Government–Community Engagement

A reflective paper on recent initiatives in the United States and New Zealand looking at how the governments can better engage with their public, Government–Community Engagement was written by Kayt Robinson as part of a fellowship with the Kettering Foundation in 2009. There is also an accompanying comparative Government–Community Engagement table and research background.

In the past year, both the United States and New Zealand governments have re-examined the way in which they engage with their publics, calling for public opinion into how they can improve the relationship between government agencies and the people and communities they serve.

While each initiative has asked different questions and, it appears, will inevitably come to different conclusions, both centred around the need for government to foster a more collaborative and transparent relationship with the public, as well as strengthen trust between citizens and those who govern them.

In the United States focus has centred on opening up lines of communication and allowing the public freer access to government information; whilst in New Zealand the approach has focused on building more direct interdependent relationships between government agencies and the community and voluntary sector.

Even though the United States and New Zealand appear to have taken very different approaches for tackling similar concerns, each initiative is a worthy example of the way in which governments around the world are re-examining their relationship with their constituents and striving for a more engaged approach to politics and the running of their nations.

Just over six months on from when President Barack Obama announced the Open Government Directive committing the US Government to "creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government" in order to "strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government" whether these aspirations have been attained is subjective and open to debate.

At the end of 2009, the President announced that every Federal department was required to develop and publish Open Government Plans by 7 April 2010. These plans were to provide concrete and specific roadmaps for making operations and data more transparent, and expanding opportunities for citizen participation, collaboration and oversight.

The Directive required that the Chief Technology Officer and Chief information Officer create an Open Government Dashboard to assess the state of open government. It tracks agency progress on the deliverables set out in the Directive, including each agency's Open Government Plan.

See also our article on US Open Government Directive.