Complete Guide

This guide will assist local authorities in developing and implementing two-way communication processes to solicit and respond to public feedback on shared policy priorities. It is primarily intended for elected officials and staff representatives of local authorities, but it should also be useful to local civil society and citizen associations, as well as anyone interested in solving local problems with public input.

A feedback loop is a mechanism for local leaders to engage in two-way communications with community residents to support informed and responsive decision-making about local issues. The process is straightforward:

• Reach out to residents to identify and set priorities (Listen).
• Work with citizens to codesign solutions to address identified priorities or challenges (Respond).
• Keep residents updated every step of the way, even if the only update is about a new obstacle or slower-than-hoped progress (Report). 

This guide offers a ten-step model for local authorities to design and implement the feedback loop process and, hopefully, to review and build upon successes and lessons learned to institutionalize the process as a regular practice for repeated use.

This guide emerged from the National Democratic Institute’s (NDI’s) years of experience implementing citizen engagement programs in collaboration with subnational government leaders and community members worldwide. In particular, this guide draws on NDI’s experience supporting feedback loops and two-way dialogues among local mayors, council members and community residents in towns and cities in Moldova, Georgia, Mexico, El Salvador and Slovakia. The steps in the guide also apply best practices from a growing community of activists and leaders implementing more participatory decision-making processes around the world.

In a democracy, elected public officials, supported by unelected officials (like city managers) and professional civil servants, are mandated with managing public affairs to improve the public welfare. This job becomes easier when public officials understand and respond to residents’ priorities. The feedback loop model is therefore a useful and empirically verifiable tool in a local leader’s public engagement toolbox. By systematically bringing citizen input into decision-making and requiring leaders to follow up on commitments to take action openly and transparently, the process strengthens democratic norms and practices, benefits residents and helps local leaders to address complex challenges and manage public expectations.

This guide will assist subnational governments,¹ referred to throughout as “local authorities,” in planning and implementing a feedback loop with the ultimate aim of institutionalizing the process as a regular part of policymaking and implementation. Completing the first loop allows local authorities to identify effective strategies and adapt for future iterations. By entrenching a tailored approach to two-way dialogue into the regular policy process, feedback loops can help local authorities to better fulfill their mandates and build relationships between elected and unelected officials and residents between election cycles. 

By centering local authority representatives as the drivers and leaders of the process, this guide contributes to the already-extensive global discussion of feedback loops, which currently centers primarily on civil society-driven approaches. Such civil society-centered feedback loops are studied, designed and implemented by organizations such as Feedback Labs, Accountability Labs and People Powered.² This guide, in comparison, learns from these endeavors to offer detailed guidance on how reformers and pro-accountability actors within government can proactively (ideally in partnership with civil society) implement, learn from and institutionalize the process. 

Therefore, this guide will be of greatest relevance to a local authority and community that wants to “do politics differently,” engaging residents more inclusively; it is designed for those with a small administrative team, limited technological and technical capacities, and generally limited resources, such as staff, money and time. 

The process proposed in this guide must be led by local authority officials (meaning elected representatives, appointed officials and bureaucrats, and administrative staff) and their respective agencies, bodies or institutions. However, this guide may also be useful to civil society groups, activists and residents interested in collaborating with local authorities to solve problems through feedback loops, including by enhancing two-way communication and community-driven policymaking in their communities. 

Note: This process differs from feedback loop processes in which civil society takes the lead. Nongovernmental actors will face added steps of securing government buy-in to undertake feedback loops (see Step 1); they should also play a role in monitoring the process (see NDI’s Political Process Monitoring guide for advice on this approach).⁴ For example, in the aftermath of the 2015 earthquake in Nepal, Accountability Labs and Local Interventions Group created Citizen Helpdesks (with donor funding) and enlisted volunteers to listen for information from citizens in remote areas about the conditions and what supplies and resources were needed. They relayed this information back to the government and established systems and methods for government information to reach communities. The government was then able to get resources to remote areas that were affected by the earthquake, and citizens were more informed about government actions and assistance. In this instance, civil society and international funding were fundamental to the initiation, design and implementation of the feedback loop, even though the government was involved as a collaborator. Would this feedback loop exist without civil society pressure? Perhaps not, as civil society “found very little effort to provide information to citizens and a high level of dissatisfaction with government” in a “control community” where Helpdesk activities did not occur.⁵

This is not to criticize civil society-led projects or to suggest that local authorities should not engage with them (indeed, the previous example resulted in benefits for local communities and government). This is only to point out a difference with the feedback loop efforts owned and led by local authorities put forward in this guide. Civil society can support or partner with local authorities in implementing the feedback loop, especially when resources are limited. In these instances, collaborative strategies aligning government reformers and collective action prove effective. Civil society engagement can play an important role in ensuring that outreach is inclusive and in holding the government accountable through regular updates to the public and “closing the feedback loop.” Thus, while government stakeholders are necessary for the feedback loop process, civil society and community members also have an important role to play. The guide identifies key moments when civil society and broader public engagement can help the local authority to improve the feedback loop process and promote more democratic outcomes by ensuring it is inclusive, accountable, participatory and transparent. 

Feedback loops enable government responsiveness: The process structures two-way communication for a local authority to listen, analyze and address the opinions, priorities and suggestions of community residents. Feedback loops are a form of ongoing dialogue between members of the public and local authority officials that drives stronger alignment between public priorities and government action to deliver on services, policies and programs. While processes vary, they help local leaders identify and address community needs and challenges (such as those related to specific services and infrastructure, or improvements to communication and consultation practices) in an iterative and participatory way.

Feedback loop processes should be intentionally participatory and inclusive.⁶ They begin with a decision by officials within a local authority to solicit public input to inform or guide governmental decision-making. This can be general decision-making (“We want to govern in a new way”) or a specific decision (“What should we do about this topic?”). The local authority then designs and implements a plan to collect public input to identify and order priorities, such as on necessary infrastructure improvements or the reform or expansion of services, within the scope of the local authority budget (as often some expense is required). To ensure the process is inclusive, the local authority should deliberately design its outreach to account for diverse communities that are hard to reach or usually underrepresented in decision-making. The government then compiles and analyzes responses and reports its findings to the public to validate the identified priorities. After this, the local authority leads a process to codesign solutions through iterative public dialogue. This results in concrete actions to be taken by the local authority, rooted in public preferences. The local authority then closes the feedback loop by providing regular updates to the public on the status of implementing the agreed actions toward the named priorities. 

In other words, the feedback loop approach is to Listen, Respond and Report: 

• Listen – Set priorities: Public feedback is collected and analyzed to identify citizen priorities in the community.
• Respond – Use dialogue to codesign solutions or navigate trade-offs: Once priorities have been identified, officials return to the public to validate priorities and codesign solutions.
• Report – Communicate updates: Throughout the process, the local authority should regularly communicate what it has heard from the public and be transparent about how data is used, the next steps and progress made toward resolving priorities. 

The feedback loop process is flexible, adaptable and scalable. The ten-step process offers a general framework that can be adapted based on context. Various public consultation and outreach methods make the process accessible and useful for local authorities from a variety of population sizes, resource bases and contexts. Specific methods must be chosen based on the local authority’s circumstances and the nature of the community, including available resources, technical skills and public communication preferences. 

The feedback loop framework is often deployed to support regular governmental processes such as annual budgeting; time-bound or ad hoc processes, such as planning specific public projects; and longer-term economic development planning. Public priorities are used to select particular objectives (often from a predetermined range of options, but they may also be open-ended). The feedback loop framework can also be used to conduct participatory evaluations of public programs and policies, where public input and resident feedback are used to qualitatively evaluate programs, such as student scholarship or economic grants programs, to improve the program’s design or implementation. Delivering on these priorities then becomes a measure of governance responsiveness. 

In some contexts, local authorities are obligated to engage in public participation processes – either under national or local laws, through development partnership agreements (as a requirement for European Union funding, for example), or other external frameworks and relationships. Where these obligations are present, a feedback loop helps local authorities meet these obligations and source residents’ priorities in an effective, participatory and accountable way that makes prioritization and decision-making easier and more responsive. 

A well-designed feedback process, carried out with commitment and seriousness by local authorities, prevents participatory exercises from being merely symbolic or tokenistic. Simulations of true engagement will only discourage citizen participation and increase public mistrust in local authorities and, potentially, democracy in general. Reformers constantly face this challenge; citizens may come to distrust participatory forums and consultations where there is no follow through, viewing them only as cynical “photo ops” where their contributions are not considered. Local authorities must establish genuine dialogue, rather than “information extraction,” which can be exploitative.

The word “loop” captures two key elements of the feedback loop framework: 

1. A loop must be closed. The process of priority setting, solution codesign, and transparent and regular public reporting is closed when the government reports on whether or not a priority has been achieved. At the end of the process, the local authority closes the loop by issuing an update to residents on progress made, or on how feedback was or was not used, and the reasons why.
2. A loop should be repeated. After the government has followed up with the public, administrators should convene to review the effectiveness of the closed feedback loop and decide on any improvements that could be made for the next process. The team should then plan to iterate the feedback loop process, whether for the same issue area, decision-making process or other governance sector. For example, if a given local budget cycle is annual, a loop for feedback on priorities for discretionary spending can be institutionalized to be repeated every year and hopefully improved across a set of indicators. Local authorities should also consider their first feedback loop as a pilot process and consider deploying similar techniques in other processes.

What are the benefits to local authorities of feedback loops?

Feedback loops have many demonstrated benefits. Evidence shows they can:

• Align decision-making with public priorities through data-driven and evidence-based planning and policymaking by ensuring that policy choices, resource allocations and service infrastructure are informed by public opinion.⁷ These processes inevitably involve trade-offs and can be contentious. When officials need to make controversial decisions and navigate trade-offs, a feedback loop can help officials to listen for strong evidence of the community’s priorities, balancing limited available resources against multiple, and often conflicting, public demands.⁸
• Engage community residents to solve local problems through proactive outreach and fostering people’s sense of feeling heard and valued in decision-making. Engaging residents to design or evaluate proposed solutions can build buy-in on a path forward and provide early warning about unworkable or deeply unpopular solutions.⁹ Through a feedback loop, residents can offer their suggestions to address local problems, learn more about their community’s needs and constraints that decision-makers face, and actively engage in government processes. Feedback loop processes can help inform citizens through dialogue events (Step 7), such as public meetings where government officials explain the public budget, or public communications (Step 6 or 8) when the government articulates how priorities can be addressed. This helps them feel heard and seen by local authorities, which enhances trust in local political institutions and actors. However, in places where public trust in the government is low or nonexistent, this trust building will take more time and effort to engage a large portion of the population using multiple engagement techniques.
• Build trust between residents and local authorities through repeated and iterative engagements and enhanced communications, which can also translate into votes. A 2019 survey of Canadians indicated that trust increases in democratic institutions (such as city hall) and government actors (such as individual elected officials) the more that people feel “they can influence government” and that “elected officials care what they think.” In addition, those with higher trust are more likely to engage in democratic and community activities, such as volunteering or attending a community meeting.¹⁰ The OECD’s 2024 survey of all 38 member countries on the drivers of trust in public institutions indicates that “having a say in government’s decisions” is the leading driver of trust in national government.¹¹ This democratic participation also increases the public’s knowledge of how government works, the powers and responsibilities of different levels of government, and how to get involved.¹² Trust also matters for revenue generation and budgeting. Analysis from the World Bank indicates that citizens are more likely and willing to pay taxes when trust in state institutions is higher¹³ and that higher trust results from more transparent and effective service delivery.¹⁴
• Make public consultation the norm by fostering a democratic governance culture that values informed public participation and recognizes the need for continuous improvement. Implementing feedback loops in support of key government processes can create the expectation that public consultation is the norm in local decision-making rather than the exception. Because many processes are annual or recurring (like a budget), local administrators gain experience in listening for and acting on feedback over time, increasing their ability to bring feedback into different local governance processes.¹⁵
• Improve the quality of public services and preempt complaints by providing local authorities with information on performance and deficiencies, which can be a means of delivering accountability.¹⁶ Some local decisions – like budgets, development plans and strategies – are very visible to the public, and residents, civil society and the private sector want to help shape them. This raises the stakes for accountability and transparency. Local authorities can use feedback loops to preempt complaints by setting public expectations about constraints (legal, zoning, fiscal, etc.) that impact what the local authority can realistically achieve at a given time.¹⁷ In this way, participation and feedback loops can be part of a larger strategy of open government, with other improvements to government efficiency and efficacy for solving public problems.

