An Office of Public Outreach: Improving citizen input, City outreach, and trust in government
After almost 20 years at IBM, I am familiar with processes and senior executive documents which state clear direction, prioritize goals, and set expectations for multiple teams. However, I see a disconnect between the Cities articulated and positive intention on reaching the community for input and the actual outcome of that outreach.
Business and neighborhood communities perceive that the City does not take its community input gathering seriously. The public perception is that community input is a “check the box” activity and that staff gathers input after it has already decided on a direction. And large portion of the community input that does exist is from the nonprofit perspective under the positive assumption that these groups would represent the community. These groups certainly have a valuable voice, but it is not the only voice to be heard in a diverse community.
The current problems of community outreach stem from who and what.
Who’s missing from the community input process? Neighborhood groups, leaders who are individual contributors, small & large businesses, and residents — housed/unhoused/renters/owners. And most importantly nearby neighbors themselves who are directly impacted by policy changes.
What’s missing is a measurement of who has been part of the reach out process and a measurement of input to actual changes as a direct result of the input. Many feel excluded from the outreach and when they do participate and provide input — it can be ignored. Attending City outreach meetings become a circle of frustration when the community itself is not being heard. These meetings often include contrary opinions which are easy to ignore. And there is no follow up. We are missing out on creative voices, good ideas and possible solutions by not actively including and hearing all stakeholders.
Input alone is not success. Listening to the varied community input is only valuable and useful when the input is taken into consideration. Many outreach participants leave the meetings discouraged that their voice was heard yet set aside
How can we accept a diverse set of perspectives and act decisively on decisions? Perhaps it would be useful to put measurements in place.
1. Actively seek out all potential stakeholders and create an active list on per project basis.
2. Measure stakeholder responses and attendance to outreach meetings.
3. Measure how much stakeholder input was utilized and implemented by the City and provide feedback loop directly back to the stakeholders.
Once the first three steps are implemented then I believe it would be helpful to have regularly scheduled audits of various departments which depend on community outreach. The audit should cover measurements in terms of expense in relation to goals met and achieved. Each department has goals and targets and will be easy to access if those goals have been met.
A happy City is dependent on a happy community and that start with communication which must include both listening and acting on the input and suggestions of our critical stakeholders.
Proposal: I suggest that San Jose create an Office of Public Outreach that reports directly to the City Manager. It would be staffed by employees currently doing this work in their department silos. And led by a professional that has a background in business market research, so they know their job is to get opinions, not just offer the opportunity to express them.
Additionally, this function would be overseen by a Citizens Advisory Committee, to ensure that full public input is the result of city public outreach.
Irene Smith, JD, PhD
2/24/21
