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Community outrage is the stuff of nightmares for any organisation that operates with the goodwill of the public. It's particularly fraught for public sector agencies for whom political oversight is the primary condition under which they operate.

This article explores the roots of outrage in moral indignation and what that means for organisations and communications practitioners.

Community outrage comes in all shapes and sizes, and about all manner of issues. But, why outrage and not mere disgruntlement or even anger? What is it that ties these issues together? Thanks to the vast volume of work by Peter Sandman, a large proportion of discussion about community outrage is focused on "risk communication" mostly for projects or incidents with a potentially huge, and more often than not unplanned, negative impact on a large group of people and/or the environment. Think nuclear power plants, the Exon Valdez, Bhopal, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

We very rarely operate in these spaces. And yet, over the years, we have seen plenty of outraged communities.

The people of Newcastle (Australia) were outraged at the prospect of losing their railway stations. Others were outraged at the prospect of keeping them. The same community was similarly outraged at the prospect of a historic lighthouse being converted into a restaurant, or not being converted into a restaurant.

The people of Sydney's northern beaches were completely outraged about off-leash dog walking on their beaches. Some were outraged that it might be banned, others that it might be permitted. The Blue Mountains community was similarly outraged about the prospect of off-leash dog walking on their sports fields; or the banning thereof. (If you ever want to get a community activated, and potentially outraged, threaten to change off-leash dog walking rules.)

The accountants of Canada were absolutely outraged at the prospect of their professional associations uniting.

Some people are outraged about coal seam gas; some by feral pest management, others about roads projects, and still others about railway projects. People quite often get outraged about public transport projects, particularly any perceived threat to bus or rail timetables. And building heights. There is probably no more outrageous issue in land-use planning that "urban consolidation". Threaten a neighborhood with apartment blocks and you will, most certainly, inspire outrage.

Some people even manage to find public art and public memorials outrageous. Perhaps not to the extent that they might find police brutality or political corruption outrageous, but it is nevertheless, a form of moral outrage.

Community outrage comes in all shapes and sizes, and about all manner of issues. But, why outrage and not mere disgruntlement or even anger? What is it that ties these issues together?

A case study of community outrage

Many years ago the Granicus team were working with a smallish council - local government - in regional Australia. They needed to raise funds for a whole range of important projects. From memory, there was a particular focus on environmental works for improving catchment quality and flood mitigation. Both of which were very important local issues.

In order to raise the funds they needed to get the community to support what is known as a "special rates variation" or "special rates levy". For anyone unfamiliar with "rates", it's the tax property owners pay to their local council to contribute to all of the local government services we all take for granted every day (and barely ever notice or acknowledge).

The reason council needed to build community support was because they didn't have the power to increase the rates of their own volition. Rather, they had to go to the State government and ask the Minister for Local Government via the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) for permission to increase the rates for one or a number of years. Neither IPART nor the Minister takes such applications lightly. So, along with the business case, wise councils will also demonstrate community support through some form of research or community engagement process (or both).

We say "wise" councils, because the last thing any politician wants, especially a Minister, is for someone to dump a big smelly fish on their desk and say "solve our problem." In public policy generally, most Ministers want to know that the local community has, at the very least been listened to, and if possible brought into the process and is comfortable with the proposal. They, quite naturally, want solutions, not problems. This is particularly the case where new or increased taxes are involved. Unsurprisingly, politicians like to be popular, rather than unpopular.

Cognizant of this political and bureaucratic reality, the council in question decided to engage its community in a fairly intensive conversation about the need to raise this extra money. They did so by arranging a whole series of face-to-face "town-hall" style meetings in the main township as well as all of the surrounding villages. And, they set up an online discussion space using engagementhq to gather community thoughts on a range of issues.

All good so far. A nice inclusive, open and transparent process. All done with the very best of intentions.

We should say at this point, that this process of seeking community and thence Ministerial approval for special rate levies is very common. Rates capping has existed for many years in NSW. Most councils are short of cash. Dozens would go through this process each year. We have worked with at least a dozen that have been in a very similar position over the years. While there are inevitably, and probably quite naturally, a few disgruntled individuals, every other similar project we have been involved with since has sailed through the approval process without a backward glance.

...

Shortly after the launch of the engagement program it became obvious that something different was happening this time. There was a lot of interest. And by a lot, I mean A LOT!

The community was, by anyone's definition, outraged.

The town-hall meetings were, quite literally overrun with people queuing out the door. Hundreds of people showed up to let their displeasure be known.

The online forums were overwhelmed by lots and lots AND LOTS of people who were really very angry with the council and livid at the idea that their rates might be about to go up. Given the scale of response, our moderators were kept busy, but, by and large, people were angry, rather than rude. But there was something bigger happening, people weren't just angry, they were outraged.

The common theme that came through over and over again was that people were not at all happy with how council was being managed. There was a perception, fair or not, that money was being wasted hand over fist. And this wasn't your usual "the government can't manage money" cynicism. It came across as a deeply held conviction that had been festering within the community for a very long time. Fair, or not, there was clearly a lot of pre-existing anger within the community waiting to bubble to the surface.

Furthermore, the area is not a wealthy one - it has a very high unemployment rate and many people survive on welfare payments. The expectation that the solution to council's funding shortfall was to extract more money from the community was, for a large number of people, the last straw. People were seething at the prospect that their pockets were about to be raided to prop up, in their opinion, a poorly managed and wasteful council.

It was a very poor context in which to have a conversation about financial management, let alone to propose a tax hike.

Council, and by council I mean the Councillors, senior executive and operational staff were, almost universally, stunned by the community response. They had no inkling as to the way the proposal would be received. And so they withdrew.

Council dumped the idea of applying for the special rates levy and went into a process of intense introspection. Some time later I ran into one of the senior managers at a conference and it became clear that, more than introspection, they were in almost in mourning, and certainly in complete shock about both the scale and visceral nature of the community response. He was genuinely completely bemused by it all.

Unfortunately, not only did council pull back from the special rates level proposal, it withdrew from the public more generally. Metaphorically, at least, the doors closed. And yes, we parted ways.

We say "almost universal", because not everyone was surprised. The community engagement team weren't particularly surprised at all. They spent their days listening to the community and they knew there was a problem with the council-community relationship. It's just that no one would listen to them.

Now they're listening.

So, what happened? We'll get to that. But first, let's explore outrage a little more.

The moral roots of community outrage

In framing a response to reader outrage about a typically provocative cover image on the New York Times, Art Markman goes a long way to explaining why outrage is so important in a public policy context:

...while someone is experiencing legitimate outrage, it is impossible to have a reasoned discussion with them. Highly arousing emotional states are just not consistent with rational discussion. So, if you want to express any kind of affiliation with an outraged party, the easiest way to do it is to express outrage yourself.

There are lots of good reasons for an organisation, and more so, for the people within that organisation, to want to avoid citizen outrage.