Through an institutionalized and repeated use of the feedback loop process, local authorities can go further. They can leverage increased trust with residents – and their experience with tried and tested means of communicating with the public – to take on bigger and more challenging issues over time and in more challenging circumstances, such as:

• Joining together with neighboring local authorities facing similar issues and – with the backing of their residents as well – pooling resources to resolve shared problems or leveraging community feedback data to lobby the national government for support. Associations of municipalities, leagues of cities or similar bodies may be useful inter-governmental mechanisms for this advocacy.
• Messaging in crisis, as the government will be able to leverage existing trust as a source of community information and already have practice with multiple methods of outreach to citizens. In addition, one use of the feedback loop is in identifying how citizens prefer to be contacted or are most easily reached. For example, Moldovan mayors created a “community” (that residents could opt into) on a well-known messaging app, Viber, for updates on local projects. Later, this app-based community was used to provide updates during the COVID-19 pandemic and provide a socially distanced platform for communications. Feedback loops can also be used to engage residents in crisis preparedness planning and reforms, or in early recovery and reconstruction prioritization, depending on the nature of the crisis. 

Why do both elected and unelected local officials value and repeat feedback loops? 

Public service, citizen participation and inclusion are end goals for many local authorities; these public officials, driven by personal motivations, promote citizen participation and innovate local institutions. For example, Slovakian city officials received appreciative responses from residents during canvassing efforts (outside of the usual campaigning season), with some leaving thank-you notes on their returned surveys.¹⁸

The uses and benefits of feedback loops will appeal to different types of local officials based on their unique priorities and incentives. For example, elected officials such as mayors or local councilors are accountable to their constituents through the ballot box and therefore have a political incentive to incorporate public priorities into government decision-making processes. As these officials are likely to initiate or authorize the feedback loop effort, they may be encouraged by the potential for higher-than-average electoral success, as enjoyed by Moldovan mayors who implemented feedback loops (see Box 2). Not all officials will be motivated by this incentive, however, opting instead to do the minimum to comply with the law or simulate engagement. However, this could increase the potential rewards for officials who are committed to meaningful public engagement. 

On the other hand, unelected officials in the civil or public service – who will be responsible for designing, implementing and monitoring the process – will find feedback loops useful in supporting decision-making, engaging stakeholders and facilitating effective communication with the public and internally with colleagues. They will benefit from institutionalized and clear internal standards, defined staff responsibilities, and structured processes for participatory engagement that will come from learning from repeated feedback loops.

A feedback loop shares similar goals with a public grievance redress mechanism²¹ but is more deliberately participatory and cumulative in its data analysis. A common form of public grievance redress mechanism is a platform (often online) designed to receive and promptly provide responses to specific feedback or complaints from community residents. These systems focus on individual concerns and resolving discrete problems. For example, each complaint is given a “ticket” and routed to the corresponding agency (automatically or after a staff member reviews it) where it is then addressed or receives a response. Examples include Ukraine’s Diia platform or the global FixMyStreet application.²² The end goal of these redress mechanisms is usually technocratic rather than democratic: to address individual complaints and speed government response. These mechanisms can exist in autocracies and democracies – citizens may still have no input into the governance processes behind the mechanism and may not have redress if their issue isn’t resolved. While these types of grievance redress mechanisms are important, the feedback loop emphasizes two-way dialogue between residents and their elected representatives. Two-way dialogue is a break from extractive practices of one-way, one-off forums or hearings, where residents may be heard, but the local authority never informs them about how their feedback is used. This creates an institutional shift toward public consultation as a default approach to policymaking. Service delivery matters, but so does voice and meaningful public participation. The feedback loop process is a democratic tool to strengthen accountability, citizen voice and inclusive decision-making.

The feedback loop Listen, Respond, Report methodology also differs from other participatory and deliberative democracy (PDD) practices,²³ such as citizen assemblies, juries and participatory budgeting. While these are not feedback loop tools, they are approaches for participatory and inclusive decision-making, often with greater accountability for local officials (who must abide by votes and decisions, for example). 

• At the local level, citizen assemblies and juries use representative sampling to select a representative group of residents (often around 100 or so for assemblies and fewer for juries) that is tasked to consider a predetermined problem or issue. The group then generates recommendations (which are sometimes binding for the government). A good process involves dedicated time for education and learning,²⁴ where experts and stakeholders present facts or viewpoints to the assembly, who then deliberate on the best paths forward and arrive at recommendations through consensus. Dissenting voices may generate their own recommendations. These processes can be quite expensive – involving costs for selecting, convening and reimbursing the time of participants and experts, as well as paying for a facilitator to moderate convenings.²⁵ As such, they should be used selectively.
• Participatory budgeting is a mechanism where a percentage of the local authority budget is set aside for members of the public to propose and submit ideas for funding. After a vetting process to remove impractical ideas, residents vote on their favorite projects, which are funded. 

All of these PDD processes – and others – empower citizens to make decisions that the government must respect. See Annex XIII for additional information.

By comparison, the feedback loop process lies somewhere in between grievance redress mechanisms and formal PDD processes: citizens are proactively consulted for their insights and may be involved in decision-making through co-creating solutions, but the local authority ultimately decides on the path forward while ensuring that these decisions – and progress on reforms – are communicated to residents to close the loop. Box 4 situates the feedback loop approach within an international standard of public participation.

Responding to public priorities is the job of democratic governments. Meaningful responsiveness takes time and may cost some money; in short, this is the “cost of doing business” for democratic governments. While being smart and efficient when matching your budget to your public engagement is crucial, a lack of budget is not a persuasive reason not to conduct this process. In practice, the ten steps of the feedback loop process look different for every local authority, but they are designed to be feasible in all democratic governance contexts and across the spectrum of available resources. 

The feedback loop process is designed to be as low-cost as possible so that scarce time and budget can be directed to implementing priorities.

• Time costs include the time of municipal officials and staff to prepare for and collect citizen feedback, analyze inputs and communicate with the public.
• Convening costs include (again) the time of municipal officials and participating community residents and any logistic costs required for meeting in a public or community space. Note that sufficient thought should be given to ensuring that diverse community members can meaningfully and effectively participate in the convenings – this may involve some logistic costs or costs associated with reasonable accommodation for people with disabilities or working parents. For example, would offering childcare or language interpretation allow more residents to participate in a meeting?
• Materials costs include those associated with printing questionnaires during data collection (e.g., surveys), the cost of postage if mailing surveys, or the cost of fuel or transportation if visiting residents door to door. Costs will arise for developing and printing reports on the feedback findings, next steps and updates for public distribution. Such costs can vary based on the chosen approach. It is crucial for local administration leadership to understand and budget for these costs upfront.
• Costs to implement identified solutions include those related to development and implementation. Public feedback will ideally point to a specific challenge or set of challenges – related to infrastructure, public services or broader development planning – that will require expenditures from the public budget to be addressed. Cost requirements to implement prioritized reforms or plans can be allocated over time as appropriate. The feedback loop builds in periodic updates to inform the public about implementation timelines, delays and when promises are fulfilled. Most people understand that projects and reforms require time, money and materials, which may lead to delays. The key is to communicate openly and proactively about these issues.

It is always advisable to overestimate human time and material cost requirements as unexpected events or obstacles to this – or any process – inevitably occur, and contingency planning is a useful mitigation measure.

Is a feedback loop just extra work for busy officials?

Rather than “extra work,” this process should help local authorities do the work they are already doing more efficiently. The time spent listening to feedback should result in clear priorities for staff and officials to respond to; these priorities will be the basis of direction and strategy to align the entire local administration toward common goals, and officials can be confident that they are aligned with residents on the same priorities. 

While a local authority must provide services, maintain infrastructure and foster the sustainable economic and social development of their community, the local authority is also responsible for the prudent and responsible investment of local taxes, fees and other revenue resources. This requires decisions to balance public demands for particular investments against the reality of a city’s financial and operational capacities. To determine this balance, leaders must consider the return on investment of particular expenditures, not just in monetary or revenue terms, but also concerning potential impacts on community well-being, health and vibrancy. With regard to investments, cash-strapped local authorities – armed with a list of public priorities – may find success in fundraising for projects from within their own communities, by partnering with neighboring communities to build a shared project, or by approaching the national government or private sector investors. Public feedback data provides evidence for these investment priorities and can support advocacy for external or community-based funding.

This section offers step-by-step guidance to design and implement a feedback loop, drawing on the experience of local authorities from Moldova, Mexico, El Salvador, and Slovakia, where NDI has supported feedback loop processes and shared learning for over a decade. This guidance also draws from the experiences of other local authorities worldwide that have designed and implemented their own two-way communication programs based on similar principles and methods, including Queensland, Australia,²⁷ and Dublin, Ireland,²⁸ among others.

The following presents the feedback loop implementation process as a series of discrete steps. However, keep in mind that these steps – especially the initial steps – are closely linked and may not, in practice, take place one after the other as outlined here. In reality, it is likely that several steps will need to happen in parallel or sometimes be repeated. 

Finally, consider the following framework to be flexible guidance rather than a rigid formula. While the contents of each step are important, the emphasis, order and timing will need to be adapted based on your best judgment of what is needed in your circumstances.

Step 1: Authorize a feedback loop process

“Talk with people, not at people.”
- Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, OBE, Mayor of Freetown, Sierra Leone²⁹

“Local government is not the lowest form of government in an ecosystem of governments, but the highest form of coordination and advocacy for the community.”
- Charles Marohn, Founder of Strong Towns³⁰

Summary:

• Local officials – perhaps spurred on by civil society pressure – assess whether a feedback loop can help them solve local problems.
• Consider the problems facing the community – can public feedback help to navigate trade-offs or prioritize a path forward among competing issues?
• Examine current outreach practices – how does the local authority talk to residents and how residents talk to officials?
• A series of do-no-harm and inclusion questions helps prepare the team to communicate with hard-to-reach communities and avoid exacerbating divisions or marginalization.
• Finally, authorization to implement the feedback loop is given, unlocking resources and kickstarting the formation of a team – whether by a formal resolution, act, or decree, or the less formal assignment of staff and resources to the process. 

As a first step, consider whether a feedback loop is suited to the local context and would be worthwhile to address a particular challenge or issue. Once a local authority decides to implement a feedback loop, ideally, it would issue a formal authorization through a legal or administrative instrument. A formal authorization ensures that the weight and resources of the local authority unit are behind the process (and enables access to resources and staff as needed). On the other hand, reform-minded officials may worry that specifying a legal or administrative instrument from the outset can create additional hurdles and delays and spark resistance. They may instead opt for an informal, ad hoc approach to pilot the feedback loop effort on a small scale, and then formalize it through a statute later after building awareness among staff and with the benefit of lessons learned. Consider the benefits and drawbacks of formal authorization compared to informal agreement with respect to, among other things, accountability and the allocation of staff, time and financial resources.

The decision should be made with a particular problem or goal in mind that the feedback loop could potentially address. It may be easier to start with an established process, such as setting local budget priorities or development planning. Why do you want to convene people for their feedback? You could seek public input to design a government program, reform a regulation, evaluate a policy, or some similar goal. 

Leaders should be prepared to listen for information about their current outreach practices and to identify the governance process(es) that the feedback loop data would contribute to, among other information. In other words, consider:

• How the local authority currently engages with the public and how the public speaks to the local authority
• Whether and how that dialogue is integrated into local authority decision-making processes or the day-to-day work of the local administration (elected officials and staff)
• The resources the local authority can bring to the process
• The unique circumstances of the community – Are there particular groups in the community that are difficult to engage with or are apathetic/disengaged? Are there divisive or controversial fractures in the community that need to be monitored?

After the process is authorized, it must be continuously reinforced and supported by senior leadership; otherwise, the process risks losing momentum. For example, the initiator and driver of the process may be: 

• a recently elected mayor
• a pro-participation champion working as a political appointee or senior civil servant (such as a city manager)
• a reform-minded local councilor or assembly member

Responding to public feedback usually requires the local authority to do something meaningful, so it should be unsurprising that feedback loops tend to be successful when local authorities lead the process.

