Category Archives: From the Community

How Can Deliberation in Citizens’ Juries Improve?

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We wanted to share another great thought piece from Max Hardy of Max Hardy Consulting, an NCDD organizational member – this time on the ways Citizens’ Juries can be improved. Max’s reflections are based in the Australian context, but plenty of them can apply to these deliberative bodies elsewhere. We encourage you to read his piece below or find the original on his blog by clicking here.

Reflections on the growing trend of using Citizens’ Juries in Australia (and how we might make them even more effective)

IHardy logot seems that is becoming more common for governments at all levels to entertain random selection of citizens to enable an informed judgment on controversial or complex planning matters (one form being the Citizens’ Jury). As an advocate for, and facilitator of, such processes this is exciting and most welcome. There is a growing weariness with more conventional processes that are dominated by well organised stakeholder groups and ‘hyper-engaged’ individuals; processes which largely fail to engage the so-called silent majority. The NewDemocracy Foundation has been pivotal in promoting and arguing for alternatives and is getting serious traction.

Several years ago I met an academic David Kahane, from University of Alberta, Canada at a conference in Sydney, where we discussed the merits of these emerging deliberative processes, and we thought that a paper could be written describing the rationale for the differing approaches and their advantages and disadvantages. We were soon joined by Jade Herriman, of the Institute of Sustainable Futures in Sydney, Australia, and Kristjana Loptson, also from the University of Alberta. And after several months of research, and another few months of writing, we published our paper, titled Stakeholder and Citizen Roles in Public Deliberation, in the Journal of Public Deliberation.

Since co-authoring this paper I have been involved in several more deliberative processes (for ease I will just refer to them from here on as Citizens’ Juries, though other forms exist such as the Citizens’ Assembly and Citizens’ Initiative Review) and I have been reflecting on the paper we published once again, and felt the need to document some ideas to address some of their perceived or actual limitations. So here goes.

Limitation 1 – Breadth of participation
Citizens’ Juries are recruited through random selection are really effective for allowing a group to deeply dive into a complex issue/topic. Sadly the rest of the community is, at best, observers of the process. The journey the jury experiences is difficult to replicate, so the findings they ultimately reach may not be seen as legitimate by the broader community.

Ideas to improve
A longer engagement process can be used to help inform the deliberative process – for instance, through the use of online engagement. This process could also help to identify other experts who could provide a balanced range of evidence to the jury.

Another idea is to provide the same questions being put to the jury for citizens to arrange their own meetings (BBQs and dinner parties), or to discuss in other established forums or community group meetings (this was an approach used with great success for The Queensland Plan). Responses can be logged online and fed into the citizens’ jury deliberative process.

Live streaming could also be used to invite viewers to frame questions or provide comments in real time. A theme team could cluster the questions and comments and provide them at a particular time to the jury to consider.

Limitation 2 – Stakeholders/experts feeling marginalised
Whilst the jury has an amazing learning experience, stakeholders and experts who give evidence generally provide their evidence, and then leave. Jurors and facilitators often feel that it would have been helpful for stakeholders to hear each other’s evidence, and have the opportunity to learn from each other.

Ideas to improve
Arrange panel sessions where witnesses with different perspectives can share information, and have a conversation with each other, with the jury present to observe. In addition, the jury could access expert witnesses via video conference as they approach their final deliberations with remaining questions. Although by itself this would not assist witnesses/stakeholders to go on the learning journey, it would at least give some clues as to the journey the jury has been on.

A second idea is to include stakeholders/experts/witnesses as a resource group for jurors during their final deliberations.

Yet another idea, and this will be somewhat controversial, is that stakeholders could be included on the jury, but make up no more than one third of the total jurors. (I have been involved in arrangements such as these whereby one third are randomly selected, one third are self selected from those who typically get involved, and one third are invited in to strengthen diversity – e.g., you may not recruit anyone from an indigenous group, or a young person, from the first two cohorts). The principle here is about gaining a reasonable diversity, not about perfection, and the benefit this may have is that groups with very different views may become more understanding of each other’s interests and aspirations.

Limitation 3 – Limited role in framing the ‘charge ‘, or questions to be answered
In most cases the commissioning body, process experts, or a steering committee (or any combination of the above) design the key aspects of the deliberative process. Decisions are made concerning the ‘charge’ or questions being put the jury, the duration of the process, the desired composition of the jury, and the witnesses to be called. For some individuals and groups, this is a reason to be skeptical about the deliberative process and any outcomes from such processes. In particular, if stakeholders do not believe the right question is being put, then the outcome of the process, the jury’s ‘verdict,’ can be irrelevant. When the ‘deliberative design formula’ is seen to be managed tightly by ‘others,’ it can give fuel for mistrust.

