Conclusions
People have different motivations for participating in online deliberations with government. Some want to have their say; others want to find out what other people think and to see how government responds. Online deliberations provide the government with opportunities to enhance public understandings of their work, but they are not a solution to disengagement of themselves. That relies on good practice.
Our guidance to government departments in the section above offers ways of achieving this, although it does not provide foolproof methods of overcoming obstacles. Success depends on the planning of online deliberations to ensure that there are sufficiently developed discussion topics and engagement strategies. Users expect a degree of interaction, which requires a time commitment on the part of the teams running the engagement exercise so that participants’ posts go up and are responded to in a timely fashion. Online deliberations offer a promise of transparency; unclear communication from engagement teams is often read by participants as obfuscation. At all times, it is necessary to manage expectations about policy impact and ensure that the process is clear to those taking part.
Many other factors shape government approaches to online deliberation, which is why discontinuous adoption is a key theme throughout the three phases of Digital Dialogues. The culture of each department or agency, its stage in the policy cycle at the time of engagement and the exercise’s objectives all generate different styles of online engagement. Some require deep deliberation with a few stakeholders or experts; others aim to increase their reach; many seek to discuss set topics; a few encourage users to set the agenda; some tie in with consultations; others are gauging public opinion. Each approach has a drawback: a deep approach requires participants to commit time and effort to understanding the issues; a structured approach stifles debate but an unstructured one is prone to hijack; etc. These detriments lead to different consequences, depending on the engagement context.
The picture that emerges is nuanced, and those government departments which benefit most from online engagement are the ones that are able to reflect on their experience and approach. For example, the FSA blog experienced a tension between conflicting expectations that they should develop scientific and public facing forms of engagement: their response is to consider developing a suite of blogs – one with a consumer focus and the other with a scientist focus.
Online deliberations do not necessarily fail when such reflexivity is lacking, but any successes in such cases are due mostly to luck. Throughout the three phases of Digital Dialogues, there have been instances of government departments whose reticence in the face of criticism has meant at best that deliberations peter out and at worst that they risk being hijacked; a vicious cycle emerges when government departments disengage. Yet risk aversion on the part of government departments remains the biggest obstacle to success. So, too, do incorrect assumptions on the part of the department running the exercise.
Policies can change on the basis of well-informed comments posted by a small number of users on a government website (see under: Jim Murphy’s blog); large volumes of participants and posts do not necessarily constitute success – some of the better case studies had small numbers of well considered comments; it takes less time to administer a well run engagement site than it does to deal with risk averse approaches and their consequences; people see through online gimmicks but appreciate it when government departments use a range of engagement methods to maintain their interest.