When making this initial decision, leaders should evaluate the following to help justify the case for a feedback loop process.

Implementing the feedback loop framework helps governments move from reactive one-off responses toward fostering a culture of government responsiveness to public voices about specific local problems. Responsiveness involves governments not just committing to change (with the commitment being an example of a response), but actually meeting its commitment and recognizing the legitimacy and relevance of the public’s input into the process; responsiveness can be enhanced when governments take the additional step to justify and explain their actions.³¹

A problem or challenge is the discrepancy between how things are and how they should be or ought to be. The solution to a problem bridges that discrepancy, bringing us closer to an improved or ideal situation.

Depending on your context, your peers in the local authority may be more receptive to different framings of the question, “What are we trying to achieve with public input?” For example:

• “What choice should we make?” These are instances where participation helps improve decision-making, such as legitimizing decisions or co-creating policies. It is most useful when there is a clear set of options – e.g., Add a bike lane to street A or street B.
• “What is our top priority?” These are processes where public input to set priorities will help to navigate trade-offs, such as when residents are asked to decide which issue or challenge to address first. This question helps support drafting institutional documents like a budget, development plan or investment plan.
• “How can we improve?” You can consider a single program and aim for in-depth feedback (such as from immediate beneficiaries) to improve it, or leverage a broader concerns survey (see Step 4 and Annex IX on surveys) to identify the least or most popular services or public goods in the local authority (and then follow up to learn more about why residents feel this way).

While the goal of “engaging more citizens in decision-making” is a useful starting point, the feedback loop process often benefits from a more concrete understanding of how feedback will be used. Setting priorities based on public feedback will help local authorities take these considerations into account when developing budgets, drafting development or investment plans, and devising long-term strategies. Recurring government planning processes offer important entry points for residents to share their views on the community’s direction. These are big-picture moments where public feedback can be used to navigate trade-offs (for instance, choosing to fund renovations to the school rather than build a new community center).

Context questions for authorizing the feedback loop

When selecting the problem your feedback loop approach will address, you will need to consider how that problem (and especially the implementation of any particular solution) fits into the decision-making and governing processes of your local authority. The following questions will help generate a quick stakeholder mapping (see Section 1.6 and Box 10 for a more detailed stakeholder mapping exercise) and context analysis that can support an initial decision to authorize the process.

If necessary, a more robust context analysis can be conducted once a team is formed (Step 2); see questions in Annex III: Context Analysis and Do No Harm.

Is the problem within the jurisdiction of the local authority? Who will be responsible for implementation?

If the local authority cannot control its own budget or make decisions concerning the problem, then in the near future there will be no effective outlet or corresponding action based on public feedback. The local authority should start by asking for public participation in making decisions that it is responsible for; otherwise, the local authority risks undermining public trust by setting unachievable expectations. If the decision is outside the local authority’s control (and rests with a national ministry, for example), the best the local authority can do is use public input to advocate on behalf of the community; this should be seen as a long-term effort. The local authority should also inform residents that local leaders cannot immediately fix a problem (and explain why), even if they agree that it should be fixed and have urged higher-level authorities to take action. In addition, consider which staff, agencies, or departments of the local authority are responsible for deciding or coordinating implementation: Does the mayor decide alone, or do they need the council’s approval? What departments may need to work together and be consulted on the feasibility of proposed solutions?

However, it is possible that residents and the local authority will agree to take on a challenge that is beyond the local authority’s responsibility or capacity to address alone. This will often present a wicked problem, especially because more stakeholders will have an interest in the process as issues cut across multiple communities and jurisdictions. For example, a small town near mines or a major port may not have the jurisdiction to regulate oversized vehicles using nearby highways but will struggle with the effects of this traffic on road quality and safety. In this instance, the feedback loop may only be “closed” or reach a resolution after action or regulatory activity by a national ministry. The local authority may have some success advocating on behalf of the community, but their advocacy will be harder to ignore when acting jointly with peers in neighboring communities. See the following example:

Does the local authority reasonably expect to have the capacity (resources, staff, etc.) to solve this problem and to implement the feedback loop?

While a local authority is legally allowed to make a decision, it still needs to follow through and take action. This question will be dealt with in greater detail by the core team in Step 3, but an initial evaluation of the local authority should indicate whether it has or lacks capacity to take action. Many local authorities focus on processes that must happen (regardless of whether the public is involved in the decision or not), such as planning, budgeting and service delivery. There is an existing process, staff and general administrative capacity in place to (more or less effectively) complete these tasks; the question then becomes how the local authority can bring public feedback into the process.

Can we engage the public effectively? Can we make the question easy to understand, ensure broad participation and use the feedback we receive?

Section 1.3 of this step focuses on the local authority’s current public engagement. In addition to understanding the strengths and weaknesses of current public communication and dialogue practices, the local authority should be ready to present the process and requests for public feedback in a way that is easy to understand. To participate effectively, residents will need to understand enough about the process, the information and feedback they are being asked to provide, and how it will be used.

Examples of feedback loops in action

Consider the following applications of feedback loops by local authorities from around the world:

Setting budget priorities

• In Moldova, mayors implemented feedback loops to set budget priorities, using residents’ surveys to rank which development projects – often related to infrastructure or services such as garbage collection – to address first. Priority-based budgeting is an increasingly common approach to setting priorities strategically and using public input to navigate trade-offs in budget allocation.
• In Slovakia, teams of mayors and local councilors analyzed the results of a door-to-door survey to rank top priorities for investment, with residents selecting between issues such as roads, parking and recreation.
• Cities in the United States, such as St. Paul, Minnesota; Lawrence, Kansas; and Fort Worth, Texas, have deployed a priority-based budgeting approach that allows residents to individually explore budget scenarios and trade-offs. By placing residents in the role of decision-maker, the budget simulation (called the Balancing Act) helps residents understand the constraints, context and consequences of the local budget process and informs their feedback to local leaders.³³

Developing strategies and plans

• In Mexico, city planning departments used public feedback to co-create municipal development plans or government programs, which are strategic documents that define and direct the work of municipal government to promote local development and improve the quality of people’s lives over three years.
• In El Salvador, civil society and officials worked together to collect feedback from local artisans and entrepreneurs, using the information to generate recommendations on improving the local economy.

Improving or expanding particular services

• A feedback loop can be used to assess residents’ perceptions of a particular municipal program and to source ideas for improving it. In Georgia, local officials and civil society examined the performance of a municipal economic grants program, holding discussions with beneficiaries (and unsuccessful applicants) to source feedback on how the application, approval and management process of the grants could be improved.

Before authorizing a feedback loop approach for your particular problem or issue, you will need to consider to what extent and how public engagement is already happening in your community. How and when does the local authority talk to residents, and how and when do residents talk to the local authority? Answering these questions will help the local authority determine the focus and scope of the feedback loop approach.

The specific methods employed in your feedback loop process will depend on how the local authority currently communicates with and learns about issues from the public, any gaps in that communication, and available skills and resources to be able to realistically implement new methods. You might start by looking at the relevant legal framework or obligations on public consultation that apply to the local authority. These will set out what should be happening and can be compared against existing practices (what is happening).

Determining “who gets how much and when” can be politically contentious and risk creating or exacerbating social and political divisions. To plan for and mitigate these risks, the team implementing a feedback loop process should be prepared to apply “do-no-harm” principles. There are different approaches, but a common framework involves mapping “dividers” – actors and factors that push communities apart – and “connectors” – actors and factors that promote peace and cohesion. Then consider your intended actions (what you will do, the resources you will deploy and how) and patterns of behavior (how your team interacts with the community and the message this interaction communicates). 

When authorizing and planning the process (especially with regard to context analysis and inclusion in Step 2), the following are examples of questions to keep in mind:

• Who will be consulted during the feedback loop process? Will outreach privilege or legitimize certain organizations, groups or voices over others?
• How will your team listen to and handle grievances that may arise during the process?
• Will everyone (men, women, boys and girls, etc.) benefit equally if the problem is solved? Who stands to benefit from proposed solutions, and who might lose out?

For more detail on context analysis and do no harm, see Annex III.

At this point, the team within the local authority considering a feedback loop process should have a clear sense of:

• The process or problem they hope to use feedback for
• The existing mechanisms for outreach and dialogue with the public
• The context in which the process will occur, especially who in the local authority will receive feedback and where it will fit into decision-making processes

Equipped with this information, local leadership can decide whether to formally authorize the process. Formal authorization ensures the budget for staff time and material costs is allowable, empowers the feedback loop team, and prepares the local authority to receive and act on the feedback regarding budgets, development planning or service delivery. Further, formal authorization may be necessary to allow the feedback team to leverage the local authority’s communication channels and administrative resources to organize a response or to collect and store public information on government computers and servers (see the discussion of data governance frameworks in Step 4).

Depending on the legal-institutional context of the local authority, examples of authorizations include: an executive decree or order from the mayor’s office; memorandum of understanding between the local authority and civil society organizations (CSOs) helping to implement the feedback process; a local council resolution, an administrative order, or a memorandum assigning staff to the task.

However, there are exceptions: If the process is not linked to or funded by the local authority, a formal authorization is not necessarily needed. For example, in situations where a feedback loop will be led by a less formal group – such as a political faction, political party, group of local elected officials, a single elected official (such as an opposition council member), or in partnership with external stakeholders such as civil society or an international organization – only a general commitment to participate in the feedback loop process is likely sufficient.

There are risks to an incomplete feedback loop. Closing the loop means feedback is not only collected but used – and the public has a clear understanding of how. Do you have concerns about your team’s ability to complete the steps to the end and follow through with the public? Concerns may relate to staff availability, agreement among political stakeholders, or a limited budget for outreach.

Consider the following risks:

• The loop isn’t closed: The most common and most disastrous risk of implementing a feedback loop is the failure to “close the loop.” Failing to close the loop generally means that “people’s voices were solicited but not acted on.”⁴⁰ From the residents’ point of view, their feedback disappeared into a vacuum, never to be seen again and with no discernible impact on government behavior. This can have deeply negative consequences for public trust in local authorities. Residents will be less inclined to supply feedback when asked in the future. At worst, trust in local authorities or their legitimacy may evaporate, especially if feedback about critical services is ignored. In this case, residents may take service delivery into their own hands or turn to parallel governance institutions.
• Feedback is too voluminous to analyze, inaccurate or unusable: The feedback loop is closed in the sense that some action was taken to address the problem, but challenges like the personal bias of decision-making officials, lack of access to relevant information, or limited technical know-how “reduced or negated any possible positive impact.”⁴¹ Requests for input and feedback should not require specialized technical knowledge or training of the community members being approached. Input should be kept general enough that the average resident can respond based on their life experience living in the community. This puts more responsibility on the designers of the feedback loop’s data collection tools. This is a key reason why data collection should focus on setting priorities rather than on the technical aspects of a particular solution. More detailed feedback can be collected in later dialogue activities.

Authorization of the feedback loop is often necessary to fund, staff and begin the process; this step refers to a broader process of securing buy-in that must still be built and maintained across decision-makers and members of the public.

The feedback loop process may affect high-impact or high-value decisions – such as the budget, development plans or services. In responding to feedback, the team will need to work with elected officials, civil service, political staff and others across local authority institutions who also help make these decisions or support these functions within the local authority. Once a team is formed (see Step 2), it will be worthwhile assigning some members of the team the job of managing buy-in – meaning informing, engaging and updating important stakeholders at important steps.

Who should be brought in – A simple stakeholder mapping

Managing buy-in should start with a simple stakeholder mapping exercise. The specific method for stakeholder mapping can differ, but the goal is to prioritize who to engage, at what times and how. Begin by simply listing stakeholders and then compare them by evaluating their power (influence to support or block the process) or their interests (where they align with your goals and where they do not). See Annex III for more information.

