Victorian local councils are not only facing a local government election on October 24th and the induction of a new Council they are also implementing a new Local Government Act. Amongst the myriad of changes in the 2020 Act are new provisions for community engagement.
The old submission provisions have been swept away and replaced with a set of community engagement principles. Alongside these principles, councils are required to have a community engagement policy in place that provides for deliberative practices in relation to four key council plans: the Community Vision, the Council Plan, the Financial Plan and the Asset Plan.
This is a major step change in seeking to put communities at the centre of local government decision making.
Many councils would be wondering what they need to do meet these requirements, particularly the one about deliberative practices.
Deliberative engagement is also based on a set of principles:
• bringing together a group of randomly selected community members (representative)
• over several days (time)
• to consider evidence and diverse perspectives about an issue (informed),
• to weigh up the various options for resolving an issue (deliberative) and
• come to judgement on a way forward/ a set of recommendations.
This is very different to standard engagement where you engage those people who choose to turn up (or you go to), there may only be time for a short conversation/interview or a brief workshop, so the viewpoints you are collecting are not informed by evidence and there is no time for weighing up options and coming to judgement. Instead you are likely to be left with a wish list of ideas that raises expectations that cannot be met.
The gold standard of deliberation is the citizens jury methodology that is commonly known as a community panel or a people’s panel. The benefits of moving to holding a series of panels for the four big plans are numerous, the most obvious being to build trust with your community - the other, to obtain well informed, carefully thought out recommendations from your community (not wish lists of things you can’t implement and that continues to build frustration in the community).
Some councils are well on their way to making deliberative practices an integral part of the making decisions in their councils.
Even before the changes to the Act many councils had been putting deliberation into place, some examples being:
Hobsons Bay (community vision)
Kingston (customer service)
Bayside (child care)
Melbourne (ten year financial plan)
In preparation for the current changes, some councils are well advanced:
Bayside has completed a community vision in May using a community panel,
Greater Shepparton is engaging around a Council Plan and
Golden Plains has developed an in-house process for developing the big four plans.
But for other councils, this is a big leap forward and they are entering unknown territory.
where should councils start?
Not all councils will go straight to the full citizens jury model. They need to take smaller steps due to budget or timing constraints. Three of the big four plans need to be in place by October 2021. So what is a good starting point?
It’s like making a cake and adding ingredients.
It is assumed that all councils have the basic ingredients of standard (or what we would call wider engagement) - such as surveys, workshops, focus groups, listening posts, submissions - all those activities that are open to anyone. Experience tells us that the articulate, passionate, informed and connected are the people who turn up – we mostly don’t see everyday people at these events, unless we’ve made a big effort to go to them. This means councils are not obtaining the full view of community sentiment and is the reason why we so often hear the lament ‘we can’t get past the usual suspects’.
RANDOM SELECTION
The first added ingredient to the standard cake recipe of deliberation is random selection of a group of residents stratified to match the demographics of the municipality – this step alone creates the greatest benefit to local government. This means that councils will hear from a truly diverse cross-section of their residents and the views of a good sized randomly recruited group can more accurately represent the views of the larger population just for the very reason that they have been selected differently.
2. TYPE OF ACTIVITY
Next there is a choice about the type of activity for the randomly selected group. We would offer three suggestions:
a. A one-day sense making workshop
The randomly selected group would come together for at least one full day (this is possible online) and they would be asked to review background data provided by council and the output from the wider engagement process. The role of the group would be to identify key themes and ideas from all the information, discuss and provide their individual views (level of support) for the key ideas.
b. A one-day deliberative poll
This methodology is based on polling people on their views on a range of issues before they discuss it with others, then providing them with an opportunity (full day in this case) to be provided with information, learn about the issues and engage in dialogue with a diverse group of people. They are then polled on the same questions at the end of the session to see if their views have changed. This approach requires councils to articulate the very core issues that underlie one or all of the big four plans, to craft a set of relevant dilemma-based questions and provide balanced information on all those questions
c. A four-evening deliberative advisory committee
Advisory committees are traditional fare of local government. They are already deliberative in that they have access to a high level of information, they are given a long time frame and often have a high level of influence in council decision making. Random selection would be the key game changer. Advisory committees are usually people who self-select by being in the know, expressing interest or effectively being handpicked by councillors or staff. This means you are mostly hearing from the passionate or people with a vested interest. Again this group would undertake the same process as described for a one day sense making workshop.
All of these approaches could be undertaken for each of the big four plans or a larger/longer process could be put in place to cover all four plans. In this way council is starting to obtain information that has been considered by a truly diverse range of citizens (not just those with vested interests) and the process has allowed for a little more information than a standard engagement process.
In these three examples the new full ingredient is random selection. The partial (only partly done) ingredients are time and information. None of these options will provide a fully informed, considered set of recommendations as they do not include sufficient time for people to consider diverse views and come to judgement.
But they are a step to councils’ engagement becoming more deliberative and will give councils a taste of what is possible with deliberation.
If your council wishes to progress to the next step, you would add more ingredients - time and information and hence more time for deliberation. One option would be a three day panel process for just one of the big plans. Over the next few years there are lots of opportunities for councils to stretch their deliberative engagement muscles and build in each time another key element of deliberative engagement.
More help for victorian councils
MosaicLab has launched a free, short guide specifically for local government staff and decision makers. Its aim is to provide assistance and information to help councils better understand deliberative engagement, its principles and how it can be implemented into council processes to meet the new requirements of the Act.
We are also running training courses specifically for Victorian Councils in October and November 2020. You can find find out more and register here.
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