Originally published 20 December 2004. This article is retained from the tCI archive. Law, policy or practice may have changed since publication.
Consultation within the public sector – and sometimes in the commercial sector as well – is increasingly being placed in the wider context of community engagement.
This expression means many different things to different people, and can cause considerable confusion. Some stakeholders, eager for an enhanced voice in key decisions, see this as a platform for much greater involvement: others believe it can amount to an effective veto on policies or decisions they dislike. Terms like citizen empowerment and active citizenship cause similar problems, if only because they are vague.
So where does consultation begin and end? And when does it become community engagement?
One way of looking at this is to recognise that, unlike some of those other concepts, consultation is a very precise activity. When undertaken properly, it has a well-defined scope, clear start and end dates, formalised methods to gather the views of the individual and collective stakeholders, and clear best practice for analysis, interpretation and feedback. As standards are developed and accreditation of consultations introduced, we expect to see better quality, and be able to evaluate both outputs and outcomes more clearly.
Community engagement is far more difficult to measure. Quantitative measures like the numbers of people taking part in events or initiatives only tell part of the story, especially as community groups hold such different expectations and such a range of perceptions.
And yet, if consultation is done really well, it should of itself achieve much of the community engagement agenda. Consider how a good consultation seeks out all those who are likely to be impacted by a policy or decision. This stakeholder identification phase is critical, and needs to reach far beyond the ‘usual suspects’. A well-planned consultation also selects the methods that are most likely to engage those target groups.
Dialogue that emerges out of such a consultation is likely to be meaningful. This is not participation for its own sake – it is with a purpose, namely, to influence matters that effect people’s lives.
There is nothing wrong with the wider agenda of community engagement, but it could be that the best way to approach this necessarily-general objective is to become 100% proficient at consultation.
Trigger points
- Obtain the Institute’s glossary of consultation terms.
- Examine the use of terminology in your organisation? Is there enough precision?
- Review your last three consultations to see if all identifiable community stakeholders were actually engaged.
This is the 24th Tuesday Topic; a full list of subjects covered is available for Institute members and is a valuable resource covering so many aspects of consultation and engagement