Introduction

Citizens can and should play an important role in Integrated Coastal Management (ICM) processes and participate in ensuring and maintaining sustainability. The purpose of ICM is to ensure an effective science-policy interface that leads to more sustainable outcomes. In this regard, it falls under the umbrella of international environmental governance. Whilst many steps have been taken over the decades to consult with and involve citizens and stakeholders in developing public policy, professionals (used in this text to refer to all those qualified in a profession) still struggle with the concept of collaborative decision-making that allows the public to inform, influence and implement decisions. Collaborative decision-making allows citizens, professionals, experts (referring to those skilled in a particular activity/science field) and managers to work together, thus giving ‘ownership’ of the project and hence, responsibility for the implementation and outcomes to all concerned. This contributes to sustainability, which often requires behavioural change by the community and stakeholders.

The Systems Approach Framework (SAF) was developed to provide a structure for ICM that guides a holistic process to address complex systems for scenario simulations to support potential policy (Støttrup et al. submitted; this issue). The SAF draws on a multidisciplinary approach to integrate environmental, social and economic aspects (Hopkins et al. 2011; Reis 2014; Støttrup et al. submitted; this issue) and enables monitoring and evaluation in a dynamic, iterative process. It seeks to create an enabling environment, which provides opportunities for people to become involved and work collaboratively to achieve better ecosystem based outcomes. The framework needs to encompass the transition to (and provide the structure and tools for) genuine collaborative decision-making.

Application of the SAF has demonstrated both strengths and limitations (Hopkins et al. 2012). Model-based scenario simulations that integrate ecological, social and economic data provide a strong basis for interaction with stakeholders as well as for sustainable policy making that also satisfy the needs of the public. Notable limitations include political timelines threatening a project (Dinesen et al. 2011) as well as practitioners not being conversant and knowledgeable enough about identifying appropriate stakeholders or encapsulating citizen involvement at all stages of a project (Støttrup et al. 2017). One sectorial approaches to resolving a problem were shown to be unsustainable. This included considering economic costs for one sector only as was shown for several re-analysed case studies by Støttrup et al. (2017) or environmental elements for one species only as shown for the re-analyses of the cormorant management (Andersen 2016). Failure to consider from the outset the potential impact of large cormorant populations on their prey (fish in coastal areas) raised a new issue with the fishermen. Application of the SAF needs to include what is arguably the most important aspect of all: the citizen.

Across all disciplines, be they social, political, environmental, economic or civic, there is growing concern about the lack of trust in ‘experts’. Lukensmeyer (2013) draws our attention to significant systemic failures across governance processes and structures which have resulted in the fundamental trust between citizens and their government being broken. She argues that a highly functioning democracy requires a commitment to building the infrastructure that will support and sustain genuine and vigorous citizen engagement practices. Professionals strive to improve citizen confidence by adopting innovative approaches to include the public for more sustainable outcomes. As Carson (2011) argues, “citizens are capable of being collectively responsible for resolving wicked problems. They can help make difficult decisions together”.

People want to be taken seriously. We expect citizens to change their behaviours to conform to policy and sustainability objectives. Yet, without citizen ‘buy-in’, it is difficult to achieve the behavioural change necessary to lead to better ecosystem sustainable outcomes. The implications of engaging stakeholders within the SAF have not been fully understood and are still not an integral part of the ICM process. For this reason, there needs to be a coherent approach to public participation that is appropriate (this means that consultative processes are not “one size fits all”, but tailored to address the complexity and contentiousness of an issue), timely, genuinely inclusive and moves beyond planning and decision-making to implementation and validation. Validation is a new concept within the SAF, which is useful in highly contentious and complex issues to ensure decisions reached in an often long-drawn process end up being accounted for in implementation.

