Public communication plays an essential role in the everyday lives of citizens, who increasingly expect instantaneous access to information from and engagement with their governments. Whether it is to make informed decisions, learn about rights and duties, or advocate for policy change, citizens and civil society organisations rely on governments’ ability to disseminate relevant information. Communication is also a key government lever to raise awareness of open government reforms and help change behaviours. As such, it is important that governments communicate clearly what they are doing to deliver open government strategies and initiatives, why they are doing it, and what benefits this offers citizens and other stakeholders. This section presents guidance on how to effectively communicate open government strategies and initiatives and how to use public communication as a strategic tool to support policy implementation and service delivery, as well as to enhance transparency and participation.
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Toolkits
United States Government
The U.S. Public Participation Playbook is a resource for government managers to evaluate and build better services through public participation using best practices and performance metrics.
Based on discussions with US Federal Government managers and stakeholders, the publishers identified five main categories that should be addressed in all programs, whether digital or offline. Within each category they identified 12 unifying plays to start with, each including a checklist to consider, resources and training. They also provide suggested performance metrics for each main category.
Open Government Partnership
This resource aims to enrich the efforts of parliaments and their civil society counterparts to engage in collaborative processes, either as part of the Open Government Partnership National Action Plan or otherwise. The first section focuses on the development of open parliament commitments. The second section shares the experiences of a variety of parliaments and civil society organisations in collaborating in the creation of parliamentary openness commitments and in developing ongoing mechanisms for dialogue on openness. The final section shares some of the types of commitments that parliaments have made to become more open, accountable and engaging of citizens. It also lists additional resources that can be drawn upon to advance parliamentary openness.
The resource is available in English, Spanish, and French.
MASS LBP
Reference Panels, also known as Citizens' Assemblies, Commissions and Juries, are an example of long-form deliberative processes that are frequently used by governments and public agencies to obtain detailed guidance on important and sometimes controversial policies.
Based on the publisher's experience with reference panels, they offer eight moves from their playbook to help others plan their own deliberative process.
Helpful Technology
This web-based resource contains ideas and practical help to use digital and social media in the public sector. It is organised by techniwues, strategies, examples, and (user generated) questions. This resource can assist governments with service delivery and stakeholder engagement. The publisher's main website also contains other resources for online communication.
GovLab
This guidance contains 13 implementation plans laying out practical ways to address corruption. It is divided into 6 issue areas, each with an overview of the problem as well as solutions. The plans emerged from “Smarter Crowdsourcing Anti-Corruption” (2017). The Smarter Crowdsourcing method is an agile process, which begins with problem definition followed by online sourcing of global expertise to surface innovative ideas and then turns them into practical implementation plans. This guidance includes case studies of this process in practice.
Argentinian Ministerio de Modernización
This tool is a condensed version of the Agile Evalution kit. It contains the key graphs and principles, including the Argentinian government's model on the lifecycle of innovation (Planificacion, Monitoreo, Evaluacion), theory of chain explanation, proposed learning modules, a Logic Model matrix of indicators, and several lists of evaluation questions.
Open Government Partnership
This is a collection of tools for an Open Government Partnership communications team, including the OGP's tips on blogging, branding, talking points, press guide, etc.
While this is specifically created for Open Government Partnership partners, it it can be adapted for other public sector initiatives, services, or programs.
Participatory Budgeting Project
This toolkit is for officials and staff at governments and institutions that are interested in launching a participatory budgeting process. Its purpose is to build understanding of what it takes to start a participatory budgeting process and how to lay a foundation for success.
It answers the questions:
How does a typical PB process work?
What are the impacts of PB?
What budgets can be used for PB?
What staffing and other resources are needed to implement PB?
How do I get started?
Argentinian Ministerio de Modernización
This kit presents the role of transparency within an open government system, including topics like visualisation of data, freedom of information laws, and communication strategies
World Bank
A collection of online guidance and knowledge to assist countries and others in setting up open data strategies and platforms.
The resource is comprised seven sections:
Open Data Essentials, Starting an Open Data Initiative,Technology Options, Demand & Engagement, Supply & Quality of Data, Readiness Assessment Tool, and Technical Assistance and Funding.