When stakeholders have some influence over the process, in my experience, they are generally more accepting or even actively supportive of the outcomes.

Ideas to improve
Consistent with the Twyfords Collaborative Pathway, engaging a cross section of stakeholders in framing the dilemma or charge to be put to the jury can be very useful. It helps to generate questions that are seen as being the important ones to address, and invariably it helps to lay out the extent of the dilemma being faced.

Conclusion and suggested principles
So that is just a few ways that deliberative processes might be strengthened. From my perspective, it is important that we continue to conduct experiments in democracy and to learn from those experiments. The important thing, from my perspective, is not that we apply a proven design, but that we continue to invest in the co-design of the process so that there is a confidence in that process and the outcomes. It is also an opportunity for groups with different values and interests to understand and respect each other more, so that the process itself contributes to a more cohesive community.

It is also important that whatever design we use follows a set of core principles. This would be my list:

  1. The ultimate decision-makers are genuine in wanting the help of citizens and stakeholders/experts to resolve an important issue/ dilemma/ question/ puzzle.
  2. The decision-makers enter the process with the intent of using that advice, to take it very seriously, and to respond publicly if they do not follow the advice given (i.e., the verdict).
  3. Reasonable efforts are made to advise the broader community about the rationale of the process, and there is an attempt to gauge their views, concerns, and aspirations prior to the deliberative process.
  4. The participants of the deliberative process (let’s say, the jurors) have access to a balanced range of information and are not steered toward a particular desired outcome of the commissioning body or the facilitators.
  5. Jurors should be recruited through an independent social research company and independently facilitated.
  6. The jurors have the ability to scrutinize those giving evidence.
  7. The jurors are given reasonable periods of time to process information and then to deliberative over that information.
  8. Jurors must feel confident that they are all actively participating and are not being overwhelmed by powerful personalities.
  9. The commissioning body and stakeholders must be confident that the questions to be posed to the jury are appropriate.
  10. The deliberative process itself should be transparent and recorded.
  11. The deliberative process is designed in such a way that it strengthens a ‘community of interest’ rather than fragmenting it further.

There are probably others, and I’m sure these could be developed further. If you have had experience in deliberative processes that rely on random selection I’d be very keen to hear your thoughts, and your feedback on mine.

You can find the original version of Max’s piece on his blog by visiting www.maxhardy.com.au/reflections-on-the-growing-trend-of-using-citizens-juries-in-australia-and-how-we-might-make-them-even-more-effective.

NCDD Discount on Strategic Collaborations Training in April

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We recently saw the announcement below from NCDD supporting member Christine Whitney Sanchez of Innovation Partners International about a great training this April 13-16 in Phoenix, AZ that we wanted to share. The early bird deadline is March 15, and Christine is offering a 20% discount for NCDD members who contact her at christine[at]innovationpartners[dot]com, so be sure to read her announcement below or learn more here.

Methods for Strategic Collaboration Foundations Training

InnovationAre you interested in learning how to engage groups of 5 to 10,000 in strategic conversations? Are you an external or internal consultant, responsible for business development, network coordination, facilitating civil dialogue or the engagement of people in change projects?

Join your peers who are making an impact in their own communities. Develop the foundational skills to blend and scale five powerful methods that are being used around the world for breakthrough thinking, decision-making and collaborative action.

For over 12 years, Methods for Strategic Collaboration participants in California, France, Illinois, Singapore, Colorado, Guadalajara, Arizona, and Wales have increased their capacity as change leaders in their own communities.

I hope you will join us – it’s always full of lively conversations and results in fascinating strategic collaborations.

Job Opening with Healthy Democracy

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We are pleased to announce that the good people with Healthy Democracy, one of our NCDD member organizations, recently announced that they are hiring for a new Program Manager. I have to admit, I’ll be a little jealous of whoever gets this position, which will include opportunities to travel the country promoting the Citizens’ Initiative Review, building partnerships, institutionalizing deliberation into American democracy!

It’s a great job opportunity that many of our NCDD members would be an excellent fit for, but the deadline to apply is March 31st, so make sure to apply as soon as you can!

Here’s how Healthy Democracy describes the position:

Job Description: The Program Manager will work with partners in multiple states to build coalitions and expand the use of the Citizens’ Initiative Review. Each CIR brings together 20 citizens from around the state for a four-day public review of a ballot measure, requiring strong team building and project management skills.

The Program Manager will run CIR events and conduct trainings, and provide support to partner organizations in other states as they run their own CIRs. In this role, the Program Manager will provide program delivery and consultation services to key partners and clients and serve as a key spokesperson for the organization.