This paper aims to strengthen public participation within the structure of the SAF. Public participation and community engagement encapsulate all interested and affected parties, including the ‘citizen’ and ‘stakeholder’. The term ‘citizen’ is used here to focus attention on a broad stakeholder profiling to include members of the general public whose ‘buy-in’ is necessary for sustainable outcomes. The knowledge is gained from empirical observations and experiences during SAF applications and while working at a high level in governance. It sets out the reasons why it is so necessary to change the way projects are managed and decisions taken. Accordingly, this paper identifies: (i) the need for genuine public participation, exploring the drivers for change; (ii) the importance of public participation to achieve sustainable outcomes; and (iii) provides guidelines for a genuine iterative process of public participation within a SAF. These guidelines contain a series of steps: (i) the discovery phase (Issue Identification); (ii) the planning phase (System Design); (iii) integrating knowledge (System Formulation); (iv) decision-making (System Assessment); and (v) implementation considerations (Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation). It then introduces the aspect of (vi) validation, which is one of the new actions in the Implementation step.

Need for genuine public participation: the drivers for change

In a healthy democratic society, all people have the right – and the responsibility – to express their views of the world around them and shape the society they live in. Considerable technological, economic, environmental and social transformations have greatly influenced interaction between citizens and their government. These include:

The changing role of government

In today’s highly complex world, neither government nor the ‘experts’ it consults have the resources, knowledge and expertise to influence or solve all issues independently. Governance processes have become multi-layered and more complex as they seek to enhance the quality of life and experiences of diverse citizens and stakeholders. Healey (2006) argues that the issue of governance capacity relates not merely to how the vertical and horizontal relations of government are articulated. It also relates to the relations between government, the economy and the wider society, especially given the scale of transformations in both economic activity and social-cultural ways of thinking and acting in recent decades. Over the past decades, governance has diffused with many layers. These include state, and regional governments, local councils or equivalents and the growth of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) (Salamon 2011). This is also observed in ICM issues where local problems are complicated to deal with because management takes place at national or international levels (Dinesen et al. submitted; this issue). The corporate sector has moved beyond financial and economic reporting with Triple Bottom-line reporting that also includes the social and the environmental aspects of their business (Drucker 2017; Birch 2002). In recognition of the fact that all layers of government and all sectors are intertwined and impact upon each other, governments have become more involved in ‘steering’ than in ‘rowing’. Governments now oversee projects (steer/outsource) rather than carry out the work themselves (row). As a result, there is growing appreciation of the need to adopt a more collaborative approach to decision-making that involves stakeholders and citizens who can provide creative and constructive input and oversight at all stages of a project across all jurisdictions including ICM processes.

Changing social expectations

Past practice of public consultation have sometimes been little more than exercises in public relations rather than a genuine commitment to educate and involve the public as to the issues and challenges on hand. People have become disillusioned with the political process, distrustful of governments’ responses to their concerns and cynical about ‘traditional decision-making’. This is amply demonstrated in Europe with regard to the migration crisis (Castles 2011), the recent Brexit vote (Garton Ash 2017a, b) and, in America, the election of Donald Trump (Garton Ash 2016). Whilst these examples are the global context, their ramifications echo through all layers of society to the local levels. There is increasing demand for people’s concerns to be taken seriously, for effectiveness and efficiency, greater accountability and transparency, and for a better co-ordinated approach to service delivery and problem solving. Recognition of these trends and drivers has seen dramatic changes in governance (Salamon 2011). However, evolving new governance processes takes time — to explore, to think, to learn, to struggle, to diffuse (Healey 2006). Faludi (2000) points to the complexity of decision-making when he draws our attention to the fact that what is important is not whether outcomes conform to intentions but rather whether the plan performs well in the subsequent communicative process. In his words: “It requires looking in detail at the decisions and actions of the groups to whom a plan addresses its messages and to establish whether, and to what extent, they have taken the messages on board.” This implies a micro-analysis of decision processes that involve people in an iterative and dynamic communicative process. Changes evolve in many small ways as governments around the world commit to a more inclusive approach, which acknowledges that communities and citizens have valuable local knowledge and experiences. Citizens have a direct interest in the outcome of decision-making, as they are often the most affected by these decisions. Furthermore, it is up to them, in many instances, to ensure that change is sustainable.

Emerging technologies

Technological developments, and especially the advent of social media, have revolutionized the way we interact and communicate, resulting in citizens being better informed as they have access to a wide range of information from a variety of sources. These technologies should also facilitate greater communication and collaboration between government and its citizens and enable transparency and accountability in decision-making. This is an important development which provides valuable opportunities for governments not only to be more transparent and responsive but also more inclusive and hence to increase trust in the systems and processes of governance. Lukensmeyer (2013) argues that a highly functioning democracy requires a commitment to building the required infrastructure. There is no doubt that technology is one of the aspects of infrastructure that need to be addressed to support and sustain genuine and vigorous citizen engagement practices.

