Originally published 1 January 2013. This article is retained from the tCI archive. Law, policy or practice may have changed since publication.
Consultation has always been a formal process within a wider environment of public engagement. No-one has ever suggested that we have to declare a consultation before a public debate can take place and, of course, a great number of important issues generating enormous controversies are never subject to consultation.
Indeed it has always seemed a little strange that all manner of fairly trivial subjects become subject to consultation whereas, for some really important stuff, citizens have no opportunity to express their views. Maybe the frustration of euro-sceptics who argue for a Referendum on the EU might be somewhat reduced had there been a consultation or two on the subject over the last thirty years.
In general, however, we know when a consultation happens. Unfortunately life is about to become more complicated and, from now on, the status of a dialogue will be more uncertain. Social media is largely to blame, but there are other factors in play.
Technology is the key driver of change. It has made it easier to contribute to a debate, and to broadcast your views to anyone who is interested. We now have a never-ending commentary on anything and everything – on far more issues than the press or television can cover. What Jon Bradley and others call the river of news is well-described, because it is constant and it is continuous; there has to be a real drought before the flow stops altogether.
For consultations, it means that people will start debating the issues when they feel they have something to say – not just when a public body invites them to give their views. Forget about any notion of a starting-gun. The launch of a consultation is still an important moment, and will see the articulation of proposals. But it is no longer the kickoff moment in the dialogue, and this has important consequences for those planning a consultation:-
• They have to be conscious of the way the pre-consultation debate is moving. It means assiduous monitoring of social media sites, and an ability to analyse and interpret the data well in advance • Be prepared for all kinds of misinformation and campaigning, often against proposals that are not even under consideration, and may never form part of the consultation – when it is announced • Bear in mind that the debate won’t end when the consultation reaches its closing date. Consultors may need to gather what they’ve learnt and need to package it up for consideration ... but the river of news may continue to flow, and will still need monitoring
All this makes one wonder whether in moving away from the default ‘12 week rule’ the Cabinet Office was not being wiser than it realised, and maybe sees more clearly than many of us, the emerging change in the patterns of informed dialogues.
But there is something else, best described with reference to the experience of two of the Institute’s Directors presenting and training at the World Bank’s headquarters in Washington DC last week. There we met dozens of people whose jobs it is to organise consultations in parts of the world without the UK’s history of democracy and without the tradition of open political involvement and transparency.
Their world is changing too. Whether there is or isn’t a form of democracy we would recognise, citizens’ appetite for greater civic involvement seems unstoppable; it is not just the Arab Spring that illustrates this – just look at what happens when Chinese municipalities propose new developments. Not everywhere uses the term consultation – but the World Bank does, and when it facilitates important new infrastructure or social investments, it knows that its plans can come to a crashing halt if stakeholder consultation is not effective.
In many of these countries, this is all an exciting brave new world of active citizenship; in our more mature democracy, there is often a weary scepticism. But despite this the technology enables people to be active as never before. We can measure this through the activities of campaigns and pressure groups, and who can doubt that they are alive and well in the UK.
So the next time people expect changes in cherished services, be they libraries, fire stations, hospital wards or whatever, the dialogue won’t wait till the consultation is announced. Active citizenship goes hand-in-hand with a consultative culture, and is becoming a universal feature of the modern world. Those who organise formal consultations have to live with a new reality – the listening extends well before and beyond the formal duration of the exercise.
This is the 226th 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