The Case for Engagement - Informing Digital Futures: Strategies for Citizen Engagement - page 28

3 The Case for Engagement
Citizens across the globe are facing an unprecedented rate of technological
and social change. An unceasing flow of new products, systems, services
and environments places demands on individuals to change their behav-
iours, attitudes and values. Collectively, the emerging developments offer
the tantalizing promise of enhancements to our lives. The emerging tech-
nologies are transforming business, communication and lifestyle; they
have the potential to enrich human life in innumerable ways, many of
which we cannot yet imagine. They can simplify the mechanics of daily
life, prolong independent living with smart homes and with 'obedient' domes-
tic appliances, assist our learning, extend our skills and capabilities and
enhance our leisure. For the transformational potential of these benefits to be
realised in society, new systems and services will need to be accessible to
all and taken up by the majority. Achieving positive digital futures, which
deliver genuine improvements in quality of life, requires the active en-
gagement of citizens in their planning, design and implementation. This
chapter sets out the imperatives for citizen engagement, and identifies the
benefits that it can bring.
3.1 Drivers for Engagement
Citizen engagement is not a new concept, and indeed there are many areas
in which some form of engagement is already an established process. Pub-
lic consultations are a regular feature in certain domains of public policy
and civic planning; for example in 2004 the UK Labour Party launched its
“ Big Conversation ” initiative, which was described as the biggest consul-
tation exercise ever undertaken with voters, as a way of gaining public in-
put into future policy making. The Scandinavian countries have led the
way in developing participative approaches to the design of technology
(e.g. Ehn and Kyng 1994), and there is growing recognition in the product
and industrial design sectors of the need for some form of user involve-
ment in defining requirements and evaluating prototypes. However, the
pace and nature of social and technical change is now such that there
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