• Elected officials: Consider elected officials (if they have not already authorized or are not already leading the implementation team), such as the mayor and local councilors. In addition, consider peer-elected officials or factions: If you are part of a political party or coalition within the elected council, will you share information about the process with others in the body and invite them to participate? Some may turn you down, but some may not. Collaborating across party or faction lines can demonstrate to the public that the exercise is nonpartisan and focused on their feedback rather than the priorities of elected officials.
• Bureaucratic leadership and staff: The heads of departments relevant to the problem or issue that your feedback loop will tackle (e.g., the head of the finance department for budgeting) can be especially helpful. In addition, determine whether there are subject matter experts in the local administration whose skills can support the process – for example, officers responsible for right to information and transparency issues, teams responsible for citizen communication or engagement, urban planners, or gender and inclusion officers. Buy-in might involve a face-to-face meeting with a key decision-maker or an all-hands meeting to brief staff on the plan and answer questions.  Be clear about what you’re asking for and how the process will affect them, and be responsive to any feedback they have. With these leaders informed of the process, they may avail the process of their staff’s expertise, time and resources. They can also provide information about relevant timelines and ongoing coordination. These officials and their staff can guide the feedback loop team through the potentially byzantine requirements and expectations of their bureaucracies. This will help set realistic timelines.  Remember that you cannot bring public priorities into a process that has already ended! For example, in certain countries, local infrastructure priorities are communicated to the central government five to six months before the local budget is finalized. This allows the central government time to calculate and allocate inter-government transfers (which in turn make up a chunk of local authority budgets).
• CSOs and local activists, including academia and the business sector, as relevant: Proactively reaching out to civil society groups can help smooth implementation. Their feedback may even help you design and implement outreach (see Step 4, especially key informant interviews [KII]). Can you tap into relevant networks – for example, of women, veterans, students or people with disabilities? If these are constituent groups you’d like to reach, these organizations may be able to assist; however, pay attention to inclusion and power dynamics. Are these organizations or networks truly representative of this constituent group (perhaps they only include people with disabilities of a certain faith or ethnicity)? Will you need to supplement this input with additional outreach?
• The public: Although you will be reaching out to the public (or a sample of them) shortly for their input, this is truly the ultimate stakeholder in this process. Once the process is confirmed to be moving ahead, be sure to inform the public that it is happening and what they might be able to expect.

Step 2: Build a team and plan for listening to feedback

“Cities can be the engine of social equity and economic opportunity… That is why it is so important that we work together to build the capacity of mayors and all those concerned in planning and running sustainable cities.” 
- Ban Ki-Moon, South Korean politician, diplomat and former United Nations Secretary General⁴²

Summary:

• The relevant characteristics and key skills of a core team are defined.
• Two models for the team are defined, depending on whether there is direct or supervisory engagement by local authority elected officials.
• The core team and leadership begin building buy-in for the feedback loop process in the local authority (peer officials and bureaucratic staff), civil society and the public.
• Six distinct roles and responsibilities for the core team are laid out.
• The core team, once selected, narrows down the problem.

In the course of authorizing the feedback loop process, leaders must decide who will be responsible for the process and establish a working group, task force or team. Decisions about the respective roles of elected officials, political appointees, civil service leadership and external partners like CSOs or a local university will depend on several factors, such as:

• The structure of the local authority, its departments and agencies, and its size
• The availability of internal and external human resources, technical skills and time
• The size of the community (and its implications for feedback loop design methods)
• The aims of local officials with respect to the importance of directly engaging with citizens

Senior political leadership – who often do not have time to be part of a feedback loop team themselves – will be important in approving and authorizing a process and designating staff to form a team. This senior political leadership will be a mayor, local council member(s) or city managers/city administrators where these exist.⁴⁴ Regardless of the particular structures and circumstances, the officials and staff within the local authority will form most, if not all, of the team implementing the feedback loop. As noted, while nongovernmental civil society can play a supporting role, comparative experience from El Salvador, Mexico, Moldova and Slovakia indicates that government officials must be involved and own this process. Nongovernmental support can become essential in certain instances, such as when local authorities have little to no experience as public officials or have limited guidance from public institutions on how to comply with existing administrative and legal requirements.

The size and composition of the team will be influenced by the nature of the problem the feedback loop will resolve and the size, structure and resources of the local authority institutions.

For the purpose of this guide, we will call this initial group the core team. Nearly all of the work to design and implement the feedback loop will be accomplished by the members of this team. Membership of the core team may change over time – inevitably, some individuals drop out to focus on other duties, and other interested individuals may join. In addition, the core team may find it necessary to recruit new members from civil society or volunteers from the public to support specific tasks along the way or bring in needed skills. This is the group “doing the work.” If one or more key decision-makers are not directly on this team, they should be consulted about changes in direction and kept updated; this kind of structure aligns with the supervisory engagement model discussed in Section 2.2 as a kind of core team plus leadership.

Dimensions of a core team

Consider the following dimensions when forming a team:

• Credibility – Elected officials, serving as the public face or personally leading a feedback loop, help build credibility among residents because people give their feedback directly to the decision-makers. Staff and civil society – although potential advocates – do not have the independent authority to act on feedback. Additionally, elected officials appear on ballots and are known by community members, whereas members of the civil service may not have strong name recognition. Note that civil society representatives, especially where trust in government is low, may have more credibility than government officials and be more known to the community (such as when they are actively helping solve local issues). As such, they may be able to know where to go to get needed information and may be helpful in collecting, responding to and reporting on feedback.
• Time – Elected officials everywhere need to prioritize how they spend their time. Staff, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and volunteers can be brought in to ease the workload of a feedback loop, especially when collecting and enumerating responses and conducting an initial analysis of feedback.
• Knowledge – The core team must be knowledgeable about the local community and local authority’s structures and rules, including which actors and departments are responsible for decisions related to the problem your feedback loop will seek to address. Members should also have a range of skills that are relevant for a successful feedback loop process, such as in project management, public communications and messaging, research and analysis, and writing.
• Accountability – When forming a team, identify at least one process manager: this person is responsible and accountable for seeing the feedback loop to its conclusion; if needed, make sure this person is empowered to do so.
• Transparency and openness – Public communication will be essential to the process, from informing the public that the process is taking place and how to get involved to following up and providing updates on progress toward priorities.
• Diversity and inclusion – To what extent does the core team resemble the community it will be engaging with? For example, is there a balance between the number of women and men on the team? Are you including people of different ages, especially young people, people with disabilities, or members of ethnic and religious minorities?

Key competencies and skills of a core team

Consider the following key competencies and skills when forming a team or in attempting to supplement the skills and competencies of your core team during the process:

• Public outreach, messaging, communication and writing skills
• Research, data collection, information management and analysis skills
• Administrative planning and organizing skills
• Subject matter expertise relevant to the problem that the feedback loop will address or the governance decision process (like budget planning) that public feedback will contribute to (these experts do not have to be members of the team but should be available to advise as needed during the process). For example, someone who understands gender analysis will be important, as almost every issue or process has a gender dimension.
• Knowledge of and skills to ensure compliance with relevant local and national laws
• Language skills, depending on the linguistic diversity of your community

Existing networks and relationships with diverse groups of residents, or local universities or civil society that can bring other necessary skills to the table

Direct engagement by a team of elected officials (Moldova and Slovakia)

This first model was implemented by elected councilors and mayors from municipal governments in Moldova and Slovakia. In their respective cities, leaders formed teams responsible for designing, implementing and reporting on the feedback loop and personally participated in data collection engagement with residents.

In the cities of Vráble (pop. 8,323) and Šurany (pop. 9,238), Slovakia, implementation was spearheaded by the mayor – who serves as the head of the local council – and allied or politically affiliated local councilors. Unelected staff – employees of the city – played no role in the feedback loop process but, of course, played a role in implementing decisions. The deputy or vice mayor played a central role in managing and leading the process (acting as the decision-maker or process manager described in Section 2.3); local councilors assisted in data collection (handing out surveys door to door in a canvassing approach) and analysis. As these elected officials receive minimal remuneration (less than 100 Euros per month) in their positions, they continue to work in other professions and spent their personal time on door-to-door resident engagement (often after the workday or on weekends). Those with prior experience as civil society activists – common among the team in Vráble – cited this past volunteer experience as essential to their effectiveness. ⁴⁵

In Moldova, implementation has taken place across nearly 200 cities and typically centered on the mayor and their political team, which often included local councilors from the same political party or coalition; in some cases, local councilors in opposition led their own, parallel feedback loop processes. Mayors played a key role in these processes, serving both as the figureheads and driving force behind the door-to-door outreach and responses to public feedback. They also served as the primary, empowered decision-makers at the local level in the Moldovan legal framework.

In both the Slovakia and Moldova cases, local authority officials sought input from the public on key priorities and complaints by distributing brief printed surveys. These focused on public priorities around local infrastructure – such as roads, waste management, drinking water and public buildings like schools – to direct investment and funding in the local budgeting process in a way that was more responsive to resident priorities. The following chart presents lessons – in the form of advantages and risks – from these two experiences. See Annex IV for detailed timelines. 
 

The Moldova and Slovakia experiences provide many lessons that can guide decisions about whether this direct engagement approach is optimal for your community:

• This model may be selected out of necessity – the local administration may be very small. Elected officials may be unpaid or paid very little and lack a budget for support staff. In those instances, only the elected officials themselves can implement the feedback loop. They do not have to work alone, however, and can seek out volunteers or help from civil society.
• In both countries, feedback loops were conducted in small communities (10,000 or fewer residents) and relied on a door-to-door canvassing approach. Door-to-door canvassing requires a significant time commitment and is only feasible in small communities compared to large cities. Mayors and councilors from Slovakia reported that the process took much longer than they’d initially hoped or anticipated (see guidance in Step 4 about making this outreach more manageable and less time-consuming.)
• Teams should be prepared for the time commitment involved. Notably, in both Moldovan and Slovakian communities, officials with previous experience as volunteers and organizers accepted this extra work more readily. Often, door-to-door canvassing must be done outside working hours to reach community residents when they are at home. Moreover, in some local authorities, elected officials serve part time and maintain other jobs, which must be factored into scheduling.
• When local elected officials lead the process, especially if there is a face-to-face element to soliciting feedback and updating the public, there is a benefit to public trust. As noted in Section 1, mayors implementing these processes enjoyed higher rates of re-election (80 to 90 percent) over the last three election cycles compared to incumbents across the country (50 to 60 percent). Since voters worldwide complain that they only hear from politicians during election campaigns, a feedback loop can be a meaningful way to keep the conversation going and sustain voter interest and engagement.
• If the feedback loop is implemented by a team from the same coalition or political party, opposing groups may seek to undermine the process or cast doubt on its results. This risk can be mitigated by opening participation in the design and implementation of the feedback loop to all local officials from across parties.
• Finally, consider the morale and mental health of teams and officials implementing the process amid criticism – ensure that they have the support and assistance of their team and colleagues. Officials without adequate support may find the process overwhelming and disheartening at times, especially if feedback is not forthcoming. ⁴⁷

Supervisory engagement – A team of public sector staff and civil society (Mexico and El Salvador)

The second model was implemented in Mexico and El Salvador, where mayors and local elected officials were aware of and supported the feedback loop effort, but the bulk of the work was completed by staff from planning departments. These municipalities tended to have larger populations or more rural and difficult-to-reach communities. In addition, the focus of the feedback loop process was more targeted to specific stakeholders (especially civil society) and often reached fewer residents than in Moldova and Slovakia, which were focused on feedback from the whole community.

In examples from two different cities in Mexico, staff from the municipal planning agencies of Guanajuato (pop. 194,500) and Tamazula de Gordiano (pop. 39,000) gathered feedback from civil society and residents through public meetings and forums to identify public needs, propose solutions and inform priorities for forthcoming municipal development plans. Guanajuato City officials created a first draft of the municipal development plan – a broad strategy that covers many issues, including the economy, transit and security – and, over the course of a month, collected feedback through the municipal website and social media, during a handful of public meetings around the city, and hosting a social forum or town hall, using a World Café format.⁴⁸ Approximately 60 residents provided feedback on specific questions or issues within the draft plan. Government officials produced a second draft plan, incorporating public feedback, and requested additional input via social media. To close the feedback loop, municipal officials held a public hearing to present the updated Municipal Government Program to civil society, citizens and public servants; 32 people attended the hearing. In Tamazula, local officials reached fewer residents, conducting a similar World Café-style public meeting with 20 people and using this feedback to develop their plan.

