Departmental Dialogue Index

Lead by Lindsey Colbourne, this research project has identified and developed a diagnostic and toolkit, the Departmental Dialogue Index (DDI), to support people within organisations who are interested in improving their organisation’s use of dialogue and engagement.

“The resulting DDI category was so like us, it was uncanny” Andrew Walker, Defra stakeholder engagement team

This applied research project showed that the cultures of different individual departments, teams and organisations link to different levels of readiness to apply and utilize public engagement and dialogue.

Rather than recommending wholesale ‘culture change’, we have developed a diagnostic tool which can be used to:

• understand your organisation’s preferences and beliefs
• consider how this affects your organisation’s propensity to engage
• use these insights to find effective ways of promoting and using engagement which goes with the grain of your organisation’s character, and therefore are more likely to be accepted