sw webinar best of_08-09-14

Sciencewise Webinar

The best of Sciencewise’s reseach

Monday 8 September 2014

www.sciencewise-erc.org.uk2

Sciencewise

Funded by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS)

Helps the government engage with the

public on policy issues involving science and technology – particularly on complex and controversial topics.

To help improve policy-making in science and technology through the use of public dialogue and engagement

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Sciencewise

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Sciencewise can help you with:

1. Information and guidance

2.Social Intelligence & Research

3.Training and Mentoring

4.Dialogue Specialists

5.Project funding and support


What is public dialogue?

Public dialogue allows a diverse mix of public participants with a range of views and values to deliberate, reflect and come conclusions on national policy issues. It places particular emphasis on being:

• Informed: Participants are provided with information and access to experts;

• Two-way: Participants, policy makers and experts all give something to and take something away from the process; dialogue is neither solely about informing the public nor about extracting information from them;

• Facilitated: The process is carefully structured to ensure that participants receive the right amount and detail of information, a diverse range of views is heard and taken into account, and discussion is not dominated by particular individuals or issues; 4


What is public dialogue?

• Deliberative: Participants develop their views on an issue through conversation with other participants, policy makers and experts;

• Diverse: Participants tend to be recruited to ensure they represent a diverse range of backgrounds and views (participants are not self-selecting);

• Purposeful: Dialogue engages the public at a stage in the policy making process where the policy can still be affected;

• Impartial: Public dialogues are often convened, designed, delivered and facilitated by independent individuals or organisations to help ensure the process is not biased in favour of a particular outcome; and

• Expansive: Public dialogue opens up conversations rather than closing them down.

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The best of Sciencewise

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• Celebrating 10 years of Sciencewise

• Bringing together the ‘best bits’ from over 20 thought leadership and research papers

• Full report available here: http://www.sciencewise-erc.org.uk/cms/assets/Uploads/Best-ofFINAL.pdf


Sciencewise team

Amy Pollard, Sonia Bussu & Houda Davis


Alison MohrLecturer in Science and Technology Studies, University of Nottingham

www.sciencewise-erc.org.uk

Our Audience today:

Over 40 participants

1.Central and devolved government

2.Research councils and public bodies

3.Universities and academia

4.Related organisations

5.Members of the public9


Webinar features

You can:

• Ask a question

• Hold up your hand (for technical problems)

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Raise hand for technical issues


Content

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• Engaging the public: Why, When, How and Who should we engage?

• When: a Departmental Dialogue Index

• How: Digital Engagement. How might new technologies support public engagement?

• Who: Which Publics?

• Overcoming barriers


Why Engage?

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When, How, Who?

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When? A Departmental Dialogue Index Colbourne (2010)

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The DDI can help departments, agencies and other public sector organisations

• to understand their propensity to engage with the public

• to identify best approaches


Matching policy and decision-making context to type of engagement

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• Type A decisions: Requiring narrow engagement

low conflict, controversy or uncertainty

• Type B decisions: Requiring moderate engagement

not huge controversy but need for buy-in/understanding

• Type C decisions: Requiring extensive engagement

high conflict, controversy and uncertainty


How? The role of New technologies in supporting dialogueLatta et al (2013)

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• New technology as an opportunity to open up discussion on policy.

• ‘Goldfish bowl’ deliberation allows those outside to watch, while maintaining privacy and focus of dialogue

Key lessons/issues:

• Matching purpose to appropriate tools

• Ability to tap into existing networks

• Flexibility of digital technologies

• Issue of Digital Exclusion


How GM Nation? challenged the way we think about ‘the public’

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• Is the purpose of public dialogue to study rather engage public opinion on wicked policy problems?

• Is majority opinion sufficient to sustain the legitimacy of policy decisions?

• Can the idea of a diffuse, general public with fixed, pre-given, ‘neutral’ views and preferences sustain good policy where issues are complex and still emerging?

• If not, how then should we think about the public?


Campaigning publics

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• Make themselves known at some point and in some space(s) around the issue in question

• But, may not always be visible to policy makers – depending on size, access, contacts (e.g., Greenpeace vs. No Leith Biomass)

• Put forward particular visions of the public and the public interest

• Raise new questions and bring in forms of knowledge not previously considered


Civil society publics

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• Organised and active in different spaces, but not around the issue in question

• Vary in size, access, visibility

• E.g., Women’s Institute vs. Mumsnet vs. ‘low profile’ or ‘obscure’ groups

• Potential to engage around the big policy issues that we have to collectively confront


Latent publics

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• Hard-to-reach, disenfranchised

• Democratic imperative of reaching out to them to meet the criterion of inclusivity

• May be characterised as ‘disengaged’

• But, may well be articulate about their priorities

• Cannot be predicted in advance of the process of dialogue


Who? Which publics?Mohr, Raman and Gibbs 2013

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Lessons from GM Nation?

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• Even the ‘narrow-but-deep’ focus groups with apparently latent participants did not produce the purely ‘disinterested citizen’ voice imagined by the sponsors

• Ostensibly neutral public were transformed via their engagement to become engaged, interested and mobilised publics

• Stimulated a wide range of inputs (incl. from campaigning and civil society publics) that challenged the narrow framing to consider the broader social and political questions about the underlying commitments of science, industry and government


Overcoming barriers

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• Greater cross-sector cooperation and working beyond internal silos

• Moving from one-off projects to a continuous process mainstreamed in the policy cycle

• Multiple forms of communication and different but connected platforms, on and offline

• Promoting universal access and familiarity with the internet

• Adequate resources


Q&A

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Contact us

Sciencewise Website


Sciencewise Helpline

01235 753 645

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

sw webinar best of_08-09-14

Government & Nonprofit

purpose of public dialogue

general public

public sectororganisations

public dialogues

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dialogue specialists5

matching policy

ensurethat participants