From an organisational perspective, outrage is damaging to the "brand". For corporates, this can affect their social license to operate which can have an influence on their relationship with government and their consequent regulatory environment. For government agencies, "brand damage" is articulated as a loss of confidence in an organisation to deliver results for the community. This can result in sweeping changes including structural reform and to the executive management team.

For the people who have to work within an organisation that is subject to outrage, the reasons are far more personal. No one wants to go to work each day and be subject to personal attacks. It is stressful, demoralizing, hurtful, sometimes frightening, and just no fun at all.

From a public policy perspective, policy conversations, or debates, framed in the context of outrage are entirely antagonistic. There is simply no room for personal or group learning, and no room for dialogue. Inevitably, policies developed in this context as the poorer for it.

Art Markman notes that outrage is an emotion with three components:

First, it has negative affect. That is, it is a bad feeling. Second, it has high arousal. That is, it is a strong and powerful emotion. Third, it occurs when people experience a violation of a moral boundary.

Let's break that down.

No one wants to feel bad. Not you, not me, and not anyone I know. But there are lots of bad feelings. Grief is a bad feeling. Humiliation is a bad feeling. There is nothing unique in this regard about outrage. Having a bad feeling about something is not enough to provoke outrage.

There are also lots of "high arousal" emotions; love, hatred, joy, exuberance. So being "highly aroused" doesn't feel like the defining feature of outrage to me.

It's the final condition that interests me, that the behavior is a "violation of a moral boundary."

So, if someone expresses outrage, then they are turning an event into a moral issue.

A sense of right and wrong is at the core of each of our personal belief systems. Anything that transgresses this in a major way is, as likely as not, a provocation for moral indignation. This is particularly important in the context of citizenship and public policy because, as Reis and Martin, writing on "Psychological dynamics of outrage against injustice" explain:

...in a tacit social contract, people grant certain powers to [leaders] with the expectation that [leaders] will offer protection and some degree of justice.When [leaders] violate common expectations - for example by imposing excessive punishments - this will be perceived as unjust and cause an adverse reaction.

While Reis and Martin were writing in relation to "big"issues like torture and war, we frequently see the same visceral response to perceived "injustices" on a much smaller, more localized scale. "Injustices" are just as readily, and perhaps even more viscerally, perceived in the home, neighbourhood, workplace, school, and community, as their are in a broader global context.

For the person who's only daily joy is taking their old dog for a romp each day, the idea that that could be taken away by government is very quickly framed as a repressive personal injustice. Equally, for the person who is terrified, or disgusted, by dogs, the idea that someone else's mutt should impinge on their daily constitutional is not merely an inconvenience, it's a transgression of a social contract in a civil society. And therefore immoral. You start to see how these things quickly elevate!

For the person who survives on a government pension and who's only means of communication with relatives on the other side of the world is regular letter writing, affordability is a moral issue, rather than a practical one. For the student who's only means of transport is the local bus service, a threat to that service is a threat to their education, which is a threat to their future aspirations. It's not a practical issue, it's an injustice.

It doesn't matter whether you or I think this is a reasonable interpretation of the situation. And it certainly isn't helpful to wonder whether is it "fair". It only matters that we, as communicators and community engagement practitioners, can empathize with the position of the community (and ultimately the individuals within that community). Because if we can't empathize then we can't even begin to have a conversation. Particularly given their highly aroused state.

And so it goes....

The authors of a very well-researched article about "The Emotional Components of Moral Outrage and their Effect on Mock Juror Verdicts" note:

Research in moral psychology has demonstrated that when people witness moral transgressions, they react with moral outrage. Moral outrage has been defined as a constellation of cognitive (e.g., attributions of blame), behavioral (e.g., desire to punish), and emotional (e.g., anger) responses to perceived wrongdoing. Disgust and anger are both emotional components of moral outrage, and are intimately linked in their ability to predict people’s moral outrage in response to a moral transgression.

Is it any wonder that things take us by surprise and blow up so very quickly.

Back to our Council friends. What happened?

The community, very quickly, turned the issue into a moral one.

"I have very little money. You are meant to be managing my contribution to this community efficiently and effectively. I don't believe that you are. In fact, I believe that you are wasting my money. And now I find out that you expect more from me. This is an injustice. You are behaving immorally. You have broken the social contract between us. I'm going to get really angry and let you know how I feel about it."

On reflection, and with the benefit of hindsight many years later, we all missed one contextual factor right up front.

No one thought to ask what the pre-existing relationship was like between the council and the community. This would have given us a critical insight into the likely community response. It would have allowed everyone to think through both the proposition and the communications plan much more critically and perhaps lead to a different path.

Of course, there were many other sociological factors at play in this particular community. But just imagine if every time we were thinking about asking the community for more money we asked ourselves, "is this a moral thing to be doing?". What difference would that make? Would we avoid community outrage? Not always, but perhaps occasionally, and we'd certainly be better prepared and, hopefully, more empathic.

Originally posted on www.bangthetable.com
Authored by Crispin Buttriss, Co-Founder of Bang the Table

Do you ever find yourself at the bottom of a rabbit hole of TikToks or YouTube videos? Do you ever go to Amazon looking for one book, and realise you have two books, a stapler, an air fryer, and a set of dog toys in your cart?

This is by design. Tech companies invest huge sums of money into making their platforms addictive. Online businesses spend extravagantly on tools that make more people buy their products. These huge companies increase engagement in a few costly ways. They hire the best web and graphic designers to make their platforms beautiful. They pay people to play around with their apps and discuss them in focus groups. They do rigorous user testing, seeing if a larger font or different design will make 1% more people buy their product or scroll 1% longer.

In local government, you are competing against these exact platforms when trying to get more residents to engage with you. This puts you at a disadvantage because you don’t have the same resources to splurge when you launch your online community engagement project. The good news? It’s possible to learn the same universal principles the tech behemoths use and apply them to whatever platform you use for community engagement – at no cost.

Here, I will share one basic principle, one technique, one tweak, that, if applied to your community engagement work, can boost participation overnight.

One principle: Don’t make me think

If you structure your information in a confusing way, your residents will leave. Not because they’re dumb, but because they would rather spend their time somewhere else. The book “Don’t Make Me Think” expands on this idea, with a pretty self-explanatory book title.

The picture above shows two variations of the same menu. Same information, same level of detail, same prices.

If you walked up to a restaurant with the menu on the right displayed, would you eat there?

No? Why not?

You know how to read. None of those words are too difficult. What’s the big deal?

The menu on the right doesn’t sync up with how the human brain processes information. We constantly seek out patterns in the world around us, cluster them, and organise them. If you’re looking for shareables, your brain knows to look for bolded text with some words like “Appetizers/Shareables/Starters” and then review the options in that box. That takes so much less energy than reading the entire menu.

