Interview with Ian Johnson

Until recently, Ian Johnson headed the Democratic Engagement Branch within the Ministry of Justice and was the Secretary of the Youth Citizenship Commission. Previously, he worked on e-government strategy, the third sector, change management, HR and operational delivery in a range of departments at HQ, regional and local levels.

What do you think was your key achievement in championing public engagement across Whitehall?

One of the most interesting schemes we ran was the Innovation Fund which provided small grants to organisations that could find innovative ways to engage the public in some aspects of democracy. Through quite a small investment of money, some of the projects had quite a substantial impact – for example, we funded the MySociety website fixmystreet.com which allowed the public to highlight to local councils things they wanted fixed in their local areas for everyone to see. There were also other interesting programmes like the Digital Dialogues which helped raise the Government’s approach to digital engagement.

Can you describe your approach to public engagement and dialogue?

What we did was try not to have one single scheme or notion which tried to provide a single solution to the issues of public deliberation and dialogue. Instead we had an approach which would try to let different flowers bloom, focused on innovation, and connected different groups of people interested in public deliberation together. We also spent a lot of time trying to connect people in Government departments together to share best practice. Our approach was about trying to see what works in an experimental way and learning from that, getting people in Government together as well as learning from people outside Government.

We found that if you connect with innovators and social entrepreneurs outside Government and work with them flexibly, small amounts of investment can have a considerable impact. Sometimes you don’t know where a project is going to go and sometimes things don’t always work out, but other projects can have quite far reaching impact, like fixmystreet. When we first supported fixmystreet, a lot of local authorities weren’t that pleased because they had their specific ‘closed circuit’ customer relationship systems which they wanted people to use. But fixmystreet was a democratic tool which allowed the public to highlight and discuss problems in their local area and local authorities came to accept that this ‘people power’ could also work for them too. It was so successful that it was incorporated on the front page of the DirectGov website and been adapted for use in other countries. It goes to show that these sorts of things can succeed if they appeal to people and you give them a little support.

How do you make the case in Government for public engagement?

Our approach was never to dream up a big scheme but instead to look at some of the obstacles and incentives to engaging the public. The obstacles are often lack of knowledge about public engagement – how to do it, what works best – the resources – the time it takes to do and the cost – and scare stories about bad previous experiences. There are also quite a lot of uncertainties for policy makers about the representativeness of those who take part in public engagement processes, how the views are aggregated and concerns about processes being captured by groups with special interests. These are very often real concerns of policy makers. We sought to counter this by sharing knowledge and experience across Government but also by giving people practical examples of where public engagement has been successful and what works best in which situation, through supporting the set-up of the peopleandparticipation.net website.

Practical issues can be overcome, but a lot of the obstacles are cultural. In the UK we have this expectation that we need a strong Government that whips its policies through, often without much scrutiny or dialogue outside Parliament. Sometimes, this leads to protests, but campaigns that make a difference to Government intentions tend to be few and far between. In other cultures it’s possible to have a much more collaborative approach from the outset, which isn’t to say that everything should be done on a consensus basis. Some decisions could never be reached that way, but they still need to be taken. We’re not going to change our national culture or our decision-making processes overnight but we can move gradually towards a more collaborative approach, if we can see the benefits, not just in policy terms, but in terms of personal satisfaction and achievement. It’s very difficult to change people’s attitudes and change their habitual ways of doing things, perhaps risking prize policies or confronting opposed viewpoints, solely by presenting the evidence of the benefits of good dialogue. It does require a leap of the imagination, trying out new things, learning new skills and being prepared for some bumpiness, but also grasping the rewards of better policies and the satisfaction of a more collaborative approach.

Cost-benefit analyses of public engagement are pretty thin on the ground and they are difficult to do, as the contribution of public engagement to the policy process is not necessarily linear. This can be taken as a clincher for not doing engagement, by those who are averse to the process. However, what about the value of doing cost-benefit analyses of what the risks are of not doing public engagement? We often invest money in evaluation of a policy that has been implemented, but we don’t look at what would be the right proportion of money to spend on dialogue and deliberation in the policy-making process to get the policy right before implementation, as balanced against the risk of not doing dialogue and the implementation costs of what might be an imperfect policy.