If this sounds like a job you or someone in your network would be a good fit for, we encourage you to read the full description on Healthy Democracy’s website by visiting www.healthydemocracy.org/healthy-democracy-is-hiring-a-program-manager.

Good luck to all the applicants!

Bridging the Divides: Practical Dialogue and Creative Deliberation

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We are happy to share the announcement below from NCDD Member Rosa Zubizarreta of DiaPraxis, which is an NCDD organizational member. Rosa’s announcement came via our great Submit-to-Blog Form. Do you have news you want to share with the NCDD network? Just click here to submit your news post for the NCDD Blog!

Dear NCDD colleagues,

I am writing to let you know about two upcoming workshops in Dynamic Inquiry / Dynamic Facilitation. The first one is in Maine on March 27 – 29, sponsored by the Maine Association of Mediators. The second one is in NYC on April 17-19, sponsored by Focusing International.

We have a sliding-scale fee that ranges from $600 community rate to $1,200 corporate rate. In addition, NCDD members are eligible for a special discount rate we are offering during the next week: e-mail me at rosa[at]diapraxis[dot]com for more info.

So many good workshops out there! Each one valuable (at least all the ones I’ve taken!) and each one offering something unique.

Here’s what’s distinctive about ours: we offer an emergence-based, non-linear practice for transforming the energy of conflict into creativity, through cognitive empathy, welcoming initial solutions, and offering audacious invitations (so if you did appoint a committee to study the issue for a year, and they came up with a recommendation you loved, what might it be?) I’ve written a great deal about how this open-source process works, both in my book (www.fromconflict2creativity.com) as well as in various articles freely available on my website at www.diapraxis.com/resources.

What this means for practitioners: past workshop participants report feeling much more at ease in situations of conflict, developing practical skills for helping others shift from defensiveness to engagement, gaining more trust “in their bones” in emergent group process, and developing a greater ability to help groups shift into a state of creative flow. Due to the highly experiential nature of the workshop, many participants also report having personally transformative experiences during our time together.

Okay! If you’re interested, and would like to have a conversation, e-mail me to let me know.

Evaluativism 101

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We are happy to share the announcement below from NCDD Member Chris Santos-Lang of GRIN Free. Chris’s announcement came via our great Submit-to-Blog Form. Do you have news you want to share with the NCDD network? Just click here to submit your news post for the NCDD Blog!

What Is Evaluativism?

The word “homophobia” was coined in the 1960s to name something that had been occurring for centuries before being named. The word “evaluativism” is an even more recently coined term with an even older history. Much as “racism” and “sexism” refer to discrimination on the basis of race and sex respectively, “evaluativism” refers to discrimination on the basis of cognitive differences known as “evaluative diversity.”

Discrimination against Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Caucasians all qualify as racism. Likewise, instances of evaluativism include discrimination against creative people, discrimination against subjectivists (i.e., against people who empathize), and discrimination against conservatives. One is often able to find a church, industry, or group in which one’s own evaluative type is privileged, and others in which it is oppressed.

Just as we are still discovering the species and sub-species that make up our biodiversity, we are still in the process of mapping our evaluative diversity. So far, at least four distinct branches of evaluative diversity have been confirmed to exist in both humans and computers; they correspond to well-established branches of moral theory. These four branches have been named with the mnemonic “GRIN”:

Natural Gadfly: Aimed at discovery – guided by creativity

Naturally Relational: Aimed at love – guided by empathy

Naturally Institutional: Aimed at purity – guided by best practices

Natural Negotiator: Aimed at results – guided by research

Although the name is new, evaluativism is not. For example, in the ancient story of Adam and Eve, Adam implied that Eve had a different evaluative nature, and that they would not have eaten the forbidden fruit if her nature had been suppressed (he may have been naturally relational and she a natural negotiator or gadfly). Criticisms of specific evaluative natures are also found in the Quran, Analects, Dhammapada, Tao Te Ching, Bhagavad Gita, and peer-reviewed science.

What’s in a Name?

Lacking a proper name, evaluativism was sometimes called “sexism” in the past. For example, Carol Gilligan’s theory of ethics of care defended the naturally relational from the evaluativism of her academic adviser, Lawrence Kohlberg, but society lacked the terms “naturally relational” and “evaluativism” at the time, so Carol instead claimed to defend “women” from his “sexism”. Modern measures confirm that the naturally relational are significantly more likely to be women, but equating sex with evaluative type perpetuates stereotypes. Similar stereotyping can complicate religionism and the neurodiversity movement. To avoid such stereotyping, evaluativism needs its own name.