In El Salvador, officials and civil society in the municipalities of Ilobasco (pop. 77,800), Guacotecti (pop. 7,600) and San Isidro (pop. 8,100)⁴⁹ collected feedback on how to improve economic development, working closely with Community Development Associations (Asociación de Desarrollo Comunal; ADESCO) in each municipality to identify participants and topics. Municipal authorities in El Salvador are required by law to create five-year participatory strategic plans, though there are no set guidelines for completing the process. As such, rather than be directly involved with the design and implementation, mayors instead oversaw the process and were “customers” of the process results. The staff and ADESCOs led the process, in which stakeholders completed online surveys to provide their priorities. Priorities were combined with an extensive diagnostic – or detailed report – of the current economic, social and planning trends in the municipalities to inform a series of recommendations transmitted to the mayor and political leadership. See Annex IV for detailed timelines.

The following chart presents lessons – in the form of advantages and risks – from these experiences.

Several lessons have been identified in the course of this more administrative approach to feedback loops undertaken in Mexico and El Salvador, as a supervisory engagement model:

• This model is especially useful when the local authority in question has a very large or geographically dispersed population. Door-to-door canvassing by individual officials, especially the mayor, is not feasible in medium-sized or large cities; these officials face large demands on their time, resulting from the increased complexity of their communities and sheer number of constituents. In addition, these local authorities often have larger administrations with more technical staff that have the training, technology and other resources to achieve broad and inclusive public input. Therefore, leaders in these local authorities can work with their administrations to adapt the feedback loop framework to focus on specific governance processes and documents, collect feedback from a more targeted group of residents and do so over a shorter period.
• Mayors and elected officials can be more involved in these processes by being present at meetings and events where feedback is collected, which can increase the credibility of the process and create accountability to follow up on feedback. For example, a public commitment from the mayor to respond to feedback (such as through a public report) can lend credibility to feedback loop processes and encourage public participation. Note that when it comes to specialized consultations or dedicated working groups, civil society and academia sometimes prefer to interact with technical and administrative staff and decision-makers (rather than elected officials).
• By leveraging the skills, time and resources of the public administration, the feedback loop process can be accomplished more quickly than when relying on elected officials alone. This is especially true if the core team is empowered to implement the process and coordinate effectively with colleagues (to plan, share information and ensure the local authorities more quickly respond to feedback).
• As elected officials are less directly involved (not conducting face-to-face meetings and door-to-door canvassing), the model will not necessarily boost public trust (and voter confidence) in those individual officials. However, trust in the local authority and the municipal departments leading outreach and responding to feedback should increase. This is supported by OECD research that indicates responsiveness of civil service and local government increases public confidence.⁵⁰

Team composition – How many people, and who does what?

The size and composition of the core team will depend on the municipality’s size, staffing resources and whether the approach is direct or supervisory. In small local governments or communities, the team may represent an all-hands-on-deck effort where all available staff or relevant political officeholders contribute to a joint effort. In smaller Moldovan towns (around 1,000 residents), the typical core team size is around four individuals, excluding the mayor and key decision-makers. This size has proven large enough to distribute questionnaires, analyze data, convene public meetings and issue updates to the public, but it limits effective outreach across different sectors of the community. In larger, better-resourced municipalities or those with more formalized departments and agencies, the core team may be larger. In Slovakia, for example, one team had seven local officials (in Vráble, with around 10,000 residents), which proved large enough to reach large cross sections of the community and complete the other steps. The team in another similarly sized city (Šurany) only had three to four active members and accordingly gathered fewer public responses. 

When forming a team, leaders need to consider diversity and inclusiveness. Are women and relevant marginalized or politically underrepresented groups (for example, ethnic, language, youth, people with disabilities and religious minorities) included? Research indicates that the presence of women and marginalized groups (especially those historically excluded from decision-making positions) will impact how the team operates and makes decisions, how the team plans outreach and more. A team that better represents the community can bring in a greater diversity of perspectives and values that can contribute to identifying issues and solutions and designing more inclusive outreach.⁵¹

Regardless of the size of the team, a number of specific roles and responsibilities will need to be fulfilled. For larger teams, each role may be filled by an individual member or shared by several members; for smaller teams, members will likely serve multiple roles as needed. The core team should handle the following list of roles and responsibilities; suggested specific responsibilities are included under each role. Adapt this list to your context and pay attention to lines of accountability or hierarchy within your municipality. As a final note, try to ensure that your core team is diverse, representative and inclusive, such as by having a balance of women and men on the team. A larger team size may be helpful to ensure diverse inclusion is achieved (for example, to ensure each canvassing team going door-to-door has at least two people, or one man and one woman if that is important for all residents to feel comfortable answering).

Decision-maker and process manager: 

This individual leads and is responsible for the overall process and managing the work of the core team. They sign process documents, authorize purchases and expenses, and are the chief point of contact and spokesperson within the government and to the public. If they are not the mayor, council leader or similar officeholder, they will communicate and report to these leaders at higher levels for requisite buy-in, progress updates or requests for support. This individual should focus on solutions and delivery; they will be responsible for translating findings into actions to be taken by the local authority. They are the initial recipient of the data collection and analysis and will use these inputs to guide recommendations and policy deliberations within the government administration. They will likely present and discuss the team’s findings and analysis with the mayor, local council and other government officials. Even if they are not making final decisions on the next steps, they will likely be responsible for implementing those next steps and working with their communications lead to keep the public informed and engaged. 

In Slovakia, this role was most often played by the deputy mayor, a directly elected position. This member should be an elected representative or a high-ranking official in the municipal administration (such as a city manager, chief of staff or chief executive officer) with some degree of decision-making authority. Ideally, this person should be backed with the confidence of the mayor (or other chief decision-maker).

Secretary and rapporteur: 

This individual is the administrative engine of the team, responsible for its smooth functioning, meeting deadlines and navigating bureaucratic red tape. The role may be filled by a single individual or small team of one to two persons who comprise the secretariat to prepare meeting agendas, take minutes of meeting discussion points, coordinate internal communications between team members, and manage notifications between the team and other departments. They also play a lead role in organizing public events and meetings. For this role, consider a high-profile staff member known within the local administration and experienced with its procedures, and possibly a supporting colleague.

Finance officer: 

This individual will be responsible for managing the team’s internal accounting and assisting the team in navigating the local budget process as relevant. They will be responsible for keeping the team on budget, processing expenses and overseeing day-to-day accounting. In addition, if the feedback loop process engages with the budget process directly or indirectly, the finance officer will have additional responsibilities and can advise on the budget process. They will assist the team in coordinating strategy, timeline and action plans with the municipal finance team. They may also offer advice as the team deliberates on priorities and responses, including estimating the costs of potential responses and, later as relevant, assisting the team in translating public commitments into concrete budget initiatives. For this role, consider a staff member familiar with the municipality’s finances and budget process who can liaise with the municipality’s budget or finance staff. 

Legal advisor: 

The team will need to be aware of any legal obligations or policies relevant to the process, such as during data collection (Step 4). This individual – ideally a lawyer – will be responsible for ensuring that the process accounts for applicable laws and regulations. They will advise on how the feedback loop fits within the local and national policy framework; handle complaints or appeals that may arise during the process; and draft contracts, policies or memoranda governing the functioning of the feedback loop team and its connections to other municipal functions and departments. 

For this role, select someone with the legal background and experience to support the process and communicate with other legal advisors, in-house counsels or attorneys in the municipal government, other government bodies, or relevant international and domestic organizations, such as donors, businesses and NGOs. Depending on your resources and context, this may not be a permanent member of the team, but you should still access legal advice as needed during the process.

Member in charge of data collection and analysis: 

This team member will be responsible for the data component of the process and play a key role in generating content for communication and transparency efforts. In the early stages, they should lead the communication with other municipal departments and bodies to ensure the team is aware of and has access to the data already available to the municipality, as well as the means of collecting and analyzing data that the municipal administration already uses. This information can be gathered during the context analysis and self-assessment stages (see Step 1). This team member will lead discussions and design in Step 4 (data collection) and Step 5 (data analysis). This team member will be responsible for guiding the development of suitable data collection instruments that align with the team’s analytical capabilities; alternatively, they should be prepared to recruit data analysts and experts to support this analysis. This member should consider the capacity for gender analysis. They will oversee data analysis, report findings to the team and prepare data for publication or public sharing, such as through charts and other visualizations. This member should work with the legal advisor to ensure data management protocols meet national or local standards and policies. They should also work closely with the team member in charge of public communications to develop clear communications and facilitate the open and transparent sharing of information around the process. 

This individual may be a municipal staff member but could also be identified within the community, such as from civil society or a local university. They will need to coordinate with the legal advisor on data governance (with regard to privacy). 

Member in charge of citizen engagement and communication: 

This member will lead and manage communications to members of the public and CSOs during the feedback loop process. They will draft public statements, raise awareness through regular and social media and assist with organizing public events, such as drafting talking points and preparing responses to frequently asked questions. They will work with the member in charge of data to present findings, recommendations and public feedback in regular reports and public updates. They will be the key point of contact for open data, transparency issues and all issues relating to the publication of and public access to information. This member will have an increasingly important role as the process unfolds – in early stages, they will create awareness and update the general public on the process. In the final and most important stages (closing the loop), they will play a key role in tracking and reporting progress toward meeting commitments or priorities.

This individual should be a municipal staff member, perhaps a spokesperson or communications professional, or a staff member within their office. This role should work closely with the process manager, secretary and data lead to develop communications that are informative, relevant and responsive to the public.

For the initial meeting of your team, consider the following agenda items: 

Begin with specifying what residents’ priorities will be used for: Will the information be used for processes affecting the entire municipality or a specific policy? For example, the entire municipality will be affected by the budget, development or investment priorities, and planning. Alternatively, feedback could have lower stakes – to improve or reform an existing policy or program of the local authority, setting priorities in social, cultural and recreational development areas, which may have a nominal economic impact (i.e., street names, arts programs or community gardens). Or will it be used to strengthen the local authority’s responsiveness to a particular sector of the community, which may be underserved or face specific service needs?

Assign core team roles and responsibilities: Refer to the roles and responsibilities discussed in Section 2.3, and assign the various tasks to team members. Develop a rough draft of the work plan to organize key tasks, responsible persons and proposed timelines. 

Identify gaps in collective knowledge or skills: Determine if there are any orientation and training needs for team members. For example, if the team is new to governing (perhaps many are recently elected to office), can a colleague or expert present and answer questions about the local planning or budgeting process? Orientation sessions like this can be a useful way to boost confidence, build team cohesiveness and get started on the right track.

Revisit your stakeholder analysis and plan to secure and maintain buy-in: Revisit the stakeholder analysis in Section 1.6 and add more detail if needed. At this stage, your goal (or the goal of particular team members so assigned) will be to begin identifying and contacting relevant stakeholders whose buy-in is a priority for the process.

Finally, draft a timeline for your feedback loop process: Plan a schedule of future meetings and assign tasks to be completed before the next meeting. See Section 3.3 on time planning for more details. See also Annex IV: Timeline, Budget and Team Composition for examples of real feedback loop implementation timelines from local authorities in four countries.

As a component of the stakeholder mapping exercise in Section 1.6 and initial meetings mentioned in Section 2.4, the core team should set aside some time to consider whether the feedback loop process will include representative inputs from everyone in the local community. It is essential to assign some team members to examine the implementation plan with these questions in mind. 

The feedback loop effort will interact with the community and also affect it. The principle of do no harm (discussed in Step 1 and Annex III) necessitates the planners and implementers of community interventions to think ahead about how their activities will interact with visible and hidden power dynamics and relationships to intentionally or unintentionally exacerbate the exclusion or marginalization of particular groups, such as women. On a related note, you will need to plan for an intentionally inclusive process that everyone can participate in.

Consider the power imbalances between various groups, identities and members of the community – for example, any safety considerations that will enable the participation of certain individuals or groups. Often, women or individuals with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities face discrimination or barriers to participation. Other identities, such as people with disabilities and youth, may also require special measures and reasonable accommodations to ensure they can be heard and participate (see Section 3.2 for additional details). The term intersectionality refers to instances when discriminated or marginalized identities are layered – for example, a young woman who is deaf may face discrimination at various times because of her youth, her gender and her disability. Accounting for this “double discrimination” is important to ensure broad inclusion. Additional guidance can be found in NDI Manual for Disability Inclusion (linked here).

