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seekers, a new housing or commercial development). In other words,
where there is a strongly felt personal reason for the citizen to become
engaged, people are motivated to become actively involved to address
the issues. It is often very difficult to generate interest and involvement in
projects which are perceived to have little immediate relevance.
Extrapolating from the phenomenon of citizen-initiated action, Coombs
(2003) suggested that in the quest to gain citizen engagement in changes it
is proposing, government should “
tap into their passions at a personal
level
”. This suggestion is supported by Randell (2003) whose first rule of
engagement is to enable citizens to “
define their own decision making
process
.” Both identified the need to go to the citizen at a local level and
not expect the citizen to move to the 'authorities/experts'. A fundamental
element underlying both these points is the importance of building the rela-
tionship/communication with the citizen. Such processes require time and
resources both from the stakeholders and the participants (Coombs 2003).
Special skills in facilitation may also be essential. Randell (2003) reports
that involvement at a local level broadens through time to extend to wider
public issues in society. She suggests that people need to be given time to
participate and to experience the rewards and satisfaction associated with
working together. Findings from projects engaging citizens clearly identify
the need of the citizen to know they have actually been listened to and that
their participation has influenced the process and outcome. The Demos
project (2004) makes the further point that citizens need feedback about
their contributions in order to sustain motivation to participate, i.e. to be
able to see the effects of their inputs.
Building the confidence of citizens to engage effectively in a change
process or design activity happens in stages. Confidence comes from indi-
viduals having the insight to see that they possess unique knowledge and
insights that others cannot contribute - because they have not 'travelled the
same path' and therefore have not gained the same knowledge and experi-
ence. The point is made powerfully by Nardi and O'Day (1999), who re-
gard as most important the idea that strategic questions demand local
knowledge both to formulate the right questions and to develop answers to
them. Further they stress that local knowledge is distributed throughout an
information ecology with the consequence that “
no single person can know
enough to ask all the right questions. A diverse set of perspectives is
needed to develop a healthy information ecology. This means that every-
one should be encouraged to ask questions, not just those with highly visi-
ble technical knowledge or management responsibility
” (Nardi and O'Day
1999). An excellent example of the benefits of such an approach being ap-
plied to deep-rooted social problems associated with poverty is reported by
Lister who describes the major and highly positive impact of engaging
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