The terms “evaluativism” and “evaluativist” derive from the term “evaluative diversity,” which is attributed to a 1961 essay by the philosopher P. F. Strawson. This derivation was made rigorous in a philosophical paper by Hartry Field which argued that evaluative diversity creates intractable disagreements even about matters of fact (such as about the nature of God), so we may as well write-off other people so far as their evaluative type does not match our own. In other words, a successful family reunion unavoidably requires keeping certain topics off-the-table.

The Science

Throughout most of history, racism and sexism were considered part of the natural order, and the same has been true (and may currently be true) of evaluativism. Like homosexuals, people of unprivileged evaluative types used to be considered mentally ill or disabled. More optimistic psychologists classified them as merely immature or ignorant, and proposed methods to educate, reform, or otherwise fix them.

Only recently have scientists begun to show that evaluative nature correlates with genes, brain structure, and type of algorithm. Trying to understand why evaluative diversity persists, they have conducted experiments and developed mathematical models to demonstrate that evaluatively diverse teams are more effective. In other words, evaluativism isn’t just hurtful to victims – it can also be counterproductive for society.

Why would we be hurtful and counterproductive? One reason resembles the reasons why people used to think the Earth was the center of the universe and why white men used to think of women and blacks as property. We have a history of weaving ego-centrism into the culture we pass from generation to generation such that it takes enormous effort and social innovation to escape notions that we are privileged, including the notion that our own evaluative type is the right one. Escaping evaluativism does not require relinquishing belief in right answers, but it does require admitting that we cannot recognize them without diverse help.

The Impact

Evaluativism has plagued humanity for thousands of years and currently produces more segregation in college than both racism and classism. In addition to the personal pain it has brought individual victims (manifesting as depression, apathy, disorientation, and creative block), evaluativism has produced a segregated society with different jobs, political parties, and hobbies for people of different evaluative types. The greatest victims are likely to be people subject to a parent, teacher, clergy, or boss, who feel they must hide their own views to maintain peace with that authority.

Perhaps the worst consequence of evaluativism has been to undermine the design of social institutions. When we succumb to evaluativism, we believe everyone should be of one evaluative type (i.e., our own). This error causes us to design social institutions as though people were interchangeable. For example, we design government in which all kinds of people are to participate in the same way, and we try to create one-size-fits-all justice and moral-education systems.

Unrecognized racism similarly tricked people into designing an economy built on slavery. That economy was temporarily stable, but would have to be reformed eventually. Current designs of government, education, and justice are a similar debt we pass to future generations – eventually, someone will have to pay the price of reforming them to match the denied truth. Meanwhile, their flawed designs cause political polarization, culture wars, and swelling prison populations.

What’s Next?

In the future, awareness of evaluativism will likely increase for the same reasons we have grown aware of speciesism: We could no longer afford to ignore speciesism when mass-production threatened to destroy entire species. Now evaluative diversity is becoming vulnerable to mass-communication, mass-production of decision-support systems, and mass-production of services for behavior control.

Advances in neuroscience, psychology, and sociology are typically at odds with evaluative diversity – aiming instead to increase the effectiveness of marketing, political campaigns, and central control. They will soon enable us to manipulate the sexual orientations and evaluative types of our children through not only genetic screening, but also through brain surgeries and exercises designed to sculpt brains like bodybuilders sculpt muscles. People may someday request brain-jobs to match their nose-jobs.  Then lawyers will debate whether it is possible to consent to such procedures freely, and what legitimacy any government can have when its citizens are so oppressed they would want to erase their own natures.

Evaluativism impacts everyone, and most of us every day. Its scope is like that of racism in an economy of slavery. There are currently no laws to regulate it, though at least one famous psychologist has endorsed the extension of mental health definitions for the sole purpose of protecting some evaluative minorities via disability legislation.

In one sense, Hartry Field was wrong that disagreements between evaluative types are intractable – as in conflicts between predator and prey, the resolution is necessarily either that each side loses some of the time or that the ecosystem collapses and all parties lose completely. Evaluative-ecosystem management would involve pruning the winners to protect evaluative diversity. It would be to social health what psychiatry and medicine are to mental and physical health.

Dr. Field seems right only when we ignore the evaluative ecosystem and consider our opinions personal, much as prey who shun predators consider their lives personal. To reject the personal perspective, however, would be evaluativistic. There’s the rub: Unlike racism and sexism, evaluativism is not a phase society can grow out of. It is more like speciesism in that ending speciesism between predator and prey would be even more dangerous than failing to regulate it. What we can grow out of is the phase in which evaluativism is unrecognized. Some forms of discrimination call for more sophisticated management, but all need to be managed.