Heuristics are mental shortcuts that we take to solve problems more efficiently. By employing basic rules of thumb, we can make decisions without having to stop and analyse everything. Everyone from web designers (the three horizontal lines is the menu button) to grocery stores (the fresh food is on the perimeter of the store) to Amazon (if it has a 4.5-star rating or above it must be good quality) takes advantage of our brain’s need to find shortcuts.

Applied to community engagement:

• If you are engaging populations with low tech proficiency, don’t rely on virtual meetings. They have the highest learning curve of all online engagement methods. Your residents will choose something easier.
• Structure and arrange your information in a visually coherent way.
• Ask yourself: Will this make sense to someone in seven seconds or less?

One technique: Present one logical next step at a time.

The best user experience in the entire internet comes from your least favorite activity: filing your taxes. TurboTax has invested tons of money into making your tax filing process easy and understandable.

When you file your taxes on TurboTax, you are presented with one step at a time. Press one button, or type in the answer to one field, then hit continue.

Here’s the fascinating part: Unless your tax situation is complicated, the dozens of screens you click through on TurboTax might add up to more clicks and keystrokes than filling out the original IRS form online! But because TurboTax asks you one question at a time, often with user-friendly inputs like emoji buttons, you feel like you’re in the drivers’ seat, making measurable progress toward a goal. This is much less mentally taxing than filling out a smaller, but more confusing, form.

For community engagement, the application is easy: Whatever your call-to-action is, make it clear. Don’t bury it at the bottom of your email or the last paragraph of your press release. When someone lands on your community engagement project, your email, or your social media post, they should know what to do. When they finish contributing, have a system or process already in place that can close the loop and follow up with residents afterward.

One tweak: Simplify your language.

Most people have heard advice like this before, but don’t know the stakes.

I recently ran a quick experiment on readability. I found blocks of text from two of our clients’ sites: one high-performing, one low-performing. I copied and pasted them into Readable.com – a tool that scans your writing for readability. Here are the results, side by side.

Can you tell which is which?

I won’t tell you who the underperforming client is. I can tell you that their content broke Readable. A grade level of 16.9 means you need a college diploma to understand their project information. A reach of 33% means that it is unreadable for 67% of residents.

I can also tell you that they galloped into community engagement with three of the Four Horsemen of the Planning Jargonpocalypse:

I’m not the first person to advise you not to use jargon. It’s honestly kind of a cliche these days. But the most common mistake I see is when subject matter experts (planners, engineers, analysts) hear “don’t use jargon” and interpret that as “use jargon and then use up a whole paragraph to define and explain it in an attempt to clarify the jargon.”

Good writing, in the lens of community engagement, is less about spelling or grammar. It’s all about readability. The underperforming client’s site checked all of the traditional boxes. Perfect grammar. Zero spelling errors. Explained all of the acronyms. Regurgitated the scope of work of the project in excruciatingly accurate detail. Check, check, check, and check.

You need to remember that you’re talking with humans. The golden rule applies here: write for others the way you would like to read. You probably don’t enjoy reading through long, technical, and formal writing. Neither do your residents.

Don’t think this is possible? This article is about how to leverage the fundamentals of user experience design for online community engagement processes in local government (phew!) and here are my stats:

Notice you got all the way to the bottom of this article. Coincidence?

Small tweaks to apply to your community engagement project to increase your reach:

• Shorten your sentences.
• Humanise your language. Write like you talk.
• Cut, cut, cut. Pretend each word costs you money.
• Shoot for an eighth-grade reading level. Use Readable.com to check your work.

Putting it all together

Did you like this article? I hosted a webinar that pulls the curtain back even further.

Learn the principles of psychology, persuasion, and user experience design to engage more residents. See the tactics the most advanced tech companies use to increase participation on their own platforms. Then, learn how to apply these to your community engagement project for a fraction of the cost.

Jeremy Shackett

EngagementHQ

With the rise in deepening and expanding public engagement globally, the importance of community engagement has become pivotal for well-functioning, twenty-first century democracies. Constructive relationships between communities and the institutions of government make community engagement not only desirable, but necessary and viable as it is likely to lead to more equitable, sustainable public decisions and improve the liveability of local communities. This is why community engagement is important for individuals, public organisations, and governments alike.

Where traditional, executive-led approaches are ineffective, community engagement is important in its collaborative approach to the design and/or delivery of services. For the complexity of issues in any given community – where traditional approaches have been ineffective if non-inclusive in the extreme – community engagement enables better understanding of communities’ needs and aspirations.

"When sending out a message...take a moment to take stock and look through it from the lens of those that have been affected." - Kate Crowe, Acting Team Leader, Communications and Community Engagement, Shoalhaven City Council

From ‘disaster dashboards’ to recovery centres to bringing local artists together, local councils in Australia speak from the frontline of emergency management and disaster recovery.

In the wake of catastrophic climate events and unrelenting disasters that have ravaged communities in recent months in Australia, local government organisations continue to engage with community and stakeholders to foster recovery and resilience. Communication and engagement strategies in these extraordinary circumstances speak to both the urgency and complexity of the issues at hand. They underline the importance of the exchange that sits at the heart of community engagement: of being heard and being listened to, and of having effective ways to do so.

Community engagement in emergency management and disaster recovery may vary in form across contexts depending on where and how the conversations happen. Nevertheless, they share a few defining features around their common objectives by way of providing accurate and timely information with clarity, in responding quickly and efficiently, in understanding community needs, and managing resources under pressure.

To these ends, digital engagement can provide crucial support. In the hour of need it can be a place to go for clarity, direction, and reassurance. It can speak to the needs of multiple stakeholders in a cohesive way. It can enable, document, support, and direct the flow of information between community, decision-makers and stakeholders. It can also equip agencies for better responses, and nurture underlying relationships.

The following notes from the frontlines look at learnings from three Australian councils who have tapped into community engagement online and offline to support their communities in managing, surviving and bouncing back from difficult times.

Adelaide Hills: In solidarity with Each Other and Community

For the core team responding to the Adelaide Hills fires in South Australia, the tense initial days drew on training, planning, collaboration, and anticipating the needs of the community around messaging and sensitivity. When it was time for the annual Christmas message to go out to the community, the situation demanded careful consideration. Even more so, when it was time for business-as-usual communications around, for instance, rates notices or health inspections. Mindful of how people were likely to be affected by such communications after the trauma of the disaster events, the Council prepared the community for the communications to follow. This way, people knew to expect letters and notices but were also made aware that the Council understood the situation at hand and outlined the available options.

To take this approach was to see the disaster event through the eyes of the community and consider their priorities around communication in the aftermath. The questions asked of the customer service team in this time spanned a range of concerns. For instance, dealing with displaced animals, waste disposal, repairing and restoring properties, power outages, and road closures. In this period, offline engagement or local events had to consider the best interests of the residents and businesses affected by the fires.

In staying mindful of the physical and emotional wellbeing of community and stakeholders, a care-based approach resonated in the local recovery centre. Located in an arts and culture hub that had escaped the fires, the recovery centre became a place for sharing in care for self and community.