There have been a few big things in the past where a participatory approach might have paid off. My favourite example is the poll tax, which was introduced without public involvement and didn’t have much public support (notably with the Trafalgar Square riot), so didn’t collect the desired income and subsequently had to be changed. I think we should look both at the risks of not doing engagement and the risks of doing it and make a good judgement on this basis. Of course, it’s not always possible because resources are limited and we have to make choices about what is the most appropriate deployment of them, and we don’t want the Government in a log-jam with participation on every single issue. But there are some issues that would definitely benefit from greater deliberation and public dialogue and it is for Government to be thoughtful about what these are.

How has the relationship between public and policy makers changed over your time in Whitehall?

That’s a big question! The civil service is not homogeneous – it’s a vast body which deals with radically different issues. The impact of ministers can also be very profound, particularly if they come in with a clear agenda, policy direction and set of priorities in which case everything changes. One of the most encouraging things recently is the publication by the COI called Effective public engagement.

This was the product of quite a lot of internal consultation and it effectively lays out the role that public engagement can play in the policy process. Anecdotally, over the past few years more people have taken part in some form of public engagement or sponsored it and it seems to be much more of the norm; people seem to be less fearful of doing it than they might have been in the past.

Given the recent change of Government what do you think the lasting trends in public engagement will be?

Things are always subject to change. The main difference will be that there are more people around who have done it and will think of it as part of the policy process. They probably haven’t had many nasty surprises and may even have seen some small benefits from it. So, when they are talking about developing new policies it becomes part of the process.

It will always be in the politically contentious areas of policy, where there are starker divisions between the political parties, where there is less willingness among policy makers to use dialogue. The political parties come to their views on these issues based on values and interests and possibly in fear of the media handling of these issues. So when you poke a stick into them it becomes difficult in political terms and the safest thing is to avoid dialogue – and in some cases doing anything at all. In some respects, this is why science and technology is perhaps an easier area, as far as Government is concerned, to explore the potential of dialogue. The result has been a big increase in the quantity and quality of dialogue in science. It isn’t necessarily politically neutral but there aren’t on all issues in this field, the developed ideologies and positions that exist for other issues (excepting GM, of course!). This isn’t to say that more contentious issues couldn’t be opened up in dialogue, but that to do so would require more political will and a shift in the expectations of Government about what dialogue could deliver and how to be truly responsive to it, as well as a more realistic expectation from the public about what the possible outcomes could be. The lessons of science and engagement in moving from ‘leave it all to the man in the white coat’, through ‘let the man in the white coat teach you nuclear physics’ though to upstream engagement are all equally valid for other areas of Government which could benefit more widely from the approaches taken in the scientific field.

What is the future for dialogue in hard economic times?

Dialogue could have a big role to play if we have fewer resources and choices need to be made about what will go and who feels the brunt. To me, that’s a greater argument for assessing the evidence by getting people together to deliberate about what the state should or shouldn’t provide. I think one of the dangers of not doing dialogue will be the levels of public discontent and individuals focusing solely on their own interests rather than thinking about the national interest. The more individuals can lift their eyes and look above what’s actually happening to them at the moment to think about what the nation should do collectively, the better. I think dialogue and deliberation will have a key role to play here. But the challenges are the time pressures and the perceived need to do something urgently to cut the budget deficit.

Dialogue can put all the facts on the record, subject them to scrutiny, connect with diverse values and beliefs and develop viable policy options. Dialogue is a reality check both in terms of the facts but also in terms of highlighting the stretch of public opinion, not all of which is captured in the ideologies of political parties. Importantly, it provides a framework for moving on from instant views to more considered thoughts and engagement, with an understanding of different points of view, and a move away from personal interests as the sole arbiter. As such, it can be an important part of that which binds us together in tough times.