Chris Santos-Lang is writing the book GRIN Free – GRIN Together: How to let people be themselves (and why you should).

League of Extraordinary Trainers Releases 2015 Schedule

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We are pleased to let you know that The League of Extraodinatory Trainers – an NCDD organizational member and one of the great partners who helped us put on NCDD 2014 conference – recently released their 2015 training schedule. LET offers excellent trainings that can help strengthen your public engagement practice, so we encourage you to check out the announcement below and register before the early bird deadlines!

And don’t forget: dues-paying NCDD members receive a 10% discount on all LET trainings, and a 20% discount if you register by the early bird date! Not up to date on your dues? Renew your membership today!

LeagueOfExtraordinaryTrainers-logoThe landscape of public participation and community engagement is changing. Rapid developments in technology, the rampant economic and political changes across the globe, widespread use of social media, and a decline in public trust have created new challenges for governments, organizations and institutions. Add to that the growing desire of citizens to participate in building the democratic architecture of their countries and communities, and it is obvious that a proven framework for public participation has never been more essential!

Public anger is an increasing fact of society. Growing global citizen outrage causes government gridlock, lawsuits, stopped projects, election losses, loss of time, money, and destroyed credibility.

IAP2 Foundations Program
(a revamped IAP2 Certificate Program – new July 1, 2014)

Foundations in Public Participation was designed with the input of successful practitioners who work with diverse populations and divergent circumstances throughout the world. This course will let you hit the ground running, armed with the knowledge and confidence you need to plan and execute effective initiatives for any area in which you may be working.

2015 Training Events:

Emotion, Outrage and Public Participation EOP2

This practical, hands-on workshop is a fresh mix of lecture, video, small and large group discussion and authentic, real world exercises that give you the answers, tools and ability to prevent problems, manage the tough public issues that you face and keep your organization on track and moving forward.

2015 Training Events:

We thank the League of Extraordinary Trainers for their continued support of NCDD and encourage you to find their complete training schedule by visiting www.extraordinarytrainers.com/schedules.

Register for Public Lands Seminar in Yellowstone

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We want to make sure that our higher ed NCDDers know that there are a few more spaces left for a great program on dealing with public issues being held in beautiful Yellowstone National Park this July 27 – August 1. The program is hosted for higher ed professionals by the AASCU. We’ve shared the NIFI announcement about the program below, and you can learn more from the program page here.

Public Lands Seminar Program PageHow does a democracy manage competing but often equally legitimate positions over public resources? How are the rights of all citizens protected in conflicts over public lands? How do universities design courses and programs to help undergraduates develop the understandings and skills necessary to think about, and become engaged in conflict management and resolution? How do we help undergraduates become more thoughtful, more engaged citizens for our democracy?

The American Democracy Project (ADP) is creating new strategies to answer that question. For the past ten summers, faculty and administrators from American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) campuses have spent a week studying political disputes in the iconic first national park in the world, Yellowstone National Park. The first year, 2005, we studied wolf re-introduction. Twenty-six (26) faculty members from 19 campuses spent a week in the Park, first studying the biology and the politics of wolf re-introduction.

But the most innovative part of the program is when we traveled outside the Park to talk to citizens and activists on both sides of the issue, to understand the controversy from their point of view. At the end of the week-long program, we considered ways that faculty might develop programs on their own campus that focused on (1) national public resource issues such as wolf re-introduction and (2) local public resource issues such as oil drilling on national seashores, wind turbines in state parks, and restoration efforts in wetlands.

For the last ten summers, we expanded the focus of the program to examine a variety of conflicts in the entire Yellowstone region, including bison and brucellosis, winter use, wolves, and grizzly bears. Our program is entitled Politics and the Yellowstone Ecosystem. In this program, we spend six (6) days in Yellowstone National Park in a combination of activities, beginning with a study of the science and history of the controversies, listening to scientists and Park rangers. Then we interview local citizens on both sides of the issues, including political activists, business people, ranchers, and other citizens.

The goal of this project is to develop new strategies and new approaches that colleges and universities can use to help undergraduates become thoughtful, informed, and engaged citizens. In a world too often filled with bitter partisan politics, this non-partisan project seeks to move beyond rhetoric and confrontation, providing students with new models that promote understanding and resolution. In a political environment where special interest groups tend to push people to polarized positions, we often try to seek common ground.

