There are many ways to increase your citizens’ levels of engagement, and the Knowledge Network includes many examples of them. If you have an issue for which you need citizen input, here is a step-by step guide for opening up the proper channels of engagement.

Define the issue. When the average citizen who has knowledge of a situation wants to contribute to the discussion, there cannot be any degree of confusion as to what the discussion is about. Otherwise, you risk losing out on the input of people who really do know what they are talking about, and having a stream of off-topic commentary from those who think the issue is something different. If the people starting the discussion are in any way unclear as to what it is about, that uncertainty will spread to other participants.

Determine how much this issue will rely on citizen engagement. It is important for whomever the discussion in question is benefitting to decide how much stock they will put into citizen input—some issues require little to no engagement; others rely almost entirely on it. While you may or may not decide whether to inform your citizens how much their input will count (that’s the next step), it is critical for you and anyone involved with the issue at hand to know in advance how important this part of the process is to solving your issue.

Decide how much information will be available to citizens. In addition to, as mentioned in the previous step, deciding if citizens should know for how much their input is counting, you must determine what information is needed in order to have an informed and effective discussion. You do not necessarily have to release every bit of related information, but if you intend to use your citizens’ input, it is important for them to know enough to be able to fully answer the question or try to solve the problem.

Develop a plan. This plan will rely on identifying two things: who you want to include in this discussion, and how/where you want this discussion to take place. The people you want to include are the people who are most directly affected by the issue, and who care enough about it to participate in such dialogue. As the Internet gains popularity, more and more of these types of discussions are taking place in online forums. Those forums can be anything from a Facebook page (where the administrator of the page can post links and stories and those who have “liked” the page can “like,” comment on, and share each post) to Google hangouts (Google, Skype, and other services provide the ability for multiple people to participate in a conversation through an online chat, including the ability to video chat) to your website’s own area of input (for example, the Knowledge Network’s Questions page, where users ask and answer questions related to local government, is the most visited part of the site.)

Establish an honest and open dialogue. From the get-go, it is important, as described in step 1, for your audience to know what the topic is. Furthermore, there must be an expressed goal of the discussion. Encourage people to speak openly and honestly, while being careful to monitor any potentially abusive or offensive comments—especially when it comes to things like Facebook, where comments stay permanently unless removed.

Maintain open communication. Your citizens deserve to know what their conversation has accomplished. Be prepared to keep them in the loop after the fact to be sure that they know what has happened. If your issue is an ongoing one, be sure to always monitor whatever discussion forum you have established for helpful material until you’ve informed the participants the issue has been resolved.

For more information and ideas, visit the Knowledge Network’s Citizen Engagement topic page. Here is a small sampling of the many resources this page provides:

The Listening Imperative is an article that discusses common mistakes local governments make during citizen engagement and various ideas for the improvement of the process.

A Manager’s Guide to Evaluating Citizen Participation talks about the importance of citizen engagement and how to evaluate the process, content, and impact of such engagement.

The ICMA 2011 Annual Conference featured a “Tools for Citizen Engagement” session. In four different handouts, you can read about GovPartner Connect, its smart phone application, the company’s Citizen Request Management Module, and studies of the implementation of GovPartner Connect’s Modules.