Community Engagement Helps Solve Public Policy Challenges

A new initiative by two US think tanks explores innovative ways of consulting and engaging with communities, arming leaders with a "toolkit" to help them find answers to public policy challenges.

The People-Led Innovation toolkit found that citizen knowledge, insights and ideas can help solve government challenges if gathered by experimenting with new means. One-size-fits-all citizen engagement efforts are ineffective and too broad.

Key Insights:

1. Fresh methodology: To tap into public insights, government leaders are encouraged to identify stakeholders to co-create with using a new process.
2. Engagement methods: Four types of engagement methods include commenting, co-creating, reviewing, and reporting.
3. Tools: To put theory into practice, case studies have concrete examples of how people and organizations can be utilized to help governments problem-solve.