"...the importance of the wellbeing of everybody who is impacted by something like this - and that ongoing care to make sure that we were taking care of each other and self." - Jennifer Blake, Manager Communications, Engagement & Events, Adelaide Hills Council

With around 100-150 people coming through in the first few weeks on a daily basis to access emergency services and relief, planners addressed an emotional component of the context by actively arranging for the space to be safe and welcoming. Local signage for easy navigation, warm decor with blankets and cushions, coffee and biscuits made available, a play area for children, art on the walls - all served to create a haven where the community could take a moment to breathe before addressing the practicalities of the situation.

The centre went on to have an art exhibition which explored themes of healing and comfort, bringing local artists and community together around programming. With the Tour Down Under, a major cycling event, due to go through these bushfire affected areas, local communities rallied to prepare their towns. Competing for a prize for the best-dressed town, community members got together to decorate their public spaces with the community working together in creative collaboration.

As observable in such times, communities go through a range of phases in recovery, and communications can speak to the distinct practical and emotional components of this spectrum. In the immediate aftermath of disaster events, the period of survival may see feelings of altruism and togetherness. The phase that follows typically sees government communications around relief and restoration. Ahead of this phase there can be challenging and demanding complexity around such issues as the financial aspects of shared repairs or rebuilding older structures to contemporary standards.

"It's really key that you don't try and duplicate information and wherever possible refer people to a single source of truth...So our challenge was to make sure that we could disseminate the info without being at odds with it and without getting the messages mixed up." - David Waters, Bushfire Recovery Director, Adelaide Hills Council

As communities go through the various phases of recovery, decision-makers have to keep in mind how to best address the communities priorities across these phases. In this regard, actions have to speak to immediate, short-term, medium-term, and long-term needs. Among the various challenges that this may pose, the Council notes, it remains key to ensure that efforts are community-led. Having already been active in local community recovery committees and reference groups, the Council maintains an active listening presence at community meetings. The Council has also outlined specific roles for local elected members in engaging the community, and within the recovery process.

Local authorities worked closely with state government agencies, non-for-profit organisations, and local community groups throughout recovery. Each carried their own specific capacities, aims and objectives and needed to be able to work together seamlessly under pressure. The Council anticipated collaboration with regional decision-makers, state structures around disaster recovery, local recovery committees and reference groups, and non-governmental organisations.

In addition to hosting a local recovery coordinator and their support staff, the Council has also offered to host nongovernmental organisations for collaboration. The Council will also embed a community recovery/development office within their community development team with state funding.

Logan’s Blended Comms: Bringing Information To and From Community

"...we want to be able to disseminate messaging but wihtout replicating or confusing it - you need a single source of truth." - Marion Lawie, Associate, Engagment Plus

Infrastructure to facilitate community and psycho-social support was a significant area of focus for the extensive training and planning that went into the City of Logan's disaster management preparations. When Cyclone Debbie caused Logan's rivers to flood, the emergency control centre needed to get vital, up-to-date information both out to and in from the community.

City of Logan Disaster Dashboard

Logan's Disaster Dashboard, a dedicated hub for information on disaster events, collates information to enable Council to disseminate messages from relevant agencies without replication or confusion. In the context of the floods, it was a one-stop, reliable place for information on road closures, emergency measures, power outages, and related matters. The Disaster Dashboard continues to serve as a single source of truth, bringing together various sources of emergency information and situational updates to generate cohesive information for community and stakeholders.

In response to events on the ground, the community took to Facebook to direct enquiries and relay local information to the authorities. This large volume of queries and contributions revealed some community priorities around information needs. The Council maintained around-the-clock, active approach in answering queries, providing direction, and listening to the community.

Responding to community queries and requests for assistance around the floods required an approach that combined electronic messaging with real-time updates (often acquired in person at flood-affected locations). Emergency services door-to-door rapid damage assessments provided information on the scale and extent of the damage.

In addition to mapping the extent of the floodwaters and feeding this information into their model and process, the Council included a welfare check, both in person and online. This line of enquiry initially went door-to-door with the rapid damage assessment to find out what kind of help was needed and made these specific needs available for decision-makers in the emergency management team. Council's digital team created online forms to mirror this data collection, enabling the community to add their knowledge of flooding extents and requirements for assistance. This intel could then be added to Council's flood modelling and to their roster for supplying community assistance.

Shoalhaven: Housing Engagement Under One Roof

Shoalhaven's recent bushfire emergency and recovery stretched across a period over two months long, taxing emergency services and communications teams with fatigue. From the onset, the communications team were embedded in the local emergency operations centre, alongside key service providers and authorities. This included state government agencies, emergency response teams, engineers, planners, and the local emergency management officer.

While regional agencies took the lead during the crisis, the Council's daily communications and engagement activities had a crucial role to play by way of reliable and regular digital engagement, media relationships, and local groundwork.

"When sending out a message...take a moment to take stock and look through it from the lens of those that have been affected." - Kate Crowe, Acting Team Leader, Communications and Community Engagement, Shoalhaven City Council

As a large local government area, Shoalhaven presented various challenges in conveying reliable and up-to-date information out to the community. However, the region has a rich online social community, with a number of local groups connected through Facebook. These community groups were a significant space for sharing information at the time of the bushfires, but were also rife with misinformation.

During the crisis, the Council had used their official website as a central source of information. Social media had also been a major concern for communication strategies. However, spaces like Facebook came with their own unique challenges. For instance, as situations and related information changed by the hour during the crisis, the team had to consider how threads and updates would move and reach people. Facebook brought a large volume of queries and insights from the community, and required active management and closing the loop on responses. This began to reveal a pattern of themes and questions, later reflected in Shoalhaven's dedicated online engagement hub, which has become a central, unifying space in which to address community concerns and gather insight.

Shoalhaven City Council's dedicated online engagement project for Bushfire Recovery information, hosted by EngagementHQ.

Healing Together: What Can Engagement Do Better?

Spanning the contexts above, the collection and dissemination of information are central to managing and recovering from disaster events. Decision-makers in these contexts work with extraordinary pressures of time and resources to stay connected with the community and stakeholders to ensure that vital information gets where it needs to go. How can community engagement address the distinct challenges of these trying times?

Bang the Table examines how WasteMINZ conducted national hui in a purely digital fashion after plans to host in-person meetings were thwarted by COVID-19.

The numbers at a glance

• 67+ stakeholders
• 27 individual phone interviews with contractors and processors
• 11 regional hui with 67 councils invited, their contractors, and elected councillors

Project performance

• Engagement success: 139 attended the 11 online hui (meetings)
• 80% of councils were represented
• EngagementHQ private project page had 120 participants with 110 (92%) engaging in articles and discussions and 58% actively participating in discussions or contributing ideas
• Survey (via EngagementHQ project page) was sent to all councils throughout New Zealand and completed by 37 local authorities (55% of councils), representing 76% of the population

Initially planning a series of in-person regional hui (meetings) throughout New Zealand, WasteMINZ changed its approach to a purely digital one in the face of a global pandemic.

