A business model perspective for ICTs in public engagement

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published article can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2012 ElsevierPublic institutions, in their efforts to promote meaningful citizen engagement, are increasingly looking at the democratic potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Previous studies suggest that such initiatives seem to be impeded by socio-technical integration barriers such as low sustainability, poor citizen acceptance, coordination difficulties, lack of understanding and failure to assess their impact. Motivated by these shortcomings, the paper develops and applies a business model perspective as an interceding framework for analysis and evaluation. The underlying principle behind this approach is that it is not technology per se which determines success, but rather the way in which the businessmodel of the technological artifact is configured and employed to achieve the strategic goals. The business model perspective is empirically demonstrated with the case of an online petitioning system implemented by a UK local authority. The case illustrates the importance of considering ICTs in public engagement from a holistic view to make them more manageable and assessable

Multi-stakeholder partnerships in affordable rental housing: An investigation using soft systems framework

Queensland Department of Housing has proposed the use of partnerships as one possible option to deliver affordable housing outcomes. Although this initiative is supported by other stakeholders, many constraints have impeded its implementation for the delivery of real projects. Whilst it might find application for mixed housing projects with some relaxation on tax and/ or planning requirements, in general, affordable housing has not been seen as a valuable investment. Moreover, the partnerships require stakeholders to work across boundaries and outside their comfort zones.\ud \ud This initial study examines the use of soft systems framework to explore stakeholders’ views of multi-stakeholder partnerships in affordable rental housing. A series of in-depth interviews with major stakeholders representing housing providers, regulators and users in Queensland has been conducted. \ud \ud Soft systems methodology has been used to express the unstructured problem by using systematic thinking to develop a conceptual model to solve the problem. A complex problem is broken down into role, social system and political system analyses. This study provides an example of using systematic thinking in solving conflicting problems. The gap between the conceptual model and implementation in the real world situation was also investigated. Major changes in the socio-cultural aspects of the broader community as well as between stakeholders were required to implement the further development of multi-stakeholder partnerships for affordable rental housing

How and why deliberative democracy enables co-intelligence and brings wisdom to governance

Over the past decade, state and local governments throughout Australia have focused on how to improve community consultation. Government consultation processes, regulated with the best of intentions to involve the public, have come under heavy criticism as being DEAD (Decide, Educate, Announce and Defend). It has become apparent that the problem community consultation was supposed to fix – including the voice of the community in developing policy and plans – has remained problematic. Worse, the fix has often backfired. Rather than achieving community engagement, consultation has frequently resulted in the unintended consequence of community frustration and anger at tokenism and increased citizen disaffection. Traditional community consultation has become a “fix that failed”, resulting in a “vicious cycle” of ever-decreasing social capital1 (Hartz-Karp 2002). Ordinary citizens are less and less interested in participating, evidenced by the generally low turn-out at government community consultation initiatives. When the community does attend in larger numbers, it is most often because the issue has already sparked community outrage, inspiring those with local interests to attend and protest. In their endeavour to change this situation, government agencies have created and disseminated ‘how to’ community consultation manuals, conducted conferences and run training sessions for staff. Issues of focus have included project planning, risk analysis, stakeholder mapping, economic analysis, value assurance, standardisation and so forth. Implementation models have illustrated a desired shift from informing, educating and gaining input from citizens, to collaboration, empowerment and delegated decision-making. Although new engagement techniques have been outlined, it has not been clarified how agencies can achieve such a radical change from eliciting community input to collaborative decision-making. Regardless, to reassure the public that improvements have been made, community consultation has been ‘re-badged’ to ‘community engagement’. A new vocabulary has developed around this nomenclature. However, the community has remained unconvinced that anything much has changed. The question is: Why hasn’t the community accepted these efforts with enthusiasm? The most optimistic response is that there will be a lag time between the announcement of improvements and actual improvements, and an even longer time lag between seeing the results and a resumption of the community’s trust in government. The more pessimistic response (one that also has resonance with many public sector staff) is that in essence, not a lot has changed. The ‘re-badging’ and management improvements have not resulted in the public feeling more engaged or empowered

Planning Network UK (PNUK): a manifesto for planning and land reform

The Manifesto is an analysis of the shortcomings of the current planning and land policy system in the UK with a number of policy proposals for refor

Embedding the concept of ecosystems services:The utilisation of ecological knowledge in different policy venues

