Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
9.3 Preparing the Ground
An important precursor to effective citizen engagement is to recruit citi-
zens to participate in a specific initiative or project. As we have already
indicated above, the selection will depend on features of the project itself
(e.g. scale, scope and the likely impact that it will have on citizens). How-
ever the approach to selecting and recruiting citizens to participate will
also need to take into account factors such as their diversity, motivation
and readiness to engage.
9.3.1 Identifying Stakeholders: Who Needs to be Engaged?
In order to engage the relevant and appropriate stakeholders for a particu-
lar design or development project, the first step clearly is to discover who
they are and to begin to understand something about the nature of their
stake in a project or initiative. Stakeholder identification can simply take
the form of a list of all the possible people or organisations that might be
affected in some way by a particular product, system or service. However
this simplistic approach may fail to identify significant and critical catego-
ries of stakeholders. To reduce this danger there are other ways of identify-
ing stakeholders. For example, in a participative 'cascade' approach, an
initial group of stakeholders (perhaps representing the most 'obvious'
ones) then identifies and defines other groups of stakeholders. These addi-
tional people can then be approached and their participation invited. Talk-
ing with members of a target stakeholder group can additionally provide
useful information about that community.
There is a need for both quantitative information e.g. how many stake-
holders in a given category, and for qualitative information, e.g. what are
the important distinguishing features of any given stakeholder group.
Building up a stakeholder 'map' or profile of stakeholders for a target pro-
ject is an important research exercise. It involves a review of a range of
data sources to build a picture e.g. of the demographic or geographic
makeup of a particular community. This could include for example, popu-
lation trends, business and employment patterns and available infrastruc-
ture.
Other methods for gaining useful information about the issues which are
important to a particular group of stakeholders include scanning stored
print and electronic media articles. This may help to identify key spokes-
persons, and indicate community attitudes and values (Queensland Gov-
ernment: Department of Communities 2004). Such research can be done in
the traditional way, or it can now be done electronically. For instance,
Search WWH ::
Custom Search