WasteMINZ is the largest representative body of the waste, resource recovery, and contaminated land management sectors in New Zealand. The membership-based organisation has over 1,500 members—from small operators through to councils and large companies.

WasteMINZ works closely and collaboratively with industry partners, the Ministry for the Environment, other government agencies, and local governments on advancing waste and contaminated land management issues.

As the authoritative voice on waste, resource recovery, and contaminated land in New Zealand, it was responsible for a project initiated by the Ministry for the Environment and which built upon some work already completed by the organisation. The Standardising Kerbside Collection in Aotearoa project sought to get agreement on what kinds of recycling should be collected at the nation’s kerbsides.

The recommendations provided in WasteMINZ’s final report would be broadly divided into two: recommendations for the standardisation of materials collected through domestic kerbside recycling, and recommendations for best practice collection systems to reduce residual waste to landfills and improve recyclable material quality.

Engaging stakeholders during a time of uncertainty

The three-month project had only a six-week window for consultation and, of course, project planning was in full swing at the moment that the Covid-19 pandemic began to restrict movements—a national lockdown was inevitable.

“Some councils were already having restrictions placed on them and we realised that even if we had had face-to-face meetings we needed another tool to allow for discussion and input beyond each regional meeting. This became even more important when we moved the hui to an online format,” WasteMINZ sector projects manager Sarah Pritchett says.

“I think that, in a way, Covid-19 was on our side because it meant that people were working from home and some of them had more time than usual.”

Both Sarah and project partner, environmental consultant Sunshine Yates, found success and increased participation through using EngagementHQ as the project’s engagement site. Sarah says the Covid-19 pandemic was not the reason but a catalyst for the realisation[ that a digital platform provides a holistic engagement approach, regardless of whether face-to-face interactions are possible.

Sarah found the setup of the private project page to be “really intuitive.”

“The team at Bang the Table was really responsive to all of my queries and the setup was very smooth.”

Inter-regional conversations in a digital setting

WasteMINZ needed to engage with the 67 Councils, their contractors, and on-shore processes with just over two weeks to conduct the regional hui in 11 regions.

The hui or meetings had several different purposes and levels of engagement. Some aspects were merely presenting decisions which had been made such as agreement on bin lid colours to differentiate between recycling, rubbish and organics, and signage. For the standardisation of recycling materials, WasteMINZ was presenting what the recyclers had agreed to and getting feedback from the councils with the aim of reaching agreement from them.

For a more “controversial proposition” about collection systems, WasteMINZ aimed to get the pros and cons of each system while identifying through its own desktop research and conversations with processes, which system produces the best quality recyclate and the least amount of contamination.

Sarah says it would have been really difficult to have physically held each regional hui because that involved traversing the length and width of the country in a 2.5 week period.

“With the travel time between each one, it would have been nearly impossible to try and digest the information we were getting and actually do something useful with it.”

Regional hui were set up on Zoom and promoted on WasteMINZ’s EngagementHQ private project page. An existing database was uploaded to WasteMINZ’s database (within the platform), with automatic invites going to hui attendees who would first complete their registration to sign up for the project.

At each hui, both Sarah and Sunshine introduced the participants to the project page and explained clearly how it would feature throughout the discussion. Each hui was three hours long, which Sarah says felt quite short considering the complexity of the topic they were all trying to tackle.

“At various parts throughout the hui, we would introduce a new EngagementHQ tool that we wanted participants to use. They would post stories of successful things happening in their respective areas, and we would post news items as they evolved and developed more thinking around the project. People would also share an idea using the Ideas tool,” Sarah says.

Participant adoption of digital hui

Sarah says the response to the digital hui was varied, with some diving straight into providing feedback via EngagementHQ and others taking a few days to reflect after the hui.

“Some people would respond to one of our many newsletters which alerted people [in the EngagementHQ database] to what was new on the project site.”

“What was great was some people who were not able to make the hui, were quite active on our project page—they hadn’t been part of discussions but were able to participate using one of the tools.”

Participants who could not attend the hui had access to a wealth of information and video recordings of discussions as well as additional uploaded documents. Sarah believes this was a real strength of digital engagement during an uncertain time.

“It’s always difficult to engage with 67 different councils who have got really heavy workloads and they’ve got their own local issues that they’re dealing with,” Sarah says.

Gathering community input with an online platform

The Forums tool, deployed to unpack key project themes and straw man options, proved to be “A really useful tool that led to a lot of discussion between different regions,” Sarah says.

This allowed for an open and transparent cross-regional conversation about collection systems. The forums highlighted how regional collection systems varied due to topography, weather conditions, and transport routes.

“We originally planned for the project page to be clean for each hui, but then we realised that it was actually useful to have the conversations and carry those conversations on, across regions and for an extended period,” Sarah says.

“Some participants were really active, others read things and some would ask a lot of questions or share their opinions. Some preferred to talk...In the end, we fed into the survey some of the discussion points that came up in the forums.”

If there was an interesting point made by participants in the forums which generated a lot of discussions, the project team would do some more research on that issue and explore the idea.

This meant WasteMINZ would sometimes alter the original list of recycling materials with additional research backing up the change.

Polls were also deployed to test certain propositions, entice people to contribute, and stoke rigorous debate.

Making sense of qualitative feedback and the final report

The final report to the Environment Minister was informed by a previous literature review and the successful regional hui conducted by WasteMINZ.

The qualitative data (written feedback) was used to assess the straw man options that had been presented at the hui and see whether the options were viable.

“It [the data] showed that people preferred their own systems. But it’s good to know the pros and cons of the crate-based system and wheelie bins,” Sarah says.

“We were able to tweak the standardised list of recycling materials by using some of the forum qualitative data that had created a lot of discussion. What was especially helpful was to screenshot everything for the final report and refer to it as we couldn’t always take notes.”

The organisation made it clear from the beginning of the process that it was not telling all councils that they must have a particular collection system. And it was also obvious that if there was a particular system that created the best quality recyclate and least amount of contamination, it wasn’t going to suit every council.

“And we heard that really strongly. We thought if we came out with the recommendation for a specific collection method there would be a lot of backlash and we didn't want it to be an antagonistic process.

"We wanted everyone to know that we listened to them, while still highlighting which system produced the best quality recyclate, but acknowledging that there are other issues that need to be taken into account that we didn’t know at the beginning of the process,” Sarah says.

A report was presented to the Minister for the Environment in May 2020 and is publicly available online.

“It was received really well by the Minister and she (at the time of the project) was keen to progress all of the topics that were raised in it,” Sarah says.

Since a change of government and the minister holding the portfolio, the recommendations in the final report have been put on hold.

Want to take a closer look at the power of EngagementHQ? Watch a 4-min demo.

