Keeping the public informed about Citizens' Juries
The challenge
Citizens’ juries bring people together to debate issues and come up with ideas. They enable decision makers to better understand public attitudes to complex areas of policy. Citizens’ juries are formed from a demographically representative sample of citizens in order to get a balanced and informed response to an issue or topic. These people deliberate together on an issue, often face to face, then make recommendations.
The Environment Agency, UK, (EA) is a large and complex non-departmental public body with more than 11,000 staff in offices throughout England. EA implement the regulations and environmental standards set by government, to protect and enhance England's natural environment.
EA has a well-established process for formal consultation, but with the onset of climate change and the associated complex responsibilities for protecting the environment, they recognised the need for a more collaborative and deliberative method of engaging with the public. EA chose to set up citizens’ juries as a method for informing long-term policy.
The approach
The Environment Agency formed three juries to ask for input on water policies. They centred around three watercourses: the River Ouseburn (North East), River Wharfe (Yorkshire) and the Thames Valley (Chilterns). Although the juries were invite-only, EA was keen to ensure that everyone could see the recommendations they made and the information that led them there. They therefore set up an information page on Citizen Space for each jury, plus an overview page. After the events concluded there remained a record of processes followed, and a place to publish follow-up actions.
The EA use Citizen Space as a virtual information board frequently. They set up the page in the same way as they would to open a consultation, but remove the call to action at the bottom where respondents would usually click through to a response form.
Using Citizen Space as a virtual information board was an ideal approach for EA’s citizens’ juries for a couple of reasons. Having all of EA’s democratic activity on a single site is convenient for people to find and for admins to manage. And having the juries’ recommendations and contextual info in the public domain is good practice, and fosters transparency and accountability. Citizen Space is sufficiently versatile to host all kinds of participatory democracy exercises, and its simple subscription pricing keeps costs predictable.
The results
Using Citizen Space as a virtual information board was an ideal approach for EA's citizens' juries for a couple of reasons. Having all of EA's democratic activity on a single site is convenient for people to find and for admins to manage. And having the juries' recommendations and contextual info in the public domain is good practice, and fosters transparency and accountability.
Citizen Space is sufficiently versatile to host all kinds of participatory democracy exercises, and its simple subscription pricing keeps costs predictable.
Delib is a govtech leader specialising in consultation and engagement, trusted by over 600 government organisations worldwide, including major planning projects. Since 2004, we've been building secure, accessible digital platforms to make participation simpler, fairer, and more inclusive. Our flagship product, Citizen Space, was built in collaboration with the UK government and has supported more than 11 million responses across over 110,000 democratic activities.