What is dialogue

Public dialogue run by Sciencewise-ERC brings together members of the public, policy makers and scientists to discuss and come to conclusions on the social and ethical issues raised by new science and technology, and other policies of national importance.

It allows a diverse mix of public participants with a range of views and values to:

• learn from written information and experts
• listen to each other, and share and develop their views
• reach carefully considered conclusions
• communicate those conclusions directly to inform Government’s decision making.

Good public dialogue can help policy makers and Government to:

• make better, more robust decisions that reflect public values and societal implications
• increase legitimacy for tough decisions
• demonstrate accountability in public investment
• overcome entrenched positions to enable policy to move forward
• gain a rich understanding of public aspirations and concerns that goes beyond media headlines or focus groups.

Public dialogue does not:

• remove Government responsibility for decision making
• rely only on surveys or opinion polls to gather public views
• seek endorsement of decisions that have already been made
• replace other public information or consultation processes.

Why do dialogue

Government routinely engages with experts and stakeholders to inform its thinking. In many cases there is a need for greater insights and this engagement is not sufficient. Policies that emerge have sometimes been difficult or impossible to implement because they fail to take account of broader public concerns. Public dialogue is increasingly recognised as filling this evidence gap for policy-makers.

Sciencewise-ERC has shown that public dialogue provides the evidence that helps policy-makers to make better national policy in science and technology.

“Pretty much everything will have to change over a period of time and if we’re going to do that then sensibly we need to know to what extent we can bring the public with us. We can’t just do it ourselves. The public are part of it.”

Joan Ruddock MP. Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change

There are many ways of engaging with the public to find out their views. Traditionally, governments have relied on statutory White Paper consultations to find out both public and stakeholder views on policy proposals. Alongside these, policy makers have gained public views through activities such as surveys and opinion polls, focus groups, and public meetings.

Over recent years, a number of new ways of eliciting public opinion has evolved, including citizen’s juries and online forums. In addition, public engagement - as opposed to consultation - has come to include a whole array of activities aimed at informing and educating the public, for example the activities of science centres and public lectures and seminars on particular subjects.

Public dialogue is one form of public engagement. It is a comparatively new method, which sits alongside all these other activities and has a specific role to play in the science and technology policy-making process.

Depending on what questions the policy maker needs to find out people’s opinions on, public dialogue can either sit alone or, more usually, is carried out in conjunction with other engagement methods. Each adds its own perspective and value to the evidence being gathered.

Public dialogue is defined by Sciencewise-ERC as a ‘two-way’ conversation between policy makers and scientists on the one hand, and the public on the other. It does not seek to find out people’s views on a range of policy options that have already been developed. Rather, it aims to find out people’s hopes, fears and aspirations about potential new areas of science and technology.

It does this by taking place ‘upstream’, in other words before key policy decisions are made, to ensure that the outcomes are able to have some influence and make a difference. 

Crucially, it needs a number of other key ingredients – the involvement of scientists and the space to allow people to discuss and debate the issues, deliberate over time, and come back together again for further discussion.

And most importantly, public dialogue needs to have a policy ‘home’ and be linked to a clear policy issue so that it can make a difference to real decisions.

In order to help policy makers identify whether or not to carry out public dialogue and how to do it, the Sciencewise-ERC programme has developed a set of guidelines which provide a framework for public dialogue to be carried out and can act as a ‘checklist’ to make sure the activity is robust and its outcomes defensible.

Watch Kathy Sykes vidcast: Sciencewise-ERC - Why do public dialogue
04:37 minutes