• Community engagement in context
  • Community engagement - an overview
  • Community engagement in a representative democracy
  • Key challenges for the public sector
  • Implications for public sector managers
  • The context for engagement
  • Clues to good community engagement
• Planning CE
  • Community engagement and the policy/planning cycle
  • Project goals
  • When is engagement necessary?
  • Community engagement objectives
  • Community research
    • Media research
    • Community profiling
    • Community segmentation
    • Community and issues analysis
  • Key communication messages
  • Selection of engagement techniques
  • Managing risk
  • Evaluation planning
  • Planning transition and exit strategies
• Implementing CE
  • Working with communities
  • Organisational culture
  • Resourcing
  • Structures and processes
  • Continuity and follow up
  • Representation and control
  • Coordination
  • Other issues
  • Embedding good practice
• Methods
  • Overview of methods
  • Methods of information-sharing
  • Methods for consultation and deliberation
  • Methods for active participation
  • Advanced participative methodologies
  • Choosing an engagement method
• Event management
  • Event engagement processes
  • Choosing a facilitator
  • Structuring the event
• Evaluating CE
  • Introduction to evaluation
  • Principles of evaluation
  • Identifying outputs and outcomes
  • Purpose and approach to evaluation
  • Evaluation criteria and indicators
  • Methods of measuring community engagement
  • Steps in evaluating community engagement
• Risk management
  • Identifying risks
  • Assessing risk
  • Managing external risks
  • Managing internal risks
  • Risk assessment and management plan
• Skills
  • Community engagement skills profile
  • Options for skills development
  • Building the skills of your team

Implications for public sector managers

Community engagement is not a fad but a deliberate international trend to improve government projects, programs, policies and the delivery of government services and ultimately the quality of democratic life. There is an increasing expectation that managers will have high-level community engagement skills, particularly when they are working in regional areas or in ‘direct to community’ roles.

Implications of community engagement for public sector managers include:

• Providing access to better information about how your services are benefiting the communities and citizens you serve
• An expectation that the community will be kept informed and included in policy and program decision-making
• A need to create linkages between what is happening at the local or regional level and what is happening at a whole-of-government level
• Shorter lead times on delivering community engagement events, which means having ideas about planning, implementing and evaluating community engagement approaches at your fingertips
• The need for you to identify opportunities for collaboration and to overcome barriers in order to work with other agencies, to reduce duplication of community engagement activities and increase collaboration
• An expectation that you will disseminate the results of community engagement events and activities so that they can be built into policy making, planning and implementation
• The need for you and your team to have good community engagement skills and for community engagement skills to be embedded in agency systems and processes, including human resource management activities such as recruitment processes and the preparation of position descriptions.