The program, held at Mammoth Hot Spring Hotel at the northern end of the Park, begins late afternoon on Monday, July 27th and ends at noon on Saturday, August 1st. The cost of the program is $1,395, which includes five (5) nights individual room lodging at Mammoth Hotel (each participant will have a separate hotel room or cabin); all instruction and instructional materials, AV rental, classroom rental; in-park transportation; and reception and dinner the first night, as well as several other meals. Space does not allow for guest participation in the full program. However, family members or guests may attend some classroom lectures, a few field trips, and evening films and presentations.

For more information on this program please contact:

George Mehaffy 202.478.4672  mehaffyg[at]aascu[dot]org

Jennifer Domagal-Goldman 202.478.7833  domagalj[at]aascu[dot]org

You can find the NIFI announcement on this seminar by visiting www.nifi.org/en/groups/registration-open-politics-and-yellowstone-ecosystem-july-2015-seminar-yellowstone-national. You can find the AASCU seminar’s page at www.aascu.org/programs/adp/SPL.

Lessons from the Jefferson Center’s OH Climate Dialogue

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We learned from our members at the 2014 NCDD conference that D&D practitioners are looking for ways to help their communities have more conversations on climate change, so we wanted to make sure to share this piece about a process model used by NCDD member organization the Jefferson Center to do just that. Their climate dialogue in Ohio follows up on similar efforts from last year, and offers some key insights on good process for discussing climate change.

We encourage you to read their piece below or to find the original by clicking here.

JeffersonCenterLogo

Northeast Ohio Dialogue on Water & Climate

On January 29th, 2015, the Jefferson Center hosted a one-day community deliberation event in Lakeland, Ohio as part of our ongoing Northeast Ohio Climate Engagement Initiative.

The event, the Northeast Ohio Dialogue on Water & Climate, brought together community members to identify the most significant challenges a changing climate presents for the long-term quality of life in the Northeast Ohio region and to assess the importance of water and climate issues relative to other local concerns. The Dialogue convened a demographically-balanced group of twelve Northeast Ohio residents to explore the local impacts of climate change and deliberate together to identify collective priority concerns.

Community Priorities

At the beginning of the day, participants identified their top policy priorities related to local quality of life to share with community and local leaders. Shortly after, Professor Terry O’Sullivan of the University of Akron joined us to discuss climate change and its impacts on the region. Participants spent the rest of the day deliberating with one another to identify top climate-related concerns before reevaluating their overall issue concerns to see if climate issues had become more important after the day’s activities.

The final community-generated list of top priority concerns included:

  1. The effects of climate change on local water resources
  2. Economic issues, broadly
  3. The direct effects of climate change on the economy
  4. Police-community relations
  5. Education

Event Evaluation

Participants were asked to complete pre- and post-event surveys to evaluate the effectiveness of the Northeast Ohio Dialogue on Water and Climate and assess shifts in behavior.

9 out of 12 participants indicated their views on climate change shifted as a result of the forum.

11 out of 12 participants indicated the Jefferson Center was “very effective” in conducting a fair and unbiased event.

In discussion, participants emphasized the importance of a strong economy as the key concern upon which action on other issues depended. The group was particularly interested in learning about both the threats and opportunities climate change directly presents to Northeast Ohio’s economy.

Driving the Conversation

The Dialogue served as a pilot to test a novel framework for assessing community-driven responses to the impacts of climate change. We hope this one-day model of citizen education and deliberation will be used by policymakers and advocacy organizations to increase public involvement in developing and implementing responses to climate change.

We will continue to work with local policymakers, public officials, and other key stakeholders to incorporate citizen priorities in their planning process. We’re thankful to Freshwater Future for supporting our climate engagement initiative, and to our local partners for their help in organizing this community-oriented awareness and engagement forum.

You can find the original version of this piece at http://jefferson-center.org/northeast-ohio-dialogue-on-water-and-climate.

$3M Knight Competition Seeks Ideas for Increasing Civic Participation

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Today, the Knight Foundation begins accepting submissions in a competition for part of a $3 million pot that we know many of our NCDD members could do well in. The Knight News Challenge calls for creative ideas about how to increase civic participation around elections, and we encourage all of our NCDDers to consider applying before the March 19 deadline. You can learn more in the KF blog piece below or by visiting www.newschallenge.org.

Knight-Foundation-logoOn Feb. 25 we will open the next Knight News Challenge with this question:

How might we better inform voters and increase civic participation before, during and after elections?

The challenge is a collaboration between Knight Foundation, the Democracy Fund, Hewlett Foundation, and Rita Allen Foundation, all of which plan to contribute funds, expertise and outreach as well as helping to review entries. What’s at stake, for the winners, is a share of more than $3 million.