The following guiding questions can help you get started; these are framed generally (“people in a given identity group”), but you can adapt these questions to focus on women; religious, language, or racial minorities; refugees and migrants; people with disabilities; youth; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) communities; older adults; and other people relevant to your context. Overall, use these questions to plan for how these populations might participate, and whether and how they may want to participate, and then design accommodations or modifications to your outreach accordingly. 

• To what extent are [people in a given identity group] represented in decision-making bodies and elected or unelected offices? Regarding data collection, who is represented in your sample, and who is missing?
• What constraints do [people in a given identity group] face to participate in politics, civil society or access public space? Include structural constraints (i.e., Are these people allowed or welcomed in all spaces? Does the meeting location allow physical access?) and social ones (i.e., Do certain people assume a higher proportion of family and caretaking responsibilities?).
• Are there unique risks [people in a given identity group] may face for participating in politics or participatory outreach activities? How can these risks be mitigated?
• What particular strategies or methods have enabled or could enable [people in a given identity group] to participate in decision-making processes? How does this group prefer to receive information and communicate (preferred language, spoken or written, online or in person, etc.)?

What particular strategies or methods have enabled or could enable [people in a given identity group] to participate in decision-making processes? How does this group prefer to receive information and communicate (preferred language, spoken or written, online or in person, etc.)?

Step 3: Budget and identify resources

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
- Idiom

Summary:

• The core team identifies human resources (skills) and the material and expert costs it will need to listen to, collect and respond to feedback.
  The core team develops a timeline for the process.

In this step, you will enumerate the resources needed by the core team to carry out the feedback loop based on the specific objective and relevant timelines developed in the previous step. Break your resource needs into three general categories: human resources, budget funds and time. 

Human resources is broader than the core team members who organize and implement the feedback loop (refer to Step 2). The process can involve others, including civil society, NGOs, volunteers and staff in the local administration. The skills and competencies relevant to the process are described in Step 2. If you are concerned that these skills are missing in the core team, and you are struggling to recruit for these skills, consider seeking out training. Local or national CSOs, associations and universities may offer free or fee-based courses or training on the skills described in Section 2.1, as well as soft skills like project management and organization. Alternatively, you may hire out for missing skills, such as hiring a research firm or consultant to listen, collect and analyze data.

In line with the authorization in Step 1 and broader institutional and external buy-in from Step 2, consider any approvals you may need – or the expectations you will need to set and manage – to ensure these human resources and skills are available to support the project when needed. For example:

• Will staff and officials only act if support for feedback loop activities is part of their key performance indicators or formal deliverables?
• Alternatively, can they realistically be expected to do extra or volunteer work without compensation or recognition? 

Formal assignments may require the support or direct engagement of the mayor (to provide approvals and issue directions) or the deputy mayor or chief of staff (depending on who is responsible for managing or overseeing staff and agencies within city hall, including hiring and firing decisions). Help these managers to organize their teams and support you more effectively by having a clear plan: define clear scopes of work for who you will need, for what, and for when (including estimates of time commitments). Plans inevitably change, but making the request early makes it easier to adapt on the go. 

Now that the core team has evaluated their strengths and weaknesses, as well as where they might require external support, consider the budget necessary to implement the feedback loop. Depending on the local context, it may be easiest to work with the local council to allocate – as part of the budget – a general budget line item for “citizen engagement.” This can become a standard practice for every budget cycle and will raise awareness of the resources available for this type of participation.  

But how much to ask for? Consider the following groups of costs: 

• Salaries and materials: This includes the salaries of team members and local authority staff who will implement or support activities, costs for materials needed for data collection (printed forms, a drop box to return forms, computers or software to analyze data collected), and any other supplies or expenses that may be incurred in the process of implementing activities. Regarding salaries, while local authority elected officials and staff are already remunerated for their work, additional remuneration or overtime may be required under local labor laws.
• Travel costs: Will the team need transportation to rural or outlying neighborhoods or communities within the jurisdiction of the local authority? Can you use a personal vehicle (if you have one) to get there (and will the cost of gas be reimbursed)? Or will you need a ferry or other specialized transportation?
• Meeting and convening space: Outreach, dialogue and codesign sessions will likely involve in-person meetings or convenings. If privacy is a concern, reserving a dedicated conference room may be necessary. Does the local authority have dedicated local spaces, such as halls of culture, community centers or rooms in city hall, where these meetings can take place? If not, you may need to rent them for a fee. You may also need to provide a coffee/tea break, in which case a small catering budget will be needed.
• External expertise and support: The core team may decide to recruit external support to implement parts of the feedback loop. This could include a grant to a local CSO to conduct outreach and surveys of a particular community. It could also include hiring a consultant enumerator or data analyst to perform the work of tallying and analyzing data collected and sharing a report with the local authority. 
  In addition, you may need to hire translation services to reach residents who speak different languages (such as migrants) or engage with a media company to air an advertisement or spot via radio and television.
• Accommodations and accessibility: Reasonable accommodations should be accounted for in your budget – for example, access to childcare, interpreters to different languages, including sign language, transportation and accessibility to the venue for persons with disabilities. Time of day and location should also be considered, as it impacts who will be available to attend meetings. 
  The goal of accommodation is to reduce barriers to broad participation. Also, consider the economic or financial barrier to participating: if you are asking a particular community to meet with you (in a focus group or hearing, for example), can you offer incentives (to offset their costs of attending), such as childcare services or reimbursements for travel expenses or time away from work?⁵²

Next, consider any approvals or procurement processes you need to follow to secure these resources. Do you need further approval from local leadership to give you an operating budget for this activity? Do you need to issue a competitive public procurement process to recruit interpreters, rent meeting space or print needed materials? Be sure to get these approvals ahead of time to avoid slowing you down or halting the process – this is where buy-in can be useful. 

Time is perhaps the most important factor in successful implementation and relates to and overlaps with the deployment of human resources and funds (described in sections 3.1 and 3.2). Time is needed to prepare the feedback loop, develop its materials, request and analyze feedback, conduct dialogue and take action. Budget time for collecting, analyzing and consulting with the public on their priorities before those priorities are submitted and used in the formal decision-making process. How can you accurately and realistically estimate how much time you will need for each step in the process? 

Start with the timelines of the decision-making process that the feedback loop will contribute to: When will a final version of public priorities be needed? Then work backwards. If the budget is drafted and deliberated in October, then priorities must be in hand by August or September. How long will it take to design public engagements (data collection and dialogue)? How long will it take to implement them? At what points will you issue updates to the public? See Annex IV for examples of real feedback loop implementation timelines from local authorities in four countries. 

• Institutional or bureaucratic deadlines: There may be a specific window of time when feedback can be used for budgets, plans and strategies. These may be legally or administratively determined deadlines.
• Time to complete tasks: Consider the time in work hours that staff and other team members will need to complete specific tasks. Also, when designing public engagements, you’ll need to consider the time needed by members of the public to respond to feedback.
• Consider intervening events or deadlines and the flexibility of your institution: Is there a major event or holiday coming up that may impact the ability of your team to meet planned deadlines? Do department heads or senior officials tend to require strict adherence to deadlines, or are timelines more flexible in practice? Consider your past experience with public outreach when drafting timelines: How long does it usually take for you to organize public events or rallies? When you campaigned for election, how long did it take to meet with 100 or 200 residents?
• Narrow the scope of your data collection and analysis: If you are concerned about timelines or cannot secure support from enough stakeholders, reset your expectations and redefine your data collection goals. When narrowing the scope, however, keep in mind who will now be left out, and assess this in light of power dynamics and do-no-harm principles. Consider the following ways you may be able to narrow the scope, if needed:
  • You can’t reach the whole community: Target certain groups. Consider narrowing the scope to a particular neighborhood or an underrepresented or marginalized group, such as youth, people with disabilities or women entrepreneurs. The population will be smaller, and you can likely contact youth centers, universities, business associations or other organizations to assist in your outreach efforts.
  • Reduce the geography: If the local authority is responsible for an urban core and a number of smaller villages and more rural areas, consider narrowing your data collection to one or fewer villages or areas.
  • Reduce the scope of the problem or focus of the analysis: Instead of tackling all discretionary spending in the local budget process, consider only a portion. For example, focus on more straightforward and visible maintenance challenges, such as parks, garbage collection or sidewalks. 

While not a resource, keep in mind the concept of proportionality. Your feedback loop’s scope and costs (in time, money and effort) should be proportional to the size of the problem you are trying to solve. As mentioned, a feedback loop is most effective when setting public priorities for large, long-term community issues. Implementing a robust feedback loop may involve a significant effort to organize public resources and substantial time from elected officials or staff. Therefore, the scale of the decision or priority set should be commensurate with the effort to collect public feedback – in other words, a $5,000 public survey should not be used to decide on a $5,000 public investment. 

Step 4: Listening to citizen input

“We all have the ability to turn that negative feeling into a positive by allowing our dissatisfaction to give birth to change.” 
- Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, OBE, Mayor of Freetown, Sierra Leone⁵³

“All cities have traffic departments and statistics for traffic and parking. Do you know of any city with a department for pedestrians and public life? Hardly any city even has good data concerning the people who use the city. People in cities tend to be invisible and poorly represented in the planning process.” 
- Jan Gehl, Danish architect⁵⁴

Summary:

• The core team assesses its data governance as well as its data privacy and protection obligations.
• The core team develops and implements interviews, focus groups and surveys to collect public feedback.

The goal of this step is to design the public engagements that will be used to collect public feedback and engage in public dialogue.

Note that completing Step 3 – securing a budget – may occur concurrently with or after this step. Your resources limit the scope of public engagement and data collection activities. At the same time, the nature of these activities will impact your budget needs. Be prepared to adapt and collaborate with your team to identify essential needs and “nice to haves,” which can be reduced or removed if budget cuts occur.

Before proceeding, and in line with Step 1, verify whether the information you are seeking already exists. This guide assumes that the information you are seeking does not exist (which is why you need to design public engagements to find it out). You may already have strong indications of public priorities – or be able to learn about them – from public records or generic public complaints mechanisms; recent polls by local universities, newspapers and community groups; and local advocacy campaigns. If the information is already available from a credible source (and is recent enough to still be relevant), then conducting additional research may be unnecessary. If so, it may be more efficient to use engagements to focus on a narrower question, such as better understanding a particular issue or how it manifests for a particular group of residents or neighborhood. 

Now that the core team has been confirmed, the objective set, and an operating budget and mandate secured, it is time to design the public engagements to be deployed during the feedback loop process. These engagements serve two purposes, generally reflecting the outward/inward-facing directions of two-way dialogue. 

Modern local authorities need data to function, and increasingly, this data is digitally shared, handled and stored. To manage this increasing quantity of data, governments have begun to adopt data governance frameworks. Such frameworks describe “how data is handled and for what purpose, its quality and integrity, as well as the privacy and security concerns related to its collection and use.”⁵⁸ An effective data governance framework will account for local capacities, needs and use of data and will align with your country’s legal framework and national policies. Data governance frameworks can cover a lot of ground but generally include the following categories (sourced from MetroLab Network’s handy guide⁵⁹):

• Data classifications: A ranking of how sensitive data is, ranging from most open (job announcements, press releases) to most restricted (data that – if made public – could risk life or property)
• Privacy and key principles: A consideration of the right to privacy and data protection, national or global standards, and equity
• Data integrity and cybersecurity: The infrastructure, staff and measures you have in place to ensure data quality, safeguarding and protocols in the event of breaches
• Data use rights and sharing agreements: A determination of who owns the data, how it is shared internally or within the government, and external sharing policies (such as with vendors or law enforcement)
• Operationalizing the framework: The procedures, resourcing and organizational structure needed to deliver on the framework, including oversight and community engagement

Does your local authority have such a framework? If not, consider developing a simplified version to guide how data collected during this process will be shared, handled and stored – noting that many of the considerations apply to paper materials as well as digital. The following sections will introduce some standards for privacy and personal data that will be relevant as you prepare to listen to public feedback and gather data.

