Preparing to Consult the Public

There is no universal formula, of course. Each country has its idiosyncratic values and conditions. Consequently, the five lecturers tried to avoid being prescriptive and stuck to mapping out the territory of citizen engagement. With the aid of examples from other polities - from Canada to Romania - they provoked the members of the Committee present, the youthful representatives of the NGO HERA, and the two journalists who participated into a review of activities past and future.

The European Center for Disease Control (ECDC) is now firmly aboard our process. Delegates from this newly-created EU organization as well from our long-time supporters, the World Health Organization (WHO), gave us a fascinating, thought-provoking, and highly beneficial workshop about public consultations: the way to organize them and pitfalls to avoid. 

There is no universal formula, of course. Each country has its idiosyncratic values and conditions. Consequently, the five lecturers tried to avoid being prescriptive and stuck to mapping out the territory of citizen engagement. With the aid of examples from other polities - from Canada to Romania - they provoked the members of the Committee present, the youthful representatives of the NGO HERA, and the two journalists who participated into a review of activities past and future.

A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the Committee's operation hitherto cast its work in a new light by placing it in context: many countries have tried and failed to accomplish even the level of stakeholder involvement that we have. Further engagement of the wider public has to take into account the scarcity of resources, on the one hand, and the ever-present risk of engendering chaos rather than a structured and productive debate, on the other hand.

The members formed unusually lively workgroups, facilitated by the visitors. Rapporteurs summarized the proceedings of these mini-assemblies and reported them in full session. Some very practical insights emerged almost immediately:

1. The members of the Committee require additional time to submit material, which is often the outcome of inner consultations in the associations, organizations, and NGOs which they represent.

2. The compilation of the Green Book should be done by members of the various subcommittees, elected by their peers in a democratic and transparent way.

3. Only one phase of citizen engagement is recommended. This would combine a structured and protracted interaction with a representative sample of the population (in the form of focus groups, deliberative polling, citizen juries, or some other method) with electronic submissions (responses to questionnaires which will go out to NGOs and GPs; submissions via e-mail and the Web, etc.)

4. The media and public relations dimension of the entire process is sorely lacking. We have failed to engage the press and to interest them in the events and activities of the Committee. Our guests proposed a few ideas as to how to reverse this disconnect. Examples: to accompany thickset documents, like the Green Book, with a "thinner" flier or brochure (a "green paper"); to distribute the green paper as an insert in the daily printed press; and to seek media partnerships and sponsorships. We also discussed running a workshop specifically for the members of the media, perhaps in conjunction with the launch of the Green Book.

I have spoken to members of the Committee after the event was over. We all feel more firmly grounded and with a renewed sense of direction. We have no answers, but now we seem to possess both the right questions and possible solutions. We need to meet and thrash out what we have learned. The workshop jolted us, put a mirror to our collective endeavor, and has made us attain that most precious of commodities in a complex undertaking such as ours: clarity.