Public participation has one main goal, which is to bring people together – citizens, community, business, project managers, politicians, experts and stakeholders thus diminishing the so-called “democratic deficit” (Hindess 2002). ‘Democratic deficit’ refers to an insufficient level of democracy in political institutions and procedures in comparison with a theoretical ideal of a democratic government. The purpose is to deliberate and interact to achieve results that are of benefit to all parties. However, the deliberation process must be inclusive and unconstrained with rational, free and equal dialogue to be truly deliberative in the theoretical sense, which may not always be achieved in deliberation processes (Crowley 2009). With growing awareness of the benefits and advantages that come from working together more collaboratively, policies and programs are developed, which are better informed, collaborative and ultimately more likely to gain broad community acceptance, ensuring sustainability.

The importance of public participation to achieve sustainable outcomes

The recognition that greater interaction between disciplines was necessary for more sustainable outcomes has evolved over many decades. It is not within the scope of this paper to look at the implementation of sustainability, but rather to follow its articulation over time. Bookchin (1982) conceptualised social ecology as a critical theory that integrates environmental, social and economic aspects for sustainable management. Whilst the interaction of these elements has undergone numerous iterations over the last decades, the conceptual model for sustainability as the integration of the three spheres has remained unchanged, and the active participation of civil society in attaining sustainability is not included, thus weakening the potential for sustainable outcomes.

Public Participation has been a topic that has been gaining worldwide attention affecting and influencing modern forms of governance. Citizens increasingly demand a greater say in what goes on around them and this has seen the growth of a plethora of civil society organisations that deal with citizen engagement such as the IAP2 (https://www.iap2.org/). There is ample literature on the growing importance of public participation in all aspects and levels of society. For example, Funtowicz and Ravetz (1993) argue that the activity of science now encompasses the management of irreducible uncertainties in knowledge and in ethics, and the recognition of different legitimate perspectives and ways of knowing. They argue that practice is becoming more akin to the workings of a democratic society, characterized by extensive participation and toleration of diversity. Healey (2006) explores the complexity of urban regional dynamics, arguing for a new and more inclusive governance model which recognises a broad and multiple conception of ‘citizen’ and ‘stakeholder’. Furthermore, more recently, Zivkovic (2017) argues that educating for sustainability to create systemic change necessitates public participation in decision-making and a partnership approach to problem solving. Obviously, this needs to take place at global, national and local levels. Participation has become an integral element in sustainable development for international environmental governance (Pavlova 2017). Thus, whether one needs to manage a coastal issue in an integrated approach, or other challenges such as Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) or implementation of directives such as the Water Framework Directive (WFD) and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), public participation needs to be incorporated. The level of engagement applied relates to the issue, and not location or theme, and allows for cultural differences.

Public involvement presents both opportunities and threats. This was demonstrated in the re-analysis of several ICM processes in the Baltic Sea Region, such as coastal realignment and lagoon restoration in Geltinger Birk, Germany (Schernewski et al. 2017a), coastal realignment and nature restoration at Markgrafenheide Hütelmoor, Germany (Schernewski et al. 2017b) and cormorant management at EU and national level (Andersen 2016). These cases were prolonged, contentious and gave rise to new issues and all would have benefitted from the structured SAF approach. The SAF framework provides a structure for an ICM process with an effective science-public policy interface that embraces the challenge of tackling complex systems and addressing issues with the active input of citizens from the onset of a project.

Whilst there is a need to recognise the complexity of a world of interactions and outcomes occurring at multiple levels, sometimes a simple model captures enough of the core underlying trends - in the case of this paper, the importance of collaborative decision-making, especially in complex issues. For example, Fig. 1 demonstrates the shift from coerciveness to delegation and responsiveness towards a more collaborative approach in citizen-government interaction and decision-making (Vigoda 2002).