Results for Development (R4D)
The Open Government Costing Tool is a Microsoft Excel based
application designed to support the collection and calculation of the cost of open government programs. This tool was created as a
companion to the Open Government Costing Framework and Methods, which details an approach to estimating the cost of open government programs. This tool is a template in which users can directly enter data collected on input units and unit costs of an open government program and automatically generate an estimate for the cost of the program. The publisher also offers written guidance on the use of the tool.
GovLab
A platform for researchers to share findings and methodologies and a repository of theoretical and applied research on open and innovative governance techniques and tools.
It includes:
A platform for researchers to share findings and methodologies;
A repository of theoretical and applied research on open and innovative governance techniques and tools;
A diversity of publication types – from research reports and journal articles to books and dissertations;
A taxonomy for browsing research by type of innovation, objective, region, sector or tool;
The ability to submit new research for inclusion on the site; and
A community for those interested and committed to studying the impact of governance innovations and a place for those with research questions to connect to those with projects to study.
Government of South Australia
The Open Data Toolkit provides guidance intended for South Australia agencies and local councils release open data, although can be adapted to other contexts. It includes guidance on the following steps: Identify, Classify, Approach, Approve, Publish, Maintain.
It includes suggestions on governance decisions and roles as well as privacy, public value, and intellectual property guidance.
Switzerland Government
The resource provides support for individuals and organizations wishing to publish open government data. Some guidance may be specific to the Swiss context. It is designed as a wiki: contributions from organizations and individuals that have experience with open data are welcomed. The resource is organised into stages: identify, prepare, publish, and support. A Github repository of the website's code is also available.
Open Data Labs
A collection of tools created during the Open Data Innovation Week, which was a gathering of innovators from across the Asia-Pacific region to build a box of tools and methods for improving the design, practice and implementation of open data initiatives to help solve the region’s key political, economic, and social problems. Tools range from ethnography to mapping and analysis. Each tool contains instructions: purpose, prerequisites, who to involve, difficulty, time-frame, and step-by-step guidance.
Open Government Partnership
This resource describes open government good practices and presents them to encourage further adoption and innovation. The publisher's goal is to help government reformers and civil society partners in improving the quality and output of co-creation processes across the Open Government Partnership (OGP). The resource was created to aid OGP partners but is applicable to others interested in open government.
The Toolkit contains content organised in a Question & Answer format, a matrix of participation and co-creation standards, and a map of 100 case studies from 39 countries.
Etalab
The OGP Toolbox is a collaborative platform that gathers digital tools developed and used throughout the world by organizations to improve democracy and promote transparency, participation and collaboration.
It is designed as a social network and includes use cases and tool "collections," technical criteria informed by the community and recommendations based on the experience of users that have already implemented existing solutions.
The goals of the publisher and platform are to:
- allow actors to identify the digital tools better suited to their needs, by collecting and describing them in the most objective way possible;
- collaborate to make digital tools more accessible and easier to use;
- create favourable conditions to further the development of better digital tools; and,
- foster the sharing of experience between actors and giving feedback on existing tools.
Proboscis
This toolkit is for people help each other map out the skills, knowledge, resources and capabilities they have in order to respond to, and effect, change in their community.
The Possible Futures Lab of the Information Security Group at Royal Holloway University of London originally developed the toolkit to assist grassroots co-creation in the community of Pallion, Sunderland. They have made their toolkits available to others to adapt.
Access Info Europe
A toolkit targeting journalists and includes concrete guidance on how to use their rights to access information. It is based on a comparative analysis of the access to information laws in the region covered by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which has 56 participating states in Europe, Central Asia and North America; of these 45 have legal provisions on the right of access to information held by public bodies which are reviewed in this analysis. It is available in 13 national language versions.
Argentinian Ministerio de Modernización
This kit discusses the fundamentals of innovation - immersion (understanding the context), problem definition, ideation, prototyping and testing
Danish Design Centre
The toolkit includes 5 methods for designing a more inclusive lab. The toolkit begins by guiding users through basic user observation, identification, and categorization processes (observation, interviews,
and personas). It then moves into problem definition and stakeholder prioritization, and finally defines a concrete suggestion for increased
diverse stakeholder governance. It includes templates and examples for each method.
