Governments worldwide are working to engage more meaningfully with communities at local, state and national levels in order to improve their decisions and increase community involvement in the business of government. Community involvement improves decisions, makes policy more relevant to people’s lives and creates a more active, involved citizenry.10
In 2004, the City of Toronto embarked on a seven-week public engagement campaign to develop a new vision by looking at the city from the inside-out as well as the outside-in. Their aim was to discover and define what Toronto stood for: what was the city’s essence and vision, its qualities and aspirations that made it unlike any other city in the world.
Their hope was that a new vision would allow Torontonians to ‘speak in one voice so that our message is clear, focused and solid’11 in order to compete globally for trade and tourists. They conducted extensive research in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada and engaged their citizens, marketing experts and local community leaders.
Torontonians were asked to respond to specific questions, via a website:
This input from inside and outside led to a new identity for the city: ‘Toronto is a city built with and for the limitless imaginations of the people that come here. And it is these people that make Toronto the city of imagination.’
The Queensland Government has adopted a number of innovative strategies to involve the community in its business, including Community Cabinets, geographic community renewal programs and Cape York Partnerships. The Government has an online community consultation mechanism, ConsultQld, which consults the community via the internet on selected issues and policy matters. ConsultQld raises awareness of consultation processes. Reports are posted to the site when the consultation ends, outlining a summary of results and the next steps in policy development.
These initiatives have been developed within the Queensland Government Community Engagement Policy Framework that identifies six principles for any engagement:
and a continuum of interactions, ranging from:
One-way information sharing, which includes marketing communication activities, can lead to better-informed citizens. It is a given that the information is accurate, easy to understand and timely.
Two-way consultation, which includes public submissions, forums and e-democracy, will involve citizens and may lead to policies and programs that represent diverse needs.
Active participation in decision-making processes is the only form of community engagement with potential to strengthen civic capacity and mobilise resources. It is the only form of engagement with the potential to create cultural change. In Queensland, the Cape York Partnerships and various geographically based community renewal programs are examples of active participation in decision-making by communities.
Active participation is more complex to achieve on a grand scale for the whole of Queensland than in local community settings. However, various tools including citizen panels, citizen juries and citizen dialogues have been used to facilitate community participation in decision-making at state and national levels. These tools seek to bring together all legitimate stakeholders including citizens on an equal footing to consider important issues.
Given the success of these mechanisms in engaging the community, there is a clear opportunity to extend the model to communicate the benefits of the Smart State.