Interview with Richard Wilson

Richard Wilson is a director of Izwe, which enables people to share their opinions online and work together to make a positive difference.  He was a founder of Involve, a leading public engagement think-tank and was Deputy Chair of the Sciencewise Steering Committee. He started his career as an academic at the Science Policy Research Unit.

What makes good dialogue?
I think a good dialogue is like a good relationship. It needs to have honest and authentic communication between the parties, and both sides need to be listening. Easy to say and very difficult to do well!

You’ve been working in the engagement field for almost 13 years. Over this time, how has the relationship between the public and policy makers changed in terms of science and technology?
One positive change is that there is much higher awareness among many of those involved in the policy making process of how engagement works. That might be a civil servant who tweets, or one who runs stakeholder and public dialogue processes. They are sufficiently confident to be able to take forward engagement which is a massive step forward. In fact, that’s all we can really hope for when the field of engagement is moving forward so quickly. Ten years ago most people were simply unaware of the benefits of public engagement.

You recently led a review on behalf of Sciencewise looking at how UK activity on public dialogue compared with other countries. Are there specific examples of good practice which the UK could learn from?
I was interested in institutions like the Danish Board of Technology or other equivalents. Partly they can be useful for knowledge capture. There are loads of great, innovative things going on in science dialogue in the UK, but capturing them all can be difficult. I also think there are benefits of an organisation like this which is independent from government, but also has a clear relationship with it. Ideally, the people running processes shouldn’t be on the side of the citizens, or the decision-makers, but should just be focusing on creating a space for dialogue between them. A bit like the current role of Sciencewise.

There’s also something really interesting we can learn about the role of the citizen in the dialogue process. In America they’re very citizen led. So for example, I was involved in a dialogue in California a couple of years ago on the future of healthcare. When people left the room at the end, they were given a pack of the results and information on how to campaign to take it forwards. With this rather different approach, people were empowered to shape the decisions being made, and the organisers saw themselves as advocates for the public’s views. In the UK we are much more focussed on models such as deliberative research where we are seeking to understand the public’s hopes, fears and aspirations, which will feed into and be taken into account in policy development.

Is there resonance to the Big Society in this more citizen led model?
Yes, I think so. An awful lot could be achieved now by turning things on their head, and by giving citizens the tools to run the processes themselves. They wouldn’t be as robust in terms of social research, but they would be far cheaper and may have higher levels of impact. As opposed to getting facilitators in, why not train up a scientist to do it themselves? We need to get much less precious about it all and begin to ruthlessly disseminate the practice of dialogue.
I think that one of the barriers to this happening is dialogue professionals like me who give the impression that it’s a special skill you only get after many years of experience. Experience helps for sure, but we don’t want to stop the inexperienced getting more involved.

Obviously we are at a time of significant cuts for all departments. What do you think the challenges are for dialogue in science in terms of cuts?
I think that in a time when dialogue has often been seen as an optional extra, the biggest challenge is going to be demonstrating impact. I think there are some important questions which need to be answered about the return on investment on the quality of science itself, the way dialogue saves money in the longer term and the impact these dialogues have on policy makers. It’s incredibly hard to do, but we should at least have a cast iron case where we can say: “you ran engagement here over a specific piece of infrastructure, and that saved you money.” We are only just starting to get this evidence of the benefits.

Many are considering the role for online engagement mechanisms as a means to engage more widely, more quickly and more cost effectively with the public. What do you see as the strengths and weaknesses of such methods?
One of its strengths is its ability to reach people. Research has demonstrated that 85% of people are more likely to take their first step in engagement online. This is particularly important in a recession. Some in government interested in promoting the Big Society might disagree with me, but I think people are becoming busier and are less likely to get involved because of various pressures, so it makes sense to offer quick and easy ways to engage.

But the internet is not a panacea. It’s much less effective at building deep relationships and creating social capital. I think the real potential is in the interplay between the face to face and the online activities. Not enough organisations are focusing on that.

What’s the one message you would want to send to policy-makers surrounding dialogue and engagement?
It sounds very definitive but when we are considering emerging areas of science and technology, I don’t think we should see one-off dialogue processes as the be all and end all. They can be expensive, and as a one off they just don’t fit with the way in which science decision-making and society really work. It should be about trying to create permanent processes of ongoing engagement. This was very much the findings from the Synthetic Biology dialogue project where the public was calling for ongoing engagement and dialogue as the science and the policies developed. The model I would suggest would be annual cycles of engagement which mix face-to-face events and online activity. We need to offer a range of different approaches which have synergies and create a permanent process which people can dip in and out of.