Fig. 1
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Map of the evolution of the role of citizens as subjects to citizens as partners (continuum 1), governance and public administration from rulers to partners (continuum 2) and simultaneously the type of interactions from coerciveness to collaboration (redrawn from Vigoda 2002)

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As citizens became more aware of governance issues, a move towards organised interest groups (Civil Society Organisations [CSO]s) and nongovernmental organizations (NGO)s that people belong to for social and political reasons has taken place over the past decades. These groups coalesce around certain issues and demand not only a place in decision-making but also the direction of society. One result of this development has been a paradigm shift from a managerial model with a focus on “outputs” to a partnership model with a focus on “outcomes”. “Outputs” measure production by managers, whereas “outcomes” measure the impact of the production, which often entails the involvement of other stakeholders and citizens. Faludi (2000) draws our attention to the fact that we must look beyond outcomes to how the process itself improves the understanding of decision-makers of present and future problems they face. Hence, outcomes should not be set in concrete but should evolve in relation to a dynamic and inclusive iterative consultative process. This further reinforces the importance of ongoing public participation. A new sustainability model (Fig. 2) is therefore required that goes beyond the traditional three spheres of sustainability to include a governance context.

Fig. 2
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A New Sustainability Framework. This goes beyond the three spheres of sustainability to include public participation, which requires good governance and frameworks for citizen engagement

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A civil society is about people, and people therefore need to be at the centre of any model. Whilst the integration of the social, the environmental and the economic goals lead to more sustainable outcomes, these should be embedded in robust governance with openness, transparency and public participation (Newton et al. 2012; Clark 2015) states that “sustainable development is about all of us. Achieving it requires us to re-examine how we live, work, consume, carry out our lives, build our industries and run our governments.” However, the dominant interpretation of sustainability as an incrementalist policy strategy that yields to the primacy of the market in addressing our collective problems places certain constraints on arrangements for public involvement (Geczi 2007). Often public participation practices and frameworks fail to adequately account for the inequalities on the democratic process. What we need are models of democratic engagement that can attend to issues of justice and inclusion in public participation in sustainability decisions. Sustainable development requires whole of government approaches to economic, social, and environmental policies. Indeed this has become Goal 16 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that world leaders adopted at the United Nations. This Goal calls for responsive, inclusive, participatory, and representative decision-making at all levels (UN Sustainable Development Summit, 2015: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/summit, accessed 10.01.2018).

Guidelines for a genuine iterative process of public participation

As has been argued in this paper, community and public participation is about better-informed decision-making and shared responsibility for policy and programme development. The traditional approach to decision-making of the industrial society has often relied on marketing, where the use of lobbying and ‘spin’ to get a particular message across to achieve a specific outcome may be used, or techniques such as open consultations where the written public responses may or may not influence the final decision. This paternalistic approach, where decisions were taken without community participation, has often resulted in time and resources being spent to defend a decision from ensuing protests (Schernewski et al. 2017a, b). A robust community engagement process that genuinely engages with citizens and stakeholders, builds understanding and capacity and ensures an improved flow of knowledge to inform decision- and policy-making (Crowley 2009; Lukensmeyer 2013). Whilst simplistic, Fig. 3 emphasises the importance of ‘mutual’ education and capacity building in consultative processes.

Fig. 3
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Transition to an inclusive decision-making model.

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When changes will affect the natural environment and the rights and quality of life of citizens, one must consider the level of public consultation required, drawing on various consultation tools to inform debates, dialogues and deliberations and for engaging effectively with citizens (Robinson 2002; Guimarães Pereira and Funtowicz 2006).

Profiling the community identifies the stakeholders and citizens including their background, knowledge and interests. It also involves regional knowledge and the historical development of an issue. Where there are strongly held competing views and interests, and information around an issue is complex, one should engage SAF at the earliest stage possible. The following phases describe the stakeholder engagement aspect of SAF (see Fig. 4 – description of SAF steps relevant to stakeholder interaction).

Fig. 4
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The Systems Approach Framework (SAF) with descriptions of the stakeholder interaction at each step

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The discovery phase (issue identification)

In most cases that arise, one of the major initial steps is a feasibility study, traditionally looking at environmental, economic and other technical considerations. Following a SAF, this stage of the process now involves a period of research, mapping and scoping to develop a fuller understanding of the issue(s), implications and social impacts. The SAF provides a list of tasks that need to be conducted with supporting tools to ensure a comprehensive feasibility study (Støttrup et al. submitted). This process will highlight who could best lead the consultation, such as an agency, a community steering group, a peak body or independent facilitators.