As with past challenges, this one will cast a wide net. We are looking for innovative ideas on new ways that news organizations, civic tech entrepreneurs and others can better inform voters and increase civic participation. Projects could range from bringing more transparency to money and politics, to making voting easy, efficient and fair, to converting election participation into longer-term civic engagement – on the local, state or national level.

With newsrooms and civic organizations gearing up for the 2016 elections, this is a prime moment to explore new ways to engage Americans in the political process and increase participation in our democracy.

Here’s what you should know before the contest opens for ideas:

  • We are interested in ideas from anyone, including journalists, civic technologists, academics, students, startups, nonprofits, governments and individuals.
  • The challenge will open for submissions on Feb. 25 and close at 5 p.m. ET on March 19.
  • Winners will be announced in June.
  • The challenge will not fund projects involving voter registration, lobbying or advocating for specific parties, initiatives or candidates.*

News Challenges usually have at least $2.5 million at stake, with winners receiving funding of anywhere from $35,000 to several hundred thousand dollars. This time, Knight has three partners, and the Democracy Fund has already announced it will contribute up to $250,000. Hewlett Foundation and Rita Allen Foundation are still finalizing details of their participation, but all partners will stimulate ideas, do outreach and help review entries. Other reviewers will include a diverse set of experts in journalism, governance and civic tech.

The challenge follows a mid-term election that had both the lowest turnout since World War II, as well as the most spending on a mid-term ever by political parties and outside groups. Many voters are apathetic, or feel that their vote doesn’t make a difference. We see that as a challenge. We see civic participation as the way communities take hold of their futures. New forms of civic participation are emerging, some enabled by technology, but elections remain central.

What if voters felt better informed and more confident going into elections? What if they could easily find and track trustworthy  information on the issues they cared about? What if the election process were more pleasant and felt empowering? What if voters made connections – to information, or people – in the course of elections that made them want to become more engaged in their communities after they cast their ballots?

The goal of a News Challenge is to find organizations and people out there who may have answers.

* The Knight News Challenge will only support nonpartisan ideas. There are categories of ideas the challenge will not fund, under laws governing elections and nonprofit organizations. It will not support ideas that are aimed to influence the outcome of any specific election or legislation. Nor will it fund, directly or indirectly, a voter registration drive. We will be offering virtual office hours during the application period and otherwise responding to questions to make sure applicants are clear on the parameters.

The original version of this Knight Foundation blog post at www.knightfoundation.org/blogs/knightblog/2015/2/12/knight-news-challenge-focus-elections.

On Evaluation and Legitimacy in D&D

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Our partners at the Kettering Foundation recently published an insightful interview with Prof. Katie Knobloch of the Center for Public Deliberation – an NCDD organizational member – that we wanted to share here. There’s a lot to learn from Katie’s reflection on the challenges of evaluating and legitimizing D&D work, so we encourage you to read the interview below or find the original piece here.

Does Our Work Really Matter? Deliberative Practitioners Reflect on the Impact of Their Work

kfAs attention to public deliberation has increased, one core interest of researchers has been evaluating the impact of deliberative processes. Researchers, practitioners, elected officials, and participants themselves want to know if what they’re doing matters. Does public deliberation impact policy? Does it change our attitude toward issues? Does it adhere to democratic ideals?

Professor Katherine R. Knobloch has been intimately involved in evaluation work, refining our understanding of these questions. Former research assistant Jack Becker sat down with her to talk about her work around evaluation, as well as her work with the Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review.

Katherine R. Knobloch is an assistant professor and the associate director of the Center for Public Deliberation in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. Her research and teaching focus on political communication and civic engagement, specifically exploring how deliberative public processes can create a more informed and engaged citizenry. For this work, she has received a grant from the National Science Foundation to study the expansion of a new governing institution, the Citizens’ Initiative Review. Her work has appeared in The Journal of Applied Communication Research, Politics, and the International Journal of Communication.

Jack Becker: Your work explores the development, evaluation, and impact of deliberative public processes. How do you compartmentalize each of these in your research?

Katherine R. Knobloch: The central element of interest is figuring out how to implement deliberative practices in ways that matter. To look at the development of public deliberation, I talk with people about what goes into running organizations, how they work with public officials to implement their processes, and how they got involved in public deliberation. I do a lot of fieldwork and observations to examine this.

For evaluation, I have worked alongside a number of scholars to develop a coding scheme that allows us to break the deliberative process out into segments. We then use that scheme to judge the deliberations against goals that practitioners identified and goals and definitions that we as researchers have developed to analyze if processes are fulfilling democratic and deliberative standards.