OVERVIEW

Technology Paves the Way for Online Community Engagement

Gore District Council is one of the smaller local authorities in New Zealand. With a population of around 12,400, a large portion of the people are aging and includes a significant amount of rural and farming residents. The council was accustomed to communicating with an older audience through paper-based communications. They would regularly print off thousands of copies of a 20-plus-page document and deliver it to residents. These practices colored their perception of what people expected and the council assumed the majority of people preferred paper-based communications.

However, as time went on, more people adopted smart technology, and even those working in rural farming areas were already accustomed to using it. The council desired a way to reach more people, house community project information in one place, and gather actionable data to make more informed decisions.

THE SWITCH TO DIGITAL-FIRST

Giving More People a Voice in Public Projects

When the council began looking at a digital-first community engagement approach, buy-in from was not an issue, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The council knew they needed to reach people in ways that didn’t involve knocking on their doors or attending a meeting. Additionally, the timing was right due to previous large projects that didn’t successfully engage the community and residents expressed their unhappiness around the lack of input.

The only hesitation the council had centered around managing a robust program with few staff and resources. However, once they realized that the EngagementHQ software platform doesn't have to take months to set up and begins to produce results quickly after launch, their misgivings disappeared. They were quickly invested in a digital-first public involvement strategy.

“My mantra became: whatever we create, we create it for digital first,” said Sonia Gerken, Communications and Marketing Manager at Gore District Council. “And then once we have the content, we can turn it into whatever we like, where it’s needed.”

THE COMMUNITY

True Engagement, Real Data, and Repeated Success

Gore District Council launched their community engagement site entitled, Let’s Talk Kōrero Mai Gore District, just as they were approaching the start of several projects that would require citizen engagement. The larger projects included a new library and community center, a wastewater system renewal, and a new bridge over a waterway.

They enjoyed watching the site traffic grow as they launched new project pages. They appreciated their new tangible data regarding how many people were interested in a project and who they were.

“We saw really strong engagement, and qualitative info. Really well-thought-out reasons, feedback, and submissions, not the type you tend to get on social media,” said Sonia.

Within seven months, Let’s Talk Kōrero Mai received 4,500 visits and had an engagement rate of 3.35%, which is considered a ‘good’ to ‘high’ rate based on global industry standards. More importantly, community members who hadn’t been reached before were empowered to get involved and easily share their feedback with the new, user-friendly platform.

PROMOTION AND CONNECTION

Spreading the Word in the Community

To promote their new site and the project information that lived on it, the council recognized the importance of a multi-pronged approach. They utilized social media, as well as their local newspaper, to spread the word and drive visitors to the platform.

Once they had a good amount of registrants and engagement on the site, the next step was to plan how to keep the community connected even when there wasn't an active project on their site. They found that following up on previous projects that residents had previously engaged with, such as progress updates on a new build, was a great way to keep people coming to the site.

“You keep the people who are already engaged happy. And word of mouth is a powerful tool, they will tell their friends and neighbors,” stated Sonia.

The word of mouth that leads to new registrants is vital as the database is built over time with community information and demographics. This data is invaluable for making planning decisions that are backed by community support, and EngagementHQ simplifies data analysis with customizable reports. EngagementHQ protects the data of all participants and community members.

LESSONS LEARNED

Giving All Residents a Platform for Feedback

Gore District Council was pleasantly surprised that there were so many people interested in the site. They were also pleased to see the high number of registrants who provided feedback.

“The number of submissions we received digitally via the project page far exceeded the number handed in via written submissions. Which was a first for us,” stated Sonia. “Ninety percent of our submissions were received via our project page.”

“We have become very aware of the need to engage with our communities early,” Sonia explained, “We have big projects upcoming around infrastructure, wastewater/stormwater separation, and district plan review–projects that will shape the nature of our towns and districts for many years to come. We want to make sure we give all our residents the opportunity to have input on all those processes.”

Gore District Council offers advice for local government agencies considering digital community engagement software. They stress that having a marketing communications plan is very helpful for the rollout and promotion, as is the need to be patient as it grows. While the engagement may be slow at first, it will ramp up as more community members see it as a hub of accurate information and a safe place for feedback.

Sonia advises organisations not to hesitate to move forward with online community engagement.

“Don’t delay. Don’t think your community is not ready for it [digital-first community engagement], because they are. Don’t sell your older community short because they will be ready for it as well.”

Want to learn more about the power of digital-first community engagement? Reach out to us.

Deliberative community engagement occurs when a group of people who represent a community agrees to come together to help guide a decision about a project or issue that affects them.

It’s a structured process, where evidence and diverse perspectives are provided to participants, who then ‘deliberate’ options and come to a consensus about a way forward.

As Sally Hussey writes, “At its core, deliberation requires weighing up competing arguments around policies and public decisions in a context of mutually civil – and diverse – discussion.”

Often (but not always), participants in deliberative engagement are selected through a two-step process to enable a random selection of participants to fulfill a representative demographic quota. They form a deliberative panel, also known as citizen juries, community panels, local partnerships, and consensus conferences, and so on. Deliberative panels may come together for a one-off session, a series of sessions (pre-determined, with dates set in advance), or be ongoing.

Deliberative community engagement can be used to guide policy and strategic direction, and help make decisions about complex challenges.

A digital deliberative process is one that takes place online, using digital tools and methods.

How does deliberative community engagement differ from other engagement methods?

With other engagement methods, you tend to hear from people who are interested in a topic and want to share an opinion through available channels. While this is valuable in gathering general sentiment, there is no guarantee the responses will truly represent the diverse opinions across your community, or that you will hear from those who often don’t have a voice. There is also no way of knowing how well respondents understand the issue/topic at hand, particularly if it is complex.

Why undertake a deliberative process?

Generally, you should consider using deliberative engagement when:

• an issue or project is likely to impact a wide range of people
• an issue or project is complex or multi-dimensional
• there is a need and opportunity to rebuild trust with your community
• there is a need to find common ground between polarised views on an issue
• there is a genuine opportunity to empower your community.

What are the benefits of online deliberative community engagement?

Fundamental to deliberative community engagement is the ability of participants to think broadly and deeply about information and views being presented to them in a respectful environment. With digital deliberative community engagement, that environment is online.

Some of the key benefits of digital deliberation include:

• a safe and moderated environment for dialogue and deliberation
• greater inclusiveness (through digital accessibility features)
• greater flexibility in how participants engage
• transparency throughout the process
• easy access to relevant data, research and other information
• meaningful connections between participants, and between participants and facilitators.
• ability to engage at a time that is convenient for participants
• reduced barriers to geographic location
• reduced costs of participant travel, accommodation and hire costs, and catering.

These benefits can help build trust in the process and between participants and the decision-making organisation.

Why is deliberative community engagement important?

Deliberative community engagement allows people who truly represent a community to make informed recommendations about a complex topic or issue that affects them.

It provides an opportunity for the community to have a voice at the table in a way that reduces barriers, creates connections, and engages in meaningful and supportive ways. It’s an inclusive process, offering opportunities for participation regardless of age, gender, ability, geographic location, cultural background personal resources, values, or beliefs. The method provides a structured environment in which perspectives can be shared and understanding of an issue increased through evidence and expert presenters.

