Why citizen participation is the best thing that can happen to your project
- June 29, 2019
- min reading time
- Jeroen Medema
Much is being said and discussed about citizen participation. Open the newspaper and countless striking examples (positive and negative) will bombard you: Lelystad Airport, gas drilling in Groningen, asylum centers in Oranje, etc.
I notice that organizations often view participation processes as a ‘chore.’ ‘We have to create support,’ or ‘this project needs to be Supreme Administrative Court-proof.’ Involved local residents, entrepreneurs, and other users of an area are often perceived as ‘difficult.’.
However, engaged users of an area can actually be the best thing that can happen to your project, for 3 reasons:
Critical view from the outside.
Local residents can be particularly critical, especially when your project touches on their deepest interests. This criticism often leads to difficult questions and highlights gaps in your project or research. Although not easy (as it concerns the result of your work), listening to this feedback actually improves your research. In this way, these critics suddenly become your best proofreaders!
Area expert.
The stakeholders in your project are often people from the area where your project is taking place. You are a guest there, only visiting once. The local residents experience this area day in and day out, year after year. And are therefore experts of the area. For example, in one of my own projects recently, it was the local residents who pointed out an important collaboration project between different government bodies in the area, which had been completely overlooked until that moment!
Subject matter expert.
What often goes unnoticed is that most of the lives of local residents and other users of the area take place outside of your project. For instance, most citizens have jobs and therefore their own expertise, which could potentially add value to your project. In a recent project, one of the local residents was an expert in setting up online environments. My client did not have a SharePoint-like environment to share files outside the organization. Therefore, this subject matter expert set up and even partially managed the shared environment for us!
So when you encounter another project with citizens as stakeholders, don't see it as a ‘must,’ but as the best thing that could happen to your project!