For example, we have used an updated definition from John Gastil’s Political Communication and Deliberation (2008), that deliberation is an analytic information gathering process, a democratic discussion process, and a decision-making process. I will also spend time observing participants and getting feedback from them directly, asking, for example, did they reach their goals? Did they uphold deliberative criteria? I will also do a pre- and post-survey of participants to examine a variety of factors, such as attitudinal changes.

To look at impact, with the Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR) process, for example, we are looking at whether the process has an impact in how voters make their decisions. Do people read the CIR statement? Do they find the information valuable?

You have a chapter in Democracy in Motion: Evaluating the Practice and Impact of Deliberative Civic Engagement (2012) in which you and your coauthors lay out criteria for evaluating deliberative public processes. What is it we learn from evaluating deliberation, and what are our challenges?

I think we’re looking to refine our methods. I’m concerned that we do evaluation in an inefficient way. Much of my own work in evaluating deliberation relies on grants, and that’s not sustainable, particularly for small organizations that lack the capacity to get large grants and do the evaluative work. So we need to figure out what survey methods are best and how they can be refined to make it easier for practitioners to regularly evaluate their work.

For the CIR, we wanted to start a coding scheme that would be applicable across deliberative events. Deliberative processes are dynamic, and that’s another challenge to the work of evaluation. During deliberative processes, the agenda may change in real time, and in the past, we’ve changed coding schemes, but now we’re trying to use the same coding scheme and develop one that will work in other deliberative processes. The goal of evaluation is to be able to look back and say what the most valuable results from a process are.

Are we seeing more practitioners evaluate their own work?

I think that’s been a trend in recent years. More people want to know if their work is doing what they say it’s doing. Also, they want to know if it is effective in impacting communities, organizations, and people.

I attended a session at the National Conference on Dialogue and Deliberation this year that was focused on practitioners and academics getting on the same page with evaluation. One of the challenges is that everyone is working off of different frameworks. Josh Lerner with Participatory Budgeting (PB) pointed out at the conference how many different teams are evaluating PB processes. So they are trying to create at least a funnel point to gather this info and synthesize this.

I’ve been talking about civic infrastructure with people for the past year. How do innovations such as the Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR) fit into ideas of civic infrastructure?

One of the most important breakthroughs for the CIR in Oregon is that it is a legitimate and formal part of the governing process. I think effective public engagement matters. It’s important for participants to come away from deliberative processes feeling like their participation was purposeful and that it could have a real impact on public decision making. I think that’s the legitimizing part of the CIR. It legitimizes deliberation as part of governance. Ideally, we would like to see more processes like these become embedded in government as ways to improve the quality of our civic infrastructure.

Organizations, practitioners, and theorizers are taking this process seriously. As a field, deliberation faces the challenge of implementing decisions that publics make at deliberative events. So people make decisions through deliberative processes, but then decision makers decide whether to use it. So the CIR specifically addresses that problem, in that recommendations go right to voters in the voters guide for their consideration. The CIR finds a way to make those decisions matter at the policymaking level.

Participatory Budgeting is a wonderful example of making things matter for people as well. City councils and city governments are handing over portions of their budget to citizen decision making, showing that citizens have the capacity to make these decisions.

So part of the success I hear there is that they are creating connections to the decision-making process by working with decision makers. Are elected and appointed officials into this?

I think there are more city officials who are into deliberation. It may be wishful thinking, but I see city officials taking citizen voice more seriously. I think they want to understand what citizens want and why. Even President Obama making the call for a discussion on mental health is a good example. And models like the Colorado State University Center for Public Deliberation are great examples of linking deliberative practice more directly with city officials and providing recommendations to city councils in ways that are impactful.

Hawaii state senator Les Ihara Jr. stressed to me in a recent interview the importance of meeting elected officials where they are. Does this resonate as a productive approach to growing deliberative practice?

Legislators are often wary of the initiative process since the policy or legislation is created without a connection to the resources allocation process. So it creates a misalignment in the policymaking process. Legislators are open to how to improve the initiative process. And so in Oregon, officials were interested in how to improve that process and saw that the CIR could potentially bring more alignment to the initiative process.

So in developing the Citizens’ Initiative Review, to what extent was the process driven by government officials in demanding these changes?

It was really driven by the founders of the CIR who were not a part of government. When they first proposed the CIR, they had a conversation with the Oregon Secretary of State who asked them to run a pilot. The founders of the process drove it. But they worked closely alongside legislators and public officials to identify what they thought would be useful to improve the process and to make sure it met the needs for Oregon as a whole. And the legislators of Oregon asked for a thorough evaluation of the process during the pilot, exploratory phase. So it really comes back to the importance of evaluation in growing deliberative practice.

The original version of this Kettering Foundation interview can be found at http://kettering.org/kfnews/does-our-work-matter.