Open Government - public participation strategy: advice

Challenges to delivering an improved public engagement strategy

Tensions between main governing bodies

The policy lexicon towards communities has been favourable in Scotland. Since around 2011 there has been enabling legislation, and participation is embedded in law and national strategies. However, this has not been always been reflected in practice. The development of key skills and frontline community facing workers have not been invested in over the years, resulting in a gulf between national government policy and local government’s (and communities’) capacity to deliver. Community Learning and Development departments in local councils have faced significant cuts throughout the UK for the last decade. Local government has much of its identity and capacity to respond to community needs. According to Oliver Escobar:

it's a game of mutual assumptions and paralysis because local government feels squeezed from the top and squeezed from the bottom and so all these different levels of governance are blocking one another.

The little power they (local authorities) have - communities are wanting to take it from the bottom and the Scottish government keeps making impositions from the top…no minister has wanted to spend political capital on this matter for the last 10 years.

Community groups are constrained by a lack of funding, heavy loads of administration and/or lack of power over the outcomes of initiatives (Lightbody 2017). The third sector has lost a lot of capacity – while they have strong narratives and agendas, they do not have the workers to deliver these on the ground. There has been a succession of initiatives which Fiona Garven refers to as a ‘sticking plaster’ effect over the years, often caused by funders stepping into the spaces which they can add value to.

New opportunities have been offered by Covid, but with it, different issues have been raised, as there has been some retrenchment into centralised decision making and funding. Tensions exist between short term and long term approaches and solutions. Short term requires wide scale consultation and information gathering. Long term requires wide and deep engagement including investment, deliberation, and a networked approach. In order to effectively look into challenges, there is a need for a community led data gathering, which we have seen an increase of during Covid (eg Carnegie Trust UK, Corra Foundation 2020).

Challenges for public compliance

What has often been a ‘one size fits all’ approach to Covid guidelines has resulted in compliance being more straightforward for some than others. Challenges such as job loss, precarious employment or ability to work effectively, childcare, physical and mental health make complying with rules more problematic for some. A letter to the Scottish Government from the Lived Experience Leadership Group in Dec 2020 called for an increase of £20 to social security and increased levels of Child Benefits – ‘social security is not a nice thing to have, it’s a human right’^[1].

Coutts (2020: 13) tells us that, ‘A combination of fear, language barriers, and a lack of trusted intermediaries might inhibit the community accessing available support’. Signing up for Test and Protect increases the chance of being told to self-isolate which many cannot afford to do. Fear of vaccines comes from an abundance of misinformation and lack of trust of experts and politicians, it is vital that people can receive information and reassurance from people that they can relate to or view to be like them. The Scottish Government was consistently rated higher than the UK government ‘doing a good job for Scotland, ‘providing advice and information’ people could trust’ and for ‘working in Scotland’s best interest’ (ScotGov 2021) and a poll showed just 19% of Scots were satisfied with Johnson’s leadership, compared with 72% for Sturgeon and 44% for Starmer (IpsosMORI, 2020).

We have to hear from people and better understand what prevents them from complying, but this has to be done on their terms. Recognising that social and economic inequalities in Scotland have made responding to the crisis more complex and more difficult for people. Most importantly, we have to be realistic and sensitive about what emboldens or enables people to comply or get involved. People who are struggling financially, mentally, or who are time-poor, simply cannot get involved.

Messaging and misinformation

Talat Yaqoob says that she is really impressed by the government’s investment in public health messages. She says it is clear what is going on, using civic messaging which is easy to understand has helped keep the public informed. The message, she feels that comes out of the daily briefings is – ‘this is your parliament, this is your politics, this is your Scotland’.

Yet, the divisive nature of politics is problematic for those watching. Politics is oftentimes perceived to be adversarial and politicians agreeing or finding common ground is interpreted as being weak. The media often polarise opinion and dumb down complexity and nuance instead of taking time to move beyond surface level politics. Social media has been a breeding ground for misinformation and polarising of opinions. Important legislation and guidance need to be explained in more detail in quieter spaces (ie not FMQs), and misinformation online needs to be flagged up and appropriate sources signposted. The First Minister addressing the public helped address some of these issues (Thiers et al. 2023, Garland & Lilleker 2021).

The media has had a significant role to play within the pandemic. It is responsible for sharing the key messages – guidelines, evidence, rules - and has a responsibility to tell the truth and scrutinise public facing actors. However, mixed messages and sensationalist headlines can, and have, driven polarisation and scepticism. It is right for a critical citizenry to question politicians and political parties but ‘alternative facts’ are driving an alarming agenda.

Denisha Killoh highlights that people are angry and want to latch on to the facts that justify their actions and feelings. She believes that propaganda used by the media, and shared on social media, has ignited much of this anger.

Digital exclusion

For consenting and compliance there are digital limitations – not all citizens have the digital infrastructure to sign up to test and protect for instance. It is estimated that 800, 000 people (300,000 households) were not online at the beginning of lockdown.^[2] The Scottish Government has made considerable efforts to bridge this gap and correct this inequality by working with third and public sector organisations, 32 local councils and the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO). Connecting Scotland believes they will have reached 50,000 people by the end of 2021 (Lyne 2020), which is quite a feat, but not for those that are left for 18 months without this valuable information source, the ability to communicate with others during lockdown, and access to basic necessities.