Deliberative community engagement also empowers the citizens who participate. It demonstrates to the community your commitment to open and transparent decision-making, in turn, building trust between community and government.

By bringing diverse voices to the table, deliberative engagement enables contrary views and potential tensions to emerge and be managed in a structured, respectful manner. This in turn adds to the depth and richness of reaching consensus. It can often mean engaging with rather than avoiding difficult conversations.

Deliberative panels, once no longer active, can also continue to be advocates for the resultant outcomes in the community.

What are the outcomes of a deliberative community engagement process?

The aim of a deliberative community engagement process is for your representative panel to reach consensus on the advice it wants to provide to decision-makers on the topic or issue under deliberation.

This advice (often a statement or series of recommendations) is then presented to the relevant decision-maker. How much influence this advice will have on any final decision, policy or direction MUST be understood from the start.

Note: When using deliberative community engagement, you need to be prepared to relinquish control and accept unpredictable outcomes.

How does it work?

There are eight key components to a deliberative engagement process or methodology.

How many people should be involved?

Research tends to indicate that groups between 40 and 100 are most effective for deliberative engagement depending on the population. Smaller groups may not be truly representative, and larger groups can reduce genuine interaction between participants from different backgrounds. Larger groups can also lead to factions.

Digital Deliberative Community Engagement

Online deliberative processes mirror the face-to-face processes, but with additional key principles.

Things to think about:

Learn more about what to look for when seeking online deliberation software.

From participatory budgeting to budget consultation, EngagementHQ’s online tools can deliver budget engagement for small, project-based allocations as well as for citywide budgets.

What is budget engagement?

Budget engagement is a formal process that enables a community to influence how a government invests its tax/rate dollars. It can be used to help prioritise how funds are allocated within a specific project, or how an entire city budget is structured. It’s sometimes also referred to as participatory budgeting.

Traditionally, budget engagement has been delivered through public meetings, community advisory boards, surveys, and focus groups. In recent years, the most effective, transparent, and engaging method has involved online tools, including budget simulations.

User-friendly simulations allow people to make the same type of budgetary decisions as their government and instantly see the potential bottom-line effects. It temporarily puts them in the shoes of the decision-makers, having to balance trade-offs and taking into account constraints and the actual costs (and savings) of services.

What is participatory budgeting?

Participatory budgeting is when a government empowers communities to play an active role in budget deliberations and decision-making. Community members help to build a budget from the ground up or help re-prioritise where specific funding allocations are spent. This type of budget engagement often involves an online budget simulator, such as Balancing Act (an engagementHQ partner). Public consultation software and a budget simulation tool are an effective duo to encourage participatory budgeting and make it easier for more people to understand the context around major financial decisions. More on this below.

What is budget consultation?

Budget consultation is when a government seeks community input into budget decision-making at a more strategic level. It may involve gaining an understanding of community satisfaction levels and priorities to help determine where funds are allocated when the government deliberates its budget. This can involve online tools such as engagementHQ’s survey and Q&A functions.

What is a budget simulator?

It’s an online tool that provides citizens with a simulation of their government’s budget and allows them to move funds around and see bottom-line impacts and benefits. It helps people see the components of the budget – including revenue and expenses – breaks down funding for key services and investment, and gives people an opportunity to prioritise how those funds are spent.

Enabling community budgeting and participation

Participatory budgeting enables a community to be meaningfully involved in budget decisions that impact them. It helps people understand and appreciate the challenges involved in setting a budget and prioritising funding – whether for a project or an entire city budget. It’s a genuinely transparent and tangible way for the community to influence funding decisions and, when done right, is one of the most effective ways to build trust between citizens and government.

It is most effective when you have a genuine opportunity (and appetite) for the community to influence how funds are prioritised and allocated. It is particularly impactful when a government needs to:

• make budget cuts or tough/potentially unpopular budgeting decisions (e.g. in the wake of an economic downturn or reduction in revenue)
• build trust with the community (e.g. if a government has reputational challenges)
• allocate funds to a project where are a number of viable options and diversity of community opinions on a preferred outcome (e.g. funding play equipment in a park)

Benefits and outcomes of participatory budgeting

Budget engagement has the potential to:

• encourage a ‘compromise’ mindset for participants
• prompt people to think more strategically about what’s important to them and their community
• create empathy for those who have to make hard budget choices

Engaging on Citywide Budgets

Many community members don’t fully appreciate the complexities involved in developing a budget, particularly a city budget. This can lead to distrust and even anger when unpopular decisions are made.

By having the opportunity to use an online budget simulator, communities can learn how budgets are structured and how decisions are made. They have a chance to be the decision-maker and see the challenges and the impacts of those decisions, as well as the trade-offs required for particular outcomes.

Budget simulations:

• show the relationship between revenue and spending
• show bottom-line effects of decisions
• convey the need – and difficulty – of trade-offs
• empower citizens to help make those trade-offs

The Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames (UK) used engagementHQ’s budget simulator Balancing Act to empower citizens to review its proposed budget and ask how they would balance the available bottom line. Participants were invited to share ideas on how they could make savings or deliver services differently. The context (in 2020/21) was that the council was facing financial challenges after no longer receiving general funding from the government.

In another example, the City of Stillwater (USA) invited its citizens to show how they would balance the budget, while Wellington City Council’s Annual Plan holistic approach to budget consultation envisaged a ‘hands-on’ community approach to balancing budget demands.

Project-based Budget Engagement

As with a citywide budget, project-based engagement for smaller scale locations empowers citizens and helps them understand the trade-offs required when allocating finite funds. It provides a transparent and democratic method of decision-making when there are a number of viable options for how funds can be invested in a particular project.

Wagga Wagga City Council (New South Wales, Australia), for example, adapted engagementHQ’s budget simulator so it could be easily used by children to match play equipment with different parks in the city. Council re-named the tool ‘The Funbobulator’. In addition, Blue Mountains City Council (New South Wales, Australia) used Wagga Wagga’s Funbobulator to help children to make decisions about their favourite parks (along with their parents and other community members).

The Three ‘C’s of Budget Engagement

Things to think about in participatory budgeting...

In any form of budget engagement, it’s important participants clearly understand what is being asked of them and why.

Participatory budgeting is an excellent way to connect with and empower your community in decisions that impact them — in a way that also broadens their understanding of government budgets and their challenges.

Reach out to us to learn more about how budget consultation and participatory budgeting could be implemented in your community.

There are no two ways about it—COVID-19 and our lived experience of lockdown created a rapid switch to online public consultation. Some people, perhaps a source of pent-up demand, were ready for this and jumped in with two feet. Other people were more reluctant and ended up doing public consultation in ways more within their comfort zones, pining for the familiar face-to-face methods of engagement.