Reboot
A hands-on resource that provides practical advice, guidance, and an 8-phase process from concept development to implementation for building an open government program, with each step referencing principles, lessons learned, case studies, and a checklist for determining whether you are at the right phase. This resource complements Open Government Partnership Action Plans and and was developed as part of a year-long project with the Mexican government.
MASS LBP
This step-by-step toolkit describes an inclusive approach to recruiting participants for public consultation or engagement processes. The publishers designed the Civic Lottery process to mitigate the shortcomings and distortions produced by traditional recruitment methods. The approach introduces randomization at multiple stages of the participant recruitment and selection
process. This toolkit is best for those who have decided that a reference panel is right for their situation (see the publishers associated toolkit on reference panels) and want to make sure that their selection process is fair and inclusive.
The toolkit was developed based on lessons learned by the publisher in deploying reference panels in Canada.
United States Government
The Toolkit helps government employees use crowdsourcing and citizen science in their work. It provides five basic process steps for planning, designing and carrying out a crowdsourcing or citizen science project. It also includes a case study library of this process in practice as well as citizen science-related resources (examples, background information, journal articles, tools).
These methods were developed for United States Government staff but could also be used by other governments and organisations interested in engage the public in their work and collect data that might otherwise be beyond their reach.
The US Government supports this work with an associated internal community of practice.
Canada Government
The Do-it-Yourself (DIY) Open Data Toolkit provides a step-by-step guidance on how to develop an open data initiative. The Toolkit is primarily intended for municipalities that have not yet begun an open data project and need some guidance on how to implement one. It can also be referenced by other governments or organizations who are considering initiating an open data initiative.
The toolkit includes: Open data orientation, Planning considerations, Publishing sample data sets, Adopting an open data policy, Executing an open data pilot project with community engagement, and
Moving your open data initiative from pilot project to operational program.
National Democratic Institute
DemTools is a suite of free, open source software solutions developed by NDITech and distributed for supporting democracy building efforts around the world. The software includes contact management, issue tracking, crowdsourcing, election monitoring, open data, and petition development tools. These were built with the developing world in mind but can also be used in other contexts.
An associated DemTools Guide Book offers an overview of each of the suite of tools, including use cases, user consideration, technical specifications, security considerations, languages/translations, the type of support offered by the publisher, instructions for deploying and hosting the tools and case studies of the tools in practice.
The publisher also offers free and paid hosting service and technical support, but some resources and expertise will be required of the user for setup and ongoing maintenance of the tools.
GovLab
The term data collaborative refers to a new form of collaboration, beyond the public-private partnership model, in which participants from different sectors — including private companies, research institutions, and government agencies — can exchange data to help solve public problems.
This resource outlines 8 Phases for designing and implementing a data collaborative (partnership) at an institutional level. The online resource includes examples, enablers, tools, and resources for each phase.
Frog Design
The Collective Action Toolkit (2nd edition) is a set of activities and methods that enables groups of people anywhere to organize, collaborate, and create solutions for problems affecting their community.
It guides users through methods according to six action areas, with suggested pathways from one method to the next. For each method, step-by-step instructions are given, in addition to the time, roles, and materials needed. Some methods include canvasses to guide activity.
The toolkit is available in English, Chinese, French, and Spanish.
Making Sense
Produced as part of the Making Sense project, which draws on nine citizen sensing campaigns in Holland, Kosovo and Spain in 2016 and 2017. Based on that experience, the publisher developed a framework and methods and tools for citizen participation in environmental monitoring and action. Their approach is bottom-up and participatory, which the publishers call "citizen sensing."
The publishers offer a software platform for collecting data, methodologies for making sense of data, and best practices and tools on community engagement and co-creation.
Argentinian Ministerio de Modernización
This kit explains how to evaluate a public policy approach/initiative, through the lens of several methodologies, including theory of change, agile (agilismo), deep dives ("Inmersiones profundas"), adaptive planning and adaptive management.
Tasmanian Department of Health and Human Services
A collection of 55 different public/stakeholder engagement techniques, including an assessment of difficulty, engagement level, cost, when might be used, how many people might be needed to run, timeframes, innovation level and a step by step guide for using each.
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