• 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

Representation and control

Community engagement opens up agencies to a greater obligation to respond to communities. Yet agencies must also retain the basic democratic principle of equity – making decisions for the overall good of all and not being seen to favour one group over another. The overall public good can supersede what specific stakeholders or communities value. Water allocation and vegetation management are examples of trade-offs where government is struggling to balance general societal outcomes with the goals of interest groups. A great deal of management effort is often needed to convey this understanding to communities and negotiate the expected outcomes of engagement.

Key questions	Tips for good management
Who represents the community or particular stakeholders? What are the dynamics between stakeholders? What are the expectations of communities? How will communities exert control?	Community analysis will outline community representation. Consider the power dynamics of communities. Openly discuss the negotiables and non-negotiables. Communicate clearly and openly with communities.

• Who represents the community in engagement processes? Agencies need to balance the legitimacy of community leaders and stakeholder organisations with the popular legitimacy that comes from broad community participation.
• Who has control? Ultimately the government has control over decisions about public benefits and public resources that arise from engagement. Agencies generally need Ministerial support to be able to delegate power and value community input, while retaining control over decisions with public implications.
• Community engagement suggests the involvement of as many citizens as possible. Yet many citizens are unable or unwilling to be involved in a particular issue. Agencies need to manage the extent to which they act on the issues expressed by the motivated few, or spend effort engaging the broader community.
• Engagement plans need to include more than a town or district – a “community of place”. Managers also need to consider communities and sub-communities with different interests within physical locations.
• Engagement sometimes changes traditional power bases. By engaging certain people or groups within the community, government may potentially and at times inadvertently raise the profile of those groups and individuals. You must take care to work with a wide cross-section from the community and to respond to changing dynamics.