So where have we ended up? Well, at this point, it's impossible to go back to where we were before: when online community engagement was an afterthought with a mere brochure website and a tokenistic survey. However, a resurgence of face-to-face conversations and deliberation is already starting to happen as pandemic precautions become less strict. Some human beings simply like to be together. It seems the phrase to capture this new phenomenon is blended public consultation or blended engagement.

What might blended public consultation look like in practice? Here are seven elements I’d expect to see, as a way to help to kick-start this important conversation.

The integral parts of blended public consultation

1. Mixed dialogue methods

The ingredients of a blended consultation will include both the traditional e.g. public meetings and workshops and the now more familiar range of online dialogue methods e.g. online forums, mapping tools, ideas boards, and surveys. A public consultation that only relies on an online survey for its digital element will not constitute a blended approach.

2. Continuous conversations

By integrating more online engagement with face-to-face approaches, a blended approach will allow for more continuous conversations. When people attend a public meeting or participate in a focus group, they should be able to visit your online consultation platform and carry on the conversation. This might happen between events or after events. If people register before attending a public meeting, they may be able to learn up on the issues beforehand and ask questions of experts and other community members. Blended community engagement is more sticky, more continuous, and people are able to dip in and out.

3. Online Public Meetings

Love them or hate them, public meetings are here to stay. However, in a blended world of public consultation, many more will be online. So expect to see online meetings evolving and getting better as part of our new world. There will be an expectation that face-to-face meetings will be recorded and placed online for people to carry on the conversation (see no. 2).

4. Synchronous + Asynchronous = Better Public Consultation

In the offline world, people had to attend a consultation event at a certain time and place (synchronous engagement). However, when the conversation is taken online, this is not required. In asynchronous dialogue, people can dip in and out at their own pace, from the comfort of their home, cabin, or commute. A blended approach will make use of more asynchronous online methods to make consultation more accessible, convenient, and to better reflect how people live their lives today. But, there will be occasions when the community needs to be in the same place at the same time for an effective consultation. This is okay too.

5. Digital Stakeholder Outreach

Build it and they will come. No, they won’t! With more online participation, more effort will be needed to make people aware of the consultation, to let residents know how to participate, and to encourage them to keep coming back. Sophisticated email campaigns, participant databases, notifications, newsletters, and social media will play a much bigger part in increasing engagement rates as part of a blended public consultation (and more inclusive).

6. Accessible Public Consultation

For blended community engagement, more attention needs to be paid to digital inclusion and exclusion. It is important that the digital aspects adhere to website & mobile app accessibility regulations. However, it's also important to be mindful of digital poverty by providing different types of online experiences for people who may not frequent the internet as much as others. At the same time, blended engagement can also make public consultation more inclusive because it is asynchronous and fits around people’s busy lifestyles. It does not require people to attend face-to-face meetings on a cold February evening, etc.

Remember, it is said that 75% of the population suffer from glossophobia, the fear of public speaking. For many, online engagement is a great option for participating in public debate. Indeed, a recent evaluation (Evaluation of Climate Assembly UK) found that the quality of deliberation in the online sessions of Climate Assembly UK was superior to the in-person sessions.

7. Safe Place for Public Discourse

Face-to-face conversations tend to be hosted in safe places for public debate, in a community centre a consultation bus, etc. There, people sign in and then they are assisted by facilitators to understand the rules of participation, and so on. In a blended approach, these same principles need to be applied to online environments and people ought to be signposted to a safe, moderated, publicly managed online platform for participating in the public consultation process. Note: this is so different from social media!

And there’s more...but seven is enough for now and, hopefully, this will start an interesting conversation about the key elements of a blended approach to (digital and face to face) public consultation. Want to see an online public consultation platform in action? Watch a 4-min demo.

Community engagement accessibility is an often overlooked — and essential — part of empowering community stakeholders to use their voices.

Whether you're an engagement specialist, a communications guru or a seasoned project manager, you know accessibility impacts how your consultation functions and whether or not your team provides equal engagement opportunities.

Here are our quick tips for making your community engagements accessible year-round.

Ditch the fancy vocabulary

In Australia - 1 in every ten people has a cognitive disability that affects their memory, concentration or decision making. Accessible language makes it easier for you to convey important ideas and for your audience to understand them. Some qualities of accessible language include:

• Preferring active voice ("The dog bit me") to passive voice ("I was bitten by the dog").
• Eliminating filler phrases such as "I think that" or "Be sure to."
• Writing out the full names of acronyms, usually at least the first time they appear.
• Using examples and analogies to explain or support complicated ideas.
• Avoiding the use of jargon and slang words that are used only by a particular subgroup or explaining their definition when they appear. You can vet your language using tools like readable.

Level up your closed caption game

Uploading a video to explain your 10-year plan? Make sure you include closed captions: text that describes and displays the auditory portion of a video in written format.

Whether you're embedding video on EngagementHQ from YouTube, Vimeo, or Wisita, each platform has built-in support that can be leveraged to make sure viewers don't miss out on important information.

Make your colours count

Colour accessibility enables people with visual impairments or colour vision deficiencies to interact with digital experiences in the same way as their non-visually-impaired counterparts. Here's some advice to help boost your community engagement accessibility:

Add enough contrast. To meet W3C's minimum AA rating, your background-to-text contrast ratio should be at least 4.5:1. So, when designing things like buttons, cards, or navigation elements, be sure to use a tool like colorable or colorsafe to check the contrast ratio of your colour combinations.

Document and socialise colour system. The most important aspect of creating an accessible colour system is giving your team the ability to reference it when needed. This reduces confusion and ensures that accessibility is always a priority. Read more about setting your colour scheme here.

Perfect your PDFs

Using PDFs to support community plans is one of the most commonly used formats by governments across the globe; as a universal standard for digital documents, it's important that PDFs follow the principles outlined above, in that they are easy to read and includes image alt text. In addition, they should also:

• Indicate document structure and non-text elements by using tags
• Specify the document language
• Select document fonts that allow characters to be extracted to text
• Set document permissions to allow access for assistive technology
• Add navigational aids to long documents (6 or more pages)

Read the full WCAG 2.0 guidelines here.

Check your images

Different images convey different types of information, from functional to informative. Alternative text provides a textual alternative to non-text content in web pages, such as photographs, logos, and other images. Here are the do's and don'ts:

Do:

• Be accurate and equivalent in presenting the same content and function of the image.
• Be succinct.
• Use an image caption instead of an alt-attribute for photos within an article.

Don't:

• Include text in an image unless that image is a logo
• Duplicate the alternative text from an image caption; instead, leave the 'alt attribute' blank.
• Use alternative text to describe decorative elements or visual elements that are not important to the page content
• Be redundant or provide the same information as text within the context of the image.
• Use the phrases "image of ..." or "graphic of ..." to describe the image.

Making sure all of your stakeholders can have their voices heard is very important to a community's success. Wondering how else you can improve your organisation's community engagement accessibility? Reach out to us.