Particular attention should be paid to profile the community to ensure that all potential stakeholders are involved. It should be noted that the term ‘stakeholder’ is being used in a generic sense to describe all those interested in or affected by a decision, those causing the problem and those that may be affected by the status quo or any changes. Newton and Elliott (2016) describe a stakeholder as “a person, organisation or group with an interest (professional or societal) or an influence on the environment or who is influenced directly or indirectly by activities and management decisions.” Stakeholders may include lobby groups, local governments, NGOs, interest groups, community representatives and individual citizens who wish to debate and consider the issues and contribute to the decision-making process. One example of how stakeholders can be inadvertently left out was demonstrated in the cormorant management process, where omission of specific tasks within the Issue Identification step resulted in an incomplete mapping of activities concerned and thus exclusion of some relevant stakeholders (Andersen 2016). This was evident at the local, national and international levels and resulted in new issues arising leading to prolonged debates lasting decades. It is also important to consider who will be affected if a project does not go ahead. An example of this was protest over the upgrade of a road to a highway in Perth, Western Australia (C. Gillgren, personal observations). Without this upgrade, trucks belching exhaust were travelling down an alternative stretch of road, which contained three schools, two of which were primary schools.

In identifying stakeholders, the following questions may provide guidelines for establishing the stakeholder group: (i) what is the problem/issue; (ii) how did it arise (history); (iii) who might be affected by the issue (negatively or positively); (iv) who might be affected if nothing is done about the issue; and (v) which interest/lobby groups are likely to be impacted. In addition, ecosystem goods and services for that locality/area/region should be listed, and the governance structure should be mapped to ensure comprehensive inclusion of all relevant stakeholders. In some ICM processes, as the issue develops the Issue ID Step needs to be iterated to recognise potential new groups that become relevant to the issue. It is also important to acknowledge the varying levels of public engagement depending on the complexity of the issue(s), the level of the technical evidence based risk (hazard), and the different community perspectives and perceptions (outrage) (Sandman 1987; Robinson 2002).

Some participants may wish to be highly involved throughout the process, or may already be known to the senior managers or government bodies and actively communicating in some form or other (Fig. 5). The “concerned” may be academics, informed observers or community leaders that rate the problem/issue as important. “Watchers” are those participants that read about the issue and follow developments. They may want to be informed but may not engage directly. Finally, the “general public” represent those citizens who had no opportunity, or lacked support or skills to engage with the issue. Credible community and stakeholder engagement often turns a group of sometimes-isolated individuals into a strong and vibrant community working towards the achievement of a shared goal. Transparency and openness will build confidence in the process and halt the migration of “general public”/“watchers”/“concerned” into the “highly involved” as citizen trust is built.

Fig. 5
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Stakeholder level and development of engagement

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Once the stakeholders have been identified, it is useful to explore their previous participation experience as this may affect their attitude to the process. It is important to recognise: (i) the impact of minority viewpoints if not dealt with respectfully at the start of the process; (ii) conflict points and contentious issues and; (iii) acknowledge risks and manage expectations by being clear about the parameters of consultation, which may result in questions of legitimacy of those established parameters. Various tools exist that can be used at the first stakeholder meeting to map their concerns and list preferences (Pinarbaşı et al. 2017). The Stakeholder Preference and Planning Tool (Schumacher et al. 2018), which was developed to serve as a supporting tool for the SAF: (i) allows stakeholders to express what is important to them; (ii) provides a clear structure for discussions to gain a common understanding of a problem and develop agreed success criteria; and (iii) helps to guide a discussion systematically and reduce dominance of single stakeholders /stakeholder groups therein, and hence leading to more transparent and efficient discussions.