The concept of ecosystem services is increasingly being promoted by academics and policy makers as a means to protect ecological systems through more informed decision making. A basic premise of this approach is that strengthening the ecological knowledge base will significantly enhance ecosystem health through more sensitive decision making. However, the existing literature on knowledge utilisation, and many previous attempts to improve decision making through better knowledge integration, suggest that producing ‘more knowledge’ is only ever a necessary but insufficient condition for greater policy success. We begin this paper by reviewing what is already known about the relationship between ecological knowledge development and utilisation, before introducing a set of theme issue papers that examine—for the very first time—how this politically and scientifically salient relationship plays out across a number of vital policy venues such as land-use planning, policy-level impact assessment, and cost–benefit analysis. Following a detailed synthesis of the key findings of all the papers, this paper identifies and explores new research and policy challenges in this important and dynamic area of environmental governance

Evaluation based on critical systems heuristics

Introduction: Critical systems heuristics (CSH) draws on the substantive work and philosophy of C. West Churchman, a systems engineer who, along with Russell Ackoff during the 1950s and 1960s, defined operations research in the United States. Churchman later pioneered developments in the 1970s of what is now known as 'soft' and 'critical' systemic thinking and practice in the domain of social or human activity systems. Churchman died in 2004. His legacy lies in signalling the importance of being alert to value-laden boundary judgements when making evaluations. Boundaries are what we socially construct in designing and evaluating any human activity system of interest (e.g., any situation of concern from a kinship group, an organisation, or a larger entity such as a national health system). The primary boundary of any human activity systems is defined by 'purpose'. Churchman's work is characterised by a continual ethical commitment to the overarching purpose of improved human well-being. In order to fulfil such purposeful activity, there is always a need to broaden inquiry from the particular system of focus so as to appreciate what Churchman calls the total relevant system. The effectiveness and efficiency of a system of interest depends on the actual boundary judgements associated with that system of interest. Churchman first identified 9 conditions or categories (including the category 'purpose�) associated with any purposeful system of interest in his book The Design of Inquiring Systems [1, 2]. He later extended these to 12 categories in a book provocatively entitled The Systems Approach and Its Enemies, significantly taking into account 3 extra factors (�enemies�) that lie outside the actual system of interest but which can be affected by, and therein have an effect on, the performance of the system [1, 2]. In the early 1980s a doctorate student of Churchman from Switzerland, Werner Ulrich, translated Churchman's 12 categories into an operational set of 12 questions which he called critical systems heuristics [3]. Ulrich returned to Switzerland and worked with CSH as a public health and social welfare policy analyst and program evaluator [4]. Section 2 introduces the basic toolbox of CSH, along with suggestions on when to use it and the benefits of its use. Section 3 will guide you through a suggested operational use of CSH questions in a process of evaluation. Section 4 provides a summary of an extensive case study in which CSH was used for evaluating the role of public participation in natural resource-use planning. Section 5 provides some advice for the practitioner in developing skills on using CSH for evaluation

Future directions in urban design as public policy: reassessing best practice principles for design review and development management

his paper reassesses John Punter's ‘Best Practice Principles for Design Review and Development Management’ that were published in this journal in 2007. Placing a focused lens on British and North American practice, the paper argues that design control and review has been profoundly reshaped since 2007 by three contributing factors: the challenges associated with climate change, the growing role that communities can play in local decision making, and the impacts of the global economic crisis upon public sector finances and property development. In light of these trends, the paper uses a review of recent literature and design practices to argue for a series of amendments to the best practice principles. These focus on: (1) the potential for design control and review to be more fully informed by ecological design theory and practice; (2) the need for more rigorous multi-stakeholder collaboration in the design decision-making process; and (3) the opportunity for urban designers to become more competent ‘market actors’ with the necessary abilities to confidently shape property development decisions

From governance to meta-governance in tourism?: Re-incorporating politics,interests and values in the analysis of tourism governance

Despite its theorization in the political and policy sciences in the early 1990s, the concept of metagovernance has gained relatively little recognition in tourism studies. Nevertheless, its significance in the political sciences and policy literature, especially as a result of the perceived failure of governance systems following the recent global financial crisis, has only served to reinforce its relevance. Metagovernance addresses some of the perceived failures of traditional governance approaches and associated interventions, and has enabled the understanding of central-state led regimes of shadowed hierarchical authorities and local-level micro-practices of social innovation and self-government. In contrast, tourism studies have tended to restrict study of the political dimension of tourism governance and the role of the state under the traditional parallelism between government and governance. Examination of how governance is itself governed enables a better understanding of the practices of planning and policy making affecting tourism and destinations. In particular, the applications of concepts of governance are inextricably linked to a given set of value assumptions which predetermine the range of its application. A short example of the application of the metagovernance paradigm is provided from the New Zealand context. It is concluded that governance mechanisms are not value-neutral and instead serve to highlight the allocation of power in a destination and the dominance of particular values and interests