Privacy and handling personal data

Each country has rules or laws about privacy and data protection, and your team should be fully aware of your obligations in relation to your domestic legal framework before embarking on data collection efforts, especially if you are collecting personal data. Personal data is “any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual.”⁶⁰ If you are not aware of the rules, you should consult with relevant civil servants or legal departments in the local authority, national ministry or other part of the government administration to understand your responsibilities. Many countries also have a supervisory authority, which can be a single government official, ombudsperson or a body with several members who oversee the application of these rules and may offer guidance.⁶¹

In addition to domestic laws on privacy, confidentiality and data protection, your country may be party to international or regional standards or guidelines on collecting, maintaining and sharing data. For example, the European Union’s (EU’s) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies to EU countries but has become a global standard.⁶² The Council of Europe’s Convention for the Protection of Individuals with Regard to the Processing of Personal Data (Convention 108+) is another international standard with 55 signatory countries,⁶³ as is the African Union’s Convention on Cybersecurity and Personal Data Protection, ratified by 15 of its 55 member states (and thus in force as of June 2023).⁶⁴ In the western hemisphere, the Organization of American States (OAS) has also developed its own Principles on Privacy and Protection of Personal Data.⁶⁵

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) offers Guidelines Governing the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data,⁶⁶ which it considers a minimum set of standards and principles, although it recognizes exceptions.

In summary, it is important to understand whether the data collection process will gather personal data. If it does, be sure to understand your obligations under domestic and international frameworks to ensure that you respect residents’ rights. Consider the following questions as you plan (although these are not exhaustive):

• Are you explaining clearly to residents (and anyone you are collecting data from) what you are using data for?
• Are there restrictions on the kinds of data the government can collect? Can you get residents’ permission to collect data? Can you get the data you need without collecting personally identifiable information?
• Does your local authority have rules about how data must be stored and who has access? Are there limits on data sharing, even between agencies or within the local authority’s administration?
• Are there rules about publishing data?
• How will your team manage and store data to ensure basic safeguards are in place?

See Annex VI: Data Governance Frameworks for additional resources and an exercise on storing and safeguarding data responses.

Experience shows that using one or more of the following methods for collecting data generates the most useful results. Your target audience and feedback process will influence the best methods for your feedback loop: 

• Interviews (called key informant interviews or KIIs) can include consultations with relevant personnel within the local authority, local cultural or traditional leaders, community activists or other relevant stakeholders.
  • Individual interviews may be useful, especially as your team begins planning data collection. For example, you can schedule interviews with community leaders or highly engaged residents as an initial source of suggestions for how best to design your data collection, what questions to ask or how best to reach a certain population in the community. These interviews can also be used to supplement or better understand feedback as it begins to trickle in.

Read more in Annex VII: Key Informant Interviews.

• Focus group discussions (FGDs) or group interviews are a spectrum of more targeted outreach to a particular group: they can be randomized, rigorous research efforts with strict methodologies and trained facilitators, or they can be meetings where interested participants can provide their thoughts less formally. Groups can also be organized around identity characteristics to support open discussions (such as a women-only focus group or a discussion with people who speak a common minority language). FGDs or group interviews can also be used at the start of your data collection efforts to support planning – such as testing questions or questionnaires to make sure respondents can easily understand them or to suggest improvements – or at the end of the process to gather greater detail on priorities (see Step 7 on dialogue). Note that rigorous focus groups may involve specific and strict procedures for selecting participants, arranging the environment and setting for the FGD, and special facilitator training. 

Read more in Annex VIII: Focus Groups.

• Surveys are a data collection method that can be used in various ways. Issue and concerns surveys, panel surveys and needs surveys may be distributed through digital (online) formats, printed hard copies or in-person methods with the help of an enumerator; surveys can also be conducted over the phone. The survey questionnaire can be short and focused on specific issues for community feedback, or it can be longer, broader and more open-ended.
  • Generally, surveys can be the most resource and time-intensive methods of outreach and collecting public input, but they offer the benefit of delivering anonymous and quantifiable public responses. Depending on how survey participants are identified (called sampling), survey responses may also be randomized and representative (through [weighted] random sampling) or highly targeted to a particular sector of the community. 

Read more in Annex IX: Surveys.

For all of these methods, determining the most appropriate sample size and the most optimal means of identifying the participants that will comprise the sample are important decisions. Each data collection method – surveys, KIIs or FGDs – carries with it a particular approach and set of key considerations concerning sample size and selection. For focus groups, for example, the size of an individual group should not be more than 8–10 people maximum to ensure free discussion. Depending on the population parameters you want to engage with, this group size limitation may require holding several different focus groups – potentially each with different types of participants (such as women adults, men adults, young women, young men, people with mixed genders, language groups and migrants) to ensure that your overall data is robust and representative. For surveys, on the other hand, your sample size should be large enough to effectively represent your target populations, which requires you to consider the overall population of your community. In addition, you must also consider the composition of your sample, which will depend on how homogeneous or heterogenous your community is in terms of identity characteristics and other factors. For more information on sample determinations for each method type, see Annex VII: Key Informant Interviews, Annex VIII: Focus Groups, and Annex IX: Surveys.

Beyond this, when planning your preferred or optimal data collection method(s), there is a range of issues to consider to ensure that your data is robust and usable for your intended purpose, that your team’s time and resources are used efficiently, and that the community members you engage with understand the issues they are being asked to comment on, in what way, and for what reasons. (See Section 4.4 for more on inclusion, access, accommodation and safety).

Finally, as indicated earlier, be prepared for the fact that your data collection plans may need to change as you begin to engage with the public, other staff within the local authority, or other stakeholders. Be flexible. You may realize you need additional resources or information and so may need to adapt your outreach efforts to reflect this, either by reducing the scope of a survey or adding interviews. For a detailed overview of how, why and in what ways to use survey, FGD or KII data collection methods, with examples and key considerations to assist your decision-making planning, see Annex X: When to Use KIIs, FGs and Surveys. 

If you want to conduct a door-to-door canvassing campaign but lack the time or resources to return to each household later, consider introducing options for residents to return the surveys themselves, either online or in person.

1. Direct residents to submit the survey online: By including a scannable code (such as a quick-response [QR] code) or URL link to an online version of the same survey, you can remove the step of returning to the resident’s house. If you are not rigorously sampling, you can also encourage the resident to share this link with their neighbors or others living in the same house.
2. Direct residents to submit the survey via mail or to a drop box: When canvassing, simply give the residents the option to return the survey in the mail (you should give them a pre-addressed and prepaid envelope along with the survey). Note: This will cost the municipality the rate for local postage multiplied by the number of surveys. Ensuring that residents have a pre-addressed and prepaid envelope is crucial to ensuring the return process is of no cost to them. Alternatively, you can ask the resident to return the survey to a specified drop box location (for example, in city hall, at the local community center, or at another convenient and predetermined location).
3. Allow residents to complete the survey on the spot: This is an option if the survey is especially simple. For example, if it is one question, for example, “Which of the following five issues matters most to you?” Then, residents do not need to keep the survey for a long time. However, this is not always recommended because it can introduce bias into responses, especially if the resident feels pressured or the presence of a local official may encourage a certain response. Further, this is not a recommended approach in Moldova’s context, as returning to each house to collect surveys after a week is considered a demonstration of the local officials’ long-term commitment to listen to residents.

For all options, you must clearly specify when the survey needs to be returned (giving a specific deadline). 

Methods to increase participant response to and return of surveys 

Relying on respondents to submit (online, via mail or via drop box) limits the team’s ability to quickly collect surveys as you need to wait for surveys to trickle in from these sources. If this is your approach, you should consider some tactics that may increase response rates: 

1. Have clear instructions for the return of the survey: Clearly indicate on the survey or a separate letter attached to the survey the date that the survey must be submitted and how it can be submitted.
2. Send individual reminders: If sampling, give each survey an ID number to track it (see Annex IX: Surveys for more information on sampling). As surveys come in, record their numbers – this will allow your team to identify which addresses or individuals require follow-up; if these numbers are small enough, following up in person or through another round of canvassing might be feasible. If your sampling is based on clusters (men and women, certain neighborhoods, etc.), then you can also see whether you need to redouble efforts among particular respondents, either by sending out a new round of surveys or through convenience sampling in a specific neighborhood.
3. Send reminders to all respondents via phone, SMS text message, post or regular media channels: Leverage the expertise and skills of your communications team member to conduct outreach and issue reminders to residents that the survey is closing, and repeat instructions to submit their surveys.

The following ten-step process was developed through the course of NDI’s support to local authorities in Moldova, which began in 2010. Funded by United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the program increases accountability and trust with constituents by demonstrably listening to and responding to concerns. 

Between 2016 and 2022, local politicians in the program conducted more than 290,000 door-to-door discussions with constituents and over 400,000 online interactions. The resulting feedback was used to resolve more than 1,200 local issues. Mayors engaged under the program use online and in-person surveys to identify priorities, publish regular updates on priority issues and use feedback to advocate for their communities on a range of issues at the regional or national level. Most local officials who participated in the program secured improvements in their constituents’ lives through a combination of local and national government actions, community self-help and international donor aid. For instance, Moldovans received new water pipes, repaired roads and waste disposal systems.

In each Moldovan municipality, the process lasts between 10 and 14 months for a full cycle (from the decision to engage the public on priorities to the final update on progress). Note that in Moldova, municipalities are often quite small (fewer than 1,000 households), and the process is implemented by teams of at least four elected officials and staff. You can see a flowchart indicating the various steps of the process, developed by NDI, in Figure 3 below. An example timeline, based on the experiences of Moldovan municipal leaders and the steps in Figure 3, follows: 

Figure 3. Ten steps of the NDI feedback loop process in Moldova

After years of working with mayors, alums of the project established a Club of Local Champions (60 mayors who are champions of more responsive governance practices). These champions make constituent outreach a regular part of their work outside of and in addition to the 10-step cycle. Most notably, the initiative created a culture and expectation that mayors and councilors report (before voters ask and outside of election campaigns) how they have fulfilled their campaign promises and delivered on residents’ priorities. In addition, because it convened mayors from across the country, the club began national-level advocacy for common issues – specifically universal access to safe drinking water. 

The rayon of Ștefan Vodă (rayons are administrative districts that typically include several towns and villages) offers another notable example of how local efforts can build on each other. Local mayors and councilors from the rayon had spent three years compiling resident priorities through door-to-door canvassing. Based on those responses, the rayon council developed and adopted a five-year plan for the rayon’s development. In another example, mayors along a major highway have sought to reduce heavy truck traffic, working together to advocate for and implement incremental changes with the national government (see Box 8). 

Overall, the shift has developed a culture of “two-way communication” that local officials sometimes refer to as “year-round campaigning” – but this is the kind of continuous citizen outreach about important local issues and progress toward addressing them that is more common in established democracies. Citizens expect that they will be consulted on key issues and policies, that policies and plans will reflect community will to the greatest extent possible, and that they will receive information about governmental plans and actions. Officials also understand the political value of accountability – as evidenced by their higher-than-average election rates (even compared to other incumbents) mentioned in Box 2. As a result, local mayors and councilors are embracing citizen consultation practices in additional areas, such as through transparent budget development. 

As with all data collection methods, issues of inclusion, representation, access and safety should be kept in mind. Different data collection methods may be more conducive to engaging with different groups of people in your community. It is important to consider people’s past experiences and familiarity with particular participation methods – if any – and identify which types may be optimal for your intended purpose, the nature of your community and the resources of your core team.

For example, how will you ensure that you listen to opinions from diverse community members, not just those known to the local authority or with higher levels of socioeconomic status or influence? How will you reach, for example, diverse women, youth, ethno-linguistic-religious minorities, people with disabilities, those outside the city center, residents of rural areas, internal or external migrants in the community, indigent persons and others who face various systemic institutional, sociocultural and individual barriers to public participation? Or, if you are trying to engage with a particular sector of the community about whose views the local authority knows little, what method might be most optimal for them? Beyond this, how will you ensure that these diverse individuals can meaningfully participate, given their life circumstances and time limitations?

