1. Citizen Engagement:
A New Approach
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COURAGE CURIOSITY SERVICE ACCOUNTABILITY PASSION TEAMWORK
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2. Today’s Topic
• Citizen Engagement – What Do We Mean
• Why the Emphasis Now
• Inspiration
• Examples Around Us
• Examples Among Us
• Challenges
• Help
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3. What is Citizen Engagement?
Government and the public must engage in real dialogue
to work through issues and collectively create solutions
Public engagement is a new way of thinking about how
governments, stakeholders, communities and ordinary
citizens can work together to find solutions to complex
problems. (Public Policy Forum)
Move from one-time conversation to ongoing dialogue
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7. Demographic Shifts
The Projected Size of the BC Public Service by 2016
COURAGE CURIOSITY SERVICE ACCOUNTABILITY PASSION TEAMWORK
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8. Demographic Shifts
Today, less than 7% of the BCPS workforce is
under the age of 30
By 2015, 45% of BCPS managers and 35% of
bargaining unit employees will be retired
By that same time, BC’s population is expected to be
15% larger than today
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12. Technology Timing
• It extends our reach - time and space
• Audience is there - people are talking
• Tools are available
• We can tell stories that spread
• We can aggregate, sort and search input
and information
• We can build community
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13. Do we have options?
• Work differently – modern
operations, infrastructure and process
• Leverage productivity outside government
• Help communities self organize to solve
problems - with reduced or no government
involvement
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33. Challenges
• Digital divide still exists – access and skills
• Policy
• Privacy
• Data and records management
• Intellectual Property
• Culture and process
• $$$$
• Employee skill set to respond
• Adaptability
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34. To find shelter for their
clients, social workers can Citizens can contact government
see the number of open beds employees easily and receive quick
in a drop-in centre and personal responses
Do Change Opportunities Exist?
People post details about BC
Parks or highways, providing School, child care, care
other citizens with details on home space information is
hiking, weather conditions, available on demand
access points
Reduce missed medical
An “at risk” youth sends text appointments with
messages or tweets their needs and automatic text or voice
status to their key community reminders
resource
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36. How Can We Help?
• Eliminate policy barriers, provide
guidance
• Model change
• Help brainstorm ideas
• Connect to central resources
• Profile success
• Fact finding
• Gain internal support
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37. Contacts
David Wrate - David.Wrate@gov.bc.ca
Tanya Twynstra – Tanya.Twynstra@gov.bc.ca
Citizen Engagement Team
Workforce Planning and Leadership Secretariat
Ministry of Citizen Services
COURAGE CURIOSITY SERVICE ACCOUNTABILITY PASSION TEAMWORK
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Editor's Notes
The creation of the Citizens’ Assembly to examine the province’s electoral system, another example of increased interest and efforts to engage the public in issues that directly affect them.
https://gww.gov.bc.ca/hr/hrplan/0702report.pdf
Challenges like climate change and homelessness can no longer be the responsibility of any single ministry. This organization will have to collaborate more than it ever has before to solve these kinds of problems.
There is demand to ‘do more’ in a digital environment and an expectation that services and information be simpler and more accessible.
We are also seeing whole online communities which have developed tools for use by governments. FixMyStreet is a great example of this. Open source code was used to quickly develop this website where citizens can identify and locate local problems to be sent to the city.
NZ government asked its citizens, ‘If there was one thing you’d change about how policing is done in NZ, what would that be?’
And anyone could respond and co-develop the police act through the use of a wiki.
From one website, students can register for any BC post secondary institution.
And I can tell you that we certainly are in the Future of Work Initiative.