It is advisable to use professional facilitators at engagement events, especially when addressing highly contentious issues. Where a certain view is fixed in one direction, the proponents can be brought in as experts to argue their case. Working together with stakeholders, agreement can often be reached on goals and processes. A clear objective ensures that the questions to be addressed take into account the wider context surrounding an issue or challenge and allows for innovative alternative solutions. For example, a consultative process in Perth (Western Australia) on constructing a new power generation plant ended up in the plant not being built because community expectations were more focused on programs to cut electricity usage and alternative power generation technologies than on mere capacity increase (C. Gillgren, personal observations). Today, in hindsight, this was a well-thought out strategy as a powerhouse that was under pressure to increase power production a decade or so ago is now often underutilised in off-peak periods.

It is often a challenging task to reach consensus on goals and solutions and one constructive way forward is to identify key success criteria and indicators for social, environmental and economic targets at the outset of the project. This can be done using a tool such as the Stakeholder Preference and Planning Tool (Schumacher et al. 2018), and can be revisited to guide stakeholder involvement throughout the ICM process. The solutions are embedded in the scenarios chosen to be simulated, and the discussion of these evolves from the stakeholder interactions throughout the SAF phases of System Design, System Formulation and System Assessment. Once there is agreement of the goals, it is time to decide on the process and timing.

The planning phase (system design)

Raising the public’s understanding and awareness of the technical/ scientific aspects that will impact on an issue not only builds bridges of respect and consideration but also promotes broader ‘ownership’ of the problem, and hence of the solution. The SAF’s inclusion of stakeholders builds on this form of collaborative decision-making being made by managers, scientists and stakeholders working together, and enhances the power-governance structure (Dinesen et al. 2011; Melaku Canu et al. 2011; Konstantinou et al. 2012). During the System Design, stakeholder groups are engaged in the development of the conceptual model and sub-models. This ensures that local knowledge on processes and data not publicly available can be procured and incorporated in the models while ensuring anonymity (e.g. see Dinesen et al. 2011).

Integrating knowledge (system formulation)

Running the sub-models with the relevant stakeholder groups during System Formulation confirms that the output reflects the “real world” of the stakeholders and in doing so gains their confidence in the model outputs (e.g. Timmermann et al. 2014). This encourages their commitment when discussing results of scenario simulations later on in the process. It also entails a certain ownership of the outcome, a higher compliance and “defence” of the standards achieved. The stakeholder engagement during the System Design, System Formulation and System Assessment increases the social capital as they become aware of the complexity of the system, and more knowledgeable on the processes involved.

Decision-making (system assessment)

Reflective practice is an important success factor in decision-making. The SAF provides ample opportunity for this through the discussion of outcomes of scenario simulations of different management options. Furthermore, this ensures that the process is dynamic and is bound to raise new challenges as often as it solves old problems. It also becomes a process of continuous learning for all parties building more trust in public institutions, governance and decision-making. At this point, it is useful to revisit the success criteria and re-evaluate, with the stakeholders, the continued relevance and importance of these criteria. With the Stakeholder Preference and Planning Tool, changes in preference can be mapped and incorporated. The criteria can then be adjusted accordingly, where some may seem less or more relevant. This ensures social learning and flexible, iterative, responsive and effective community participation. It also contributes to a better understanding of the processes involved in the issue(s) to enable informed discussions on scenario simulation results of potential management options in line with the social, environmental and economic criteria that were established.

Implementation considerations (SAF: implementation, monitoring and evaluation)

A vital step in building social capital is to set out clearly how the decisions will be implemented and how the community will be able to assess that the outcomes do indeed reflect the values and key social, environmental and economic indicators identified throughout the public participation process. Good public policy serves the community of interests. As Walters et al. (2000) state: “Public policy requires attention to both technical constraints and public preference. Citizens provide guidance to expert analysts about the direction of public policy through their experiences, preferences, and values. Failure to include the public in the decision-making process deprives decision-makers of valuable input and compromises legitimacy”. In the SAF, considerable effort goes into scoping, mapping and carrying out a public participation process.

