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Thus, mainstreaming or institutionalizing citizen engagement processes in
the public and private sector is a challenge of considerable proportions in
terms of the resource requirements. As we have shown, however, to com-
pensate for this investment, citizen engagement also brings huge divi-
dends.
For organisations to take on the significant challenges and associated
costs identified above requires awareness of both the 'carrots' and
'sticks'. This means knowing the likely rewards of engaging with citi-
zens as well as the costs and negative consequences of failing to do this.
It appears that few have a balanced view of this equation. In both the
public and private sector, those charged with developing services or
products appear to be far more aware of the high costs of engaging citi-
zens (e.g. the time-consuming nature of consultation, focus groups, sur-
veys etc.) than of the costs of failing to engage citizens. Despite the fact
that the consequences or costs of the latter are well-documented, this re-
ality does not seem to be widely recognized. This is reflected, for exam-
ple, in the limited resources available to local government to fund relevant
citizen engagement processes. It would be difficult for local government to
justify the investment since the costs of citizen engagement are relatively
easy to calculate and visible while the value of the benefits are harder to
quantify. Although often profoundly important, the benefits are less tangi-
ble and some may take a long time to accrue. This makes it harder to jus-
tify expenditure on 'soft issues' of engaging with citizens and acts as a
powerful deterrent to engagement processes becoming institutionalized as
a routine part of ICT development projects.
7.2 Changing the Focus of ICT Development
In summary, the current position with regard to ICT design is that, while
the benefits of user participation/citizen engagement are partially recog-
nized, there are a number of barriers which prevent widespread adoption of
this approach and realization of the consequent benefits. We propose that,
if ICT design is to lead to the creation of desirable digital futures, there is a
need for a significant shift in focus for the mainstream of current ICT de-
sign practice. The parameters of this shift are discussed below.
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