Groups like the Glasgow Disability Alliance (GDA 2020)^[3] reached out to over 6000 disabled people through 8000 phone calls, send out 20,000 mail shots, and collect 2,100 in-depth responses to their COVID-resilience survey. This allowed them to launch a rapid response to the pandemic by listening to lived experiences and honing in on what was needed. Organisations like this need to be supported to carry out work like this. But as Fiona McHardy, from the Poverty Alliance points out, the ability to pick up and respond to social cues and body language is diminished online or via telephone. And loss of visual cues makes it difficult to identify anxieties, fear, confusion and bewilderment. Where physical settings may have once been a lifeline to individuals, they are no longer available, and to many that is a significant loss.

The Covid pandemic has enforced a ‘digital-only’ approach which comes with accessibility issues for those with no or limited access to the internet and related technology and those who struggle with digital literacy (the digital divide). Digital exclusion can also relate to not knowing how to navigate misinformation and feeling daunted at the prospect of knowing who to believe and trust. All of this creates barriers to inclusion which highlights the need for innovative and affordable ways to participate.

Further to this, the channels of communication used can vary between generations, on where people live and what access to technology people have. People go to trusted sources which may be national, local or community tv, radio, newspapers, on- or off-line sources.

Excluding new voices

There are many expert groups working on different areas in different contexts and it is vital that these voices join up. Fiona Garven wonders if Scotland is too small to have this many expert groups. While it is important to consider what can be learned from each other it is also appropriate to consider if these expert groups’ tasks overlap and could be streamlined. A joined-up and networked approach is required. Importantly if the government is seeking input from experts and citizens, the government needs to be bold enough to act upon their advice. Experts must also be prepared to step aside or make room in advisory groups for seldom heard or easy to ignore groups or individuals (Lightbody 2017). Particularly at the implementation and review stage of policy making, communities and community workers can be at the forefront in order to feedback what is actually happening on the ground, as Talat Yaqoob (2020) reminds us, ‘Lived experience experts are there to not only share their stories, but evaluate whether a policy or initiative is fit for purpose when the times comes for it to be implemented’. Experts can be brought back in periodically as part of the evaluation, or part of the process as an equal to those new voices.

In the past, some participatory processes or engagement exercise have been perceived to be tokenistic and ministers can be reluctant to share power with citizens (Lightbody and Escobar 2021). Furthermore, Fiona McHardy says that often these participatory initiatives do not have impact beyond the people that they involve. The government needs to recognise when not to consult or hold participatory processes – resulting in a smaller number of higher quality engagement exercises, and be prepared to listen if people are willing to engage. This collaborative way of working has to continue right through the policy cycle – as Sally Witcher warns, ‘a fantastically designed policy can fall down if it’s poorly delivered’.

With this, comes a need for greater accountability, legitimacy, and transparency in terms of where investment is going and what action is taken as a result of community engagement. Transparency is also required for participatory processes - people need to know who is involved, what is done with the information that is gathered and the resultant recommendations, and what impact those recommendations will have on decision making. People should be incentivised, supported and valued for taking part. Better publicising is required to ensure that the purpose and the impact are more widely felt and to ensure that ‘new voices’ are more inclined to get involved in the long term.

Lack of long-term investment

In order to foster a climate of participation and inclusion, we need to rethink how we do politics in Scotland. Community organisations are critical to the fabric of a good society, they provide opportunities for participation, and for people to have agency. Fiona Garven and Sally Witcher highlight that the people that do those jobs are tired and need to be supported and resourced. For many people working in these roles, knowing they have the resources to implement change in the long terms would allow them to plan and work strategically rather than ‘lurching from year to year’.

Fiona McHardy here highlights programmes and initiatives which have been effective in the past but had limited lifespans and funding– such as civic skills training and community research. Investing in political education is a vital step in adapting Scotland towards participatory governance. Political education needs to be done within communities – this is why investing in youth centres, youth workers, community centres and community development workers is so important.

Similarly, Denisha Killoh notes that often initiatives are funded and could be improved as they go along, rather than evaluating at the end. Being more flexible and responsive to user feedback would strengthen the initiative or policy going forward.

Fiona Garven too believes that it important to build a skill base amongst citizens, communities and service providers, and this starts to become more cost effective once that learning is there to tap into:

Unless you've got an ongoing culture of citizen participation and participatory policy making, you can't suddenly assemble when a crisis hits, it is easier to bring in expert advisory groups but I think this is one thing that we need to learn. What we need to do is build this into the bones of how we go forward and then that doesn't need to be a scramble.

A risk is created by using the wrong sort of engagement which leads to frustration, delays and disengagement, according to Sally Witcher, ‘Engagement should be designed to be transformative, not performative’. More often than not, poorly designed and actioned engagement processes will actively disincentivise people from getting involved in the future.

The Scottish Government has made use of democratic innovations such as Citizen’s Assemblies (CA) and Participatory Budgeting (PB). While these democratic innovations have been welcomed for the most part - the overwhelming feeling is that these need to be linked with wider forms of participation and at a local level. All experts call for investment in a Centre for Participatory Democracy or equivalent to provide consistent and ongoing research, guidance, training, standard setting and advice.