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Seven Observations about Public Engagement

This entry was contributed by Rick Morse, on February 6th, 2019 at 7:15 pm and is filed under Capacity Building, Community Partnerships, Elected Officials, Outreach Methods.

In my role as an associate professor at the School of Government, I often find myself leading discussions with various groups on the topic of public engagement. Just within the last couple of months I have spoken with numerous current and future government officials about public engagement practice, including:

a local elected official here in Chapel Hill,
several local government staff members from various communities here in North Carolina,
dozens of MPA students, many of which are current public service practitioners, and
a group of government officers from India.

I also read a lot about and conduct research on various aspects of public engagement. With that in mind, there are some overarching observations or principles that I keep coming back to that I’d like to share here on the blog. Continue Reading

Targeted Online Advertising for Wider Participation – the Raleigh Citywide Bike Plan

This entry was contributed by John Stephens, on March 10th, 2017 at 10:28 am and is filed under Accessibility, Capacity Building, Dialogue & Deliberation, Diversity, Innovation, Online Participation, Outreach Methods, Public Meetings.

This post was written by Brad Johnson and Sharon Felton. Brad Johnson is the Director of Engagement for Raleigh based Cityzen. He assists with implementation of projects and consulting with staff on the best approach. A former member of a planning staff, he’s worked with over a hundred local government entities to optimize their online engagement.

Sharon Felton is the Communications Administrator with the City of Raleigh Public Affairs team. She works with departments, including the Department of City Planning, to implement communications strategies that best fit their needs.

The City of Raleigh was faced with a dilemma when approaching the public outreach portion of their citywide Bike Plan. A passionate, well established group of cyclists would be engaged throughout, but staff didn’t want to assume that they were the only stakeholders in the process. Reaching others for what would be a relatively technocratic discussion seemed like a big challenge. Continue Reading

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