Validation (implementation)

The Implementation step should take into account the fact that the public has become wary of hard-fought for decisions being ‘put aside’ for a variety of reasons, such as for instance unforeseen technical/scientific issues that may arise during a process. For this reason, modern public participation processes increasingly include ongoing validation. Validation is a new concept within the SAF. It is particularly useful in highly contentious and complex issues to ensure decisions reached in an often long drawn process end up being accounted for in Implementation. It is the assessment of an action, decision, plan, or transaction to establish that it is: (i) correct; (ii) complete; (iii) being implemented (and/or recorded) as intended; and (iv) delivering the intended outcome. This means that the group involved in the process now focuses on the task of ensuring that objectives, values and targets arrived at through the ICM process find their way into the actual implementation of the decision/s arrived at through the process. For example, the State Government of Western Australia was faced with a general teachers’ strike in 2007 over the introduction of new curriculum across all courses of study taught in secondary schools. To address this issue, teacher juries were set up for each subject with jury participants randomly selected from the teacher cohort for each subject by the Electoral Commission of Western Australia. The juries then went over each curriculum proposal and ruled as to what they considered the best way forward for students. These jury results were then relayed to the Curriculum Council of Western Australia for implementation. Once the curricula were amended according to jury outcomes, then each jury was transformed into a Validation jury to ensure that the changes were as intended by each jury. The key factor in this process was that the teachers were so mistrustful of the Curriculum Council policy makers and Government that they were not ready to call off the strike and participate unless there were assurances that the final outcome was acceptable to teachers of each subject. The appointment of an Independent Consultant (C. Gillgren, personal observations) was not sufficient to address the lack of trust. The issue had turned so ugly that selected teacher jurors were being threatened about participating in the process. To address this, a meeting of teachers was set up. The full consultative process was laid out and the Validation Stage introduced. This assured the participants that they had the final say. The teachers subsequently engaged in what turned out to be a highly successful exercise that went a long way to restoring trust among the players (Gillgren 2007, 2008). In this example, validation proved to be an invaluable tool to getting people with highly polarised positions to the deliberation and negotiation table to work out a solution for the common good. Validation takes the focus away from individuals - and the personal - and instead channels the focus to a robust process that participants can commit to. This stage can be useful to the SAF in similar situations.

Consultation fatigue arises when those involved in a process over a long period find that their contributions are ignored at the final stages. The SAF can be strengthened with inclusion of validation within the Implementation step. Validation should be conducted together with stakeholders, especially in contentious and complex issues.

One of the most important determinants in successful decision-making and on-going participation is the level of openness throughout the process. With the advent of internet and social media, it is now easier than ever to track the input, deliberation and responses that go into an ICM process from the very start right through to the final implementation stages. On-going community involvement in validation builds trust in the systems and processes of government. It addresses consultation fatigue as stakeholders and citizens alike can witness how their input contributed to the final decisions. It promotes greater respect both for the professionals whether they are scientists, engineers, health or other professionals and for the knowledge that the public have about their environment and the way they wish to live their lives. This has been amply demonstrated in many parts of the world, such as the growing “Imagine” projects (http://www.imaginechicago.org/global_projects.html, accessed 15.08.2017). One example is the Imagine Chicago project where a whole-of-community approach was taken to shape public space or to address issues in their community (Browne 2004).

Conclusions

With citizens becoming increasingly more confident about their rights and responsibilities, a deliberative form of democracy is one of the most powerful ways to challenge and overturn the growing cynicism and lack of trust in politicians and public institutions, which is corrosive to healthy democracy. However, for public participation to thrive and provide benefits there needs to be a robust form of governance, with a commitment to transparency, accountability and open government at its core to ensure sustainable outcomes.

While the SAF provides a structure for the ICM process of identifying and engaging stakeholders, its application has demonstrated the need to understand the shift from “outputs” to” outcomes” and the importance of a shift from a managerial to a collaborative approach with a genuine stakeholder engagement embedded in every stage of the process. The application of the SAF has shown weaknesses in acknowledging that decision-making is a collaborative effort between all parties and not a domain of managers. Furthermore, inclusion of a Validation phase (within the Implementation step) to complement the Monitoring and Evaluation step in the SAF ensures stakeholder and citizen trust in a credible process. Ownership of issues and challenges by all stakeholders lead to greater ownership of solutions, hence improved compliance and enhanced sustainability.

Communities and societies are not static. As outlined in this paper, governance dynamics are constantly on the move. It is therefore important that the SAF continues to evolve and is effectivity monitored to reflect the current realities that require citizen and stakeholder input and ‘buy-in’ in decision-making, and thus contribute to nurturing healthy, functioning democracy.