Questions about Participatory Budgeting provides guidance on how to define a participatory budget, how to implement it, how to decide on the allocation of budget and the participatory aspects.
East, North and South Ayrshire Councils Participatory Budgeting Toolkit was developed in Scotland for community groups and organizations who are planning to organise a participatory budget.
Another city is possible with participatory budgeting by Yves Cabannes discusses the background and challenges of PB processes. It highlights 13 cases of PB around the world, in various contexts and institutions. It also includes recommendations to address challenges with participation.
Great Cities Institute’s Participatory Budgeting in Schools: A Toolkit for Youth Democratic Action is a toolkit, developed based on participatory budgeting experiences in Chicago schools, aims to make PB easier to implement with teachers and youth in schools across a wide variety of models and contexts.
EMPACI Participatory Budgeting (PB) Blueprint Guidebook presents best practices based on case studies.
People Powered How Cities can use Participatory Budgeting to address Climate Change provides short information sheet giving useful recommendations.
Citizen Lab’s An introduction to participatory budgeting
lesbudgetsparticipatifs is a website with information about participatory budgeting in France that offers expertise and guidance for PB implementers/practitioners.
Participatory Budgeting Project is a website with useful resources to design, implement and evaluate PBs.
Text Messaging for Participatory Budgeting explains how participatory budgeting practitioners can use mass text messaging to effectively engage underrepresented communities.
PB training is a series of video tutorials by Democratic Society to help practitioners navigate different aspects of a participatory budgeting.
Representative deliberative processes, such as Citizens' Assemblies, Juries, and Panels, are some of the most innovative citizen participation methods that public authorities from all levels of government increasingly initiate to tackle complex policy problems ranging from climate change to infrastructure investment decisions. The design of these processes varies depending on several factors: the policy issue to be tackled, the level of governance, the number of randomly selected citizens etc. Below is a simplified pathway to designing such a process. Please see the resources below for detailed guidance on every step.
The OECD Trello board with a range of further resources for representative deliberative processes.
OECD’s Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave
OECD’s Toolbox and useful resources on Deliberative Democracy.
OECD’s Eight Ways to Institutionalise Deliberative Democracy
OECD’s Evaluation Guidelines for Representative Deliberative Processes
Handbook on Democracy beyond Elections by UN Democracy Fund & newDemocracy Foundation
MASS LBP’s Guide on How to run a civic lottery
Citizens’ Assemblies: Guide to Democracy That Works by Marcin Gerwin.
People Powered How to Start a Climate Assembly provides short information sheets with key facts.
RSA’s How to run a Citizen’s Assembly is a handbook covering the planning, organizing and delivery stages of a CA.
Dublin City University’s Enhancing Citizen Engagement on the Climate Crisis: The Role of Deliberation is a short and useful guide for policymakers wishing to utilise deliberation to further engage citizens.
Involve’s How do I set up a Citizens’ Assembly? is a step by step guide for practitioners.