While not an exhaustive list, the following considerations should be kept in mind when determining your preferred outreach approaches:

• Literacy rates and numeracy knowledge within your community: Do different groups in the community have different literacy and numeracy rates? The advantage of discussion-based focus groups compared to surveys is that they do not require all participants to be literate and can reach more people than an individual survey. Consequently, face-to-face interviews or FGDs may be preferable for persons with lower literacy or numeracy skills.
• Physical ability and visual impairment: If people are required to travel to a FGD or interview outside their home or local area, safe and reliable transportation may hinder their participation. Would a different method be more accommodating?
• Sociocultural norms and practices: In some contexts, engagement in public life is dominated by adult men, and women and youth are not free to speak up in group settings about public affairs; they may not even be able to comfortably sit in on the events. If surveys are distributed to a household, the family may assume that only the male head of the household should respond. These sociocultural norms often interact with differential rates of literacy and numeracy among women and men, or among women and men from different ethno-religious-linguistic groups, socioeconomic statuses or urban/rural locations. Where the norms around public engagement differ for different groups or genders, it is important to ensure that data collection methods are accessible to these different groups. Would a woman-only FGD be useful? Should multiple surveys be distributed to a household, with specific requests for feedback from all adults individually? Do written surveys or materials need to be translated into several languages? Should the lead interviewer and the participant interviewee be of the same sex or the same ethno-religious-linguistic group? There may also be a technology gender gap within families.
• Language diversity and clarity: Do members of your community speak different languages? Even in communities where one language is dominant or officially designated as the language of government, people within the community will vary in their levels of oral and written fluency and comfort. Even if people are fluent in a language, they may not grasp highly formal or technical terms. Therefore, it is important to ensure that the choice of language used in your data collection process – and clarity of word choice and phrasing – is accessible, easy to understand, in plain terms (not just formal/technical), and sensitive to diverse ethno-religious-linguistic and other identity characteristics. Testing your survey or questionnaires can be a useful method to determine whether your questions and word choices are appropriate.
• Caregiving and other employment responsibilities: Most people have a range of responsibilities and burdens that impact their availability to engage with public affairs. Women often have multiple caregiving responsibilities, such as caring for children and older or disabled relatives, managing the household, and going to the market or fetching water; on top of this, women may also be employed outside the home. Similarly, for men, those with irregular employment or who work shift hours may have schedules that make it difficult to participate in meetings or to be interviewed during regular local authority business hours. To accommodate various caregiving and employment responsibilities, schedule data collection events to ensure participation. Consider offsetting caregiving burdens by providing childcare or small honorariums for participation.
• Safety: As part of do no harm, safety is a key consideration when planning for data collection. Safety considerations refer to both the data collection team (enumerators) and the community member participants providing data. If enumerators will be walking along streets, through neighborhoods, and knocking on doors, how can you ensure they will be safe? For example, will they have a pin, badge or shirt that identifies them as officials? Similarly, how can you ensure that the people they will engage with will be safe from potential harassment, exploitation or other abuse – especially if enumerators are volunteers or contractors not well known to the local authority? More broadly, might any sociocultural or household beliefs or practices put participants at risk for engaging with enumerators – for instance, if a male enumerator conducted an interview with a female community member in her home? A common approach to mitigate safety risks is to have enumerators work in pairs, depending on their availability for your feedback loop process. Additionally, consider the gender composition of the enumerator pairs. If trying to engage with both men and women community members, mixed pairs or teams of two women or two men may be advisable, depending on the context. Such considerations should be applied to door-to-door engagements (such as survey delivery), FGDs and interviews. Additional considerations include the time of day that data collection takes place (i.e., if after business hours, are there any traffic or crime risks that enumerators may face?), location of data collection, type of and access to transportation, and awareness of sociocultural norms and practices.

As part of your planning, you should discuss and try to address any personal concerns your team members may raise about their role in the given data collection approach.

You have determined your data collection method, designed your questionnaires and materials, selected your participants (or samples), and tested your questions on a few close colleagues and friends. Determine whether you need to conduct orientation and training for your colleagues or any volunteers who will assist you. 

If you need volunteers to assist with door-to-door canvassing or distributing surveys, this communication can be a part of your volunteer recruitment efforts. Host an event at the local university, high school, youth center or community center – it might help to promise volunteers a certificate or small honorarium (maybe even a t-shirt!) for their participation. 

Your training and preparation will depend on the kind of outreach and data collection you choose, but be ready to provide talking points, answers to frequently asked questions, or training (including handouts with relevant overviews and briefings) on the following topics: 

• How will colleagues and the volunteers transmit responses or communicate in general – such as any unexpected issues or delays, problems with data collection and other questions to the core team? Determine whether there will be a single point of contact to field questions and organize volunteers, an email or shared drive to store responses on the cloud, or a form (electronic or hard copy) where responses can be entered. Make sure that your volunteers and colleagues will behave appropriately, will refer residents to the relevant authority (and not answer questions they do not know the answers to or on behalf of the local authority) and are sufficiently supervised and supported by the core team.
• What are your protocols for meeting standards for data privacy and data integrity? Will volunteers or colleagues be handling private personal information; what steps or precautions will be taken to ensure this is done correctly, in a way that respects local residents and is in line with relevant laws?
• What is your risk mitigation strategy? How will you ensure that colleagues and volunteers are safe? Will you organize volunteers and enumerators into groups rather than have them work alone; will you provide interpreters; will you organize transportation, water, and snacks; how will you handle risks from excessive heat or cold?
• Do you need to organize training or briefing materials for volunteers and colleagues conducting surveys and canvassing? Consider whether it will be necessary to print and distribute maps, provide talking points (about what they are doing and how responses will be used) and example dialogues (see Annex IX: Surveys for an example), set and establish a schedule for canvassing and due dates for distribution of surveys, and offer an explanation or guidance for any other components that will make their work easier and clearer. 

You have determined your data collection method, designed your questionnaires and materials, selected your participants (or samples), tested your questions on a few close colleagues and friends, and conducted orientation and training. It’s time to go listen to the public and collect your data. Distribute your questionnaires and organize your focus groups and/or interviews. 

This is a good time to communicate with the public. Your core team has made the big first step of Listen, Respond, Report – asking for input. The individuals who answer the door or join a focus group will be aware of your efforts, but the rest of the community may not hear about it. Activate the team’s communications officer or point person and raise awareness. For example: 

• Create a series of posts about the process on social media.
• Issue a press release to local media outlets, and have the mayor or a team leader available for an interview with a local TV station, radio program or newspaper.
• Create an announcement or post on the local authority website.
• Hold a meeting or an announcement event.

Your goal will be to make at least some members of the public aware that this process is happening. Tell them about the process, your goals, and how they can get involved. Be clear that this is only the beginning of the process. 

As a part of your data collection strategy, you should set some expectations about your data collection timeline. Data collection should ideally be completed in less than one month. In other words, while initially developing your research instruments may take some time, you should keep the data collection relatively brief. Once the first survey is out the door, the first focus group invitation is sent or the first interview is held, your team should end data collection one month later and begin compiling and analyzing the data on hand. This will help you stay on track and keep momentum.

Interviews and focus groups 

These are easier to control for time, as they are arranged by your core team and conducted on your schedule (but see Section 4.4 for information on scheduling and other ways to accommodate participant needs). If you will use interviews or focus groups as a data collection method, you should prioritize them and complete them in a condensed period. 

FGDs typically last about 60 to 90 minutes, involving around 8–10 people in the group. Individual interviews may take less time for each interview, but overall timelines will depend on the number of interviews you will schedule and your available human resources. By dividing efforts between your team members, you should be able to arrange and conduct many of the interviews and/or FGDs in the same week. As noted in Annex VII and Annex VIII, significant time will be required for transcribing the spoken interviews or conversations, as the quality of these notes will be crucial for analysis.

Surveys

For surveys, your method of distributing and collecting the survey questionnaire and your sample size will affect how quickly results are collected, as different approaches, such as door-to-door canvassing with printed paper surveys, online surveys and mailed surveys, require varying timelines. You should set a reasonable time frame for surveys to be completed by residents and returned to (or collected by) the core team or its partners – at least one and up to two weeks is a good benchmark.

Why limit survey collection timelines? You want to make sure that your data collection is a snapshot of opinions at a given time and that as few external variables may influence responses as possible. The longer that surveys are out among the public, the greater the chance that an external event will affect responses; for example, if a sudden natural disaster (fire or flood) damages many local homes, that will immediately reset the community’s priorities to emergency relief and constructing new homes. 

Also, you want the data. While survey data collection – especially door-to-door canvassing – can be a rewarding way to engage with community members and an important moment for your team and local leaders to demonstrate commitment to residents, you need to listen to and analyze the data before acting on resident priorities. The longer you wait, the more you risk losing momentum, and the public may even feel that you have failed to follow through.

Door-to-door canvassing: 

The size of your community will contribute to determining your overall sample size and how you determine your sample composition. This will, in turn, impact timelines.

Small sample sizes (less than 200 households, with fewer than 30 to 40 total households assigned to each canvassing team member or pair of enumerators) will more easily allow team members to return in person after a short period (such as one week in Moldova) to collect the completed survey questionnaires. This step of returning in person also increases response rates, and once sufficient surveys are collected, analysis can begin. 

When it comes to higher sample sizes (more than 200 households or more than 50 doors per canvassing team), distributing surveys may take several days. This makes it difficult to conduct a second round of canvassing to collect surveys within a week or two. 

Step 5: Data analysis

“But when judges judge straight, for neighbors
As well as for strangers, and never turn their backs
On Justice, their city blossoms, their people bloom.” 
- Hesiod: Works & Days, Theogony, Translated by Stanley Lombardo at University of Kansas⁷⁴

Summary:

• The core team, having completed data collection, analyzes the data depending on its character as qualitative or quantitative information.
• Data is recorded and reviewed, and initial findings are identified.

At the start of this step, you should already have designed and implemented your data collection methodology, and now results have begun to come in. This section shares lessons on data analysis, provides troubleshooting advice if data collection is not going as planned and offers suggestions on how to know if you have collected enough data.

Determining whether you have collected sufficient data to meaningfully understand – and act on – community preferences depends on both the issue or problem that is the focus of your feedback loop process and your chosen data collection method(s). You will likely never have a 100 percent response rate to your surveys or 100 percent participation in FGDs or interviews. Accordingly, you will likely need to decide when you have “good enough” information to understand – and act on – the preferences of your community in all of its diversity.

The team should refer to its goals for the feedback loop process set at the beginning of the efforts (Steps 1 and 2). What is the question you are trying to answer and the problem you are trying to solve? What depth or breadth of information do you need – and from whom – to meaningfully address this problem? Has this level of data from your identified target groups been gathered?

In terms of data collection methodology, some key rules of thumb can help you determine if your data collection has been sufficiently robust. 

• For a survey, your sample size is your key marker for whether you have collected enough data. If you have not reached your sample size goal within two weeks of issuing the survey, refer to the previous sections and either (a) reissue the survey to a wider sample, send reminders or adopt additional distribution methods, or (b) supplement the survey findings with focus groups. When more than a month has passed (and you have made efforts to solicit additional survey responses or issue reminders), you should close the survey, work with the collected findings and note any challenges in data collection or shortages in the sample size in your analysis report. Depending on the number of responses compared to your sample size goal, your findings may be more or less representative of community views and should be viewed as a starting point for further discussion, rather than as a robust and representative basis for policymaking.
• For focus groups and interviews, you have collected enough data if you have heard from the groups or individuals you intended to reach. You cannot speak to everyone directly and indirectly affected by a particular issue; instead, aim to hear perspectives from individuals representing all groups with a stake in the process and some knowledge to contribute. To identify these groups, refer back to the stakeholder mapping conducted by the team earlier in the process (Step 1). Your stakeholder mapping and sorting of groups by their interests, power and relevance to the topic will help you prioritize groups for outreach. 

For all data collection methods, if you feel that the collected feedback is not sufficient, revisit Step 4 to identify missing information and the best way to collect it. For example, your survey might show split responses on two issues, residents might raise unexpected topics, a small sample size could weaken your confidence in representing diverse views, or data might indicate contradictory or confusing trends. Before going to the public with your initial findings, it may be worth conducting additional focus groups or convening a meeting or series of interviews with local civil society representatives and leaders or government officers. At these focus groups or discussions, you can present your initial findings and ask for feedback and clarity on points of confusion; participants might provide additional information that will help you make sense of the initial feedback. This step may also validate your decision to return to the data collection phase with a new survey where you ask different questions or more targeted outreach to a particular community for another focus group. 

Overall, your approach should be flexible and oriented toward listening more, rather than less. It is better to return to the data collection stage and listen again for more information than to present findings to the public that are difficult to act on or pointing in different directions. However, you should always maintain momentum and keep an eye on moving forward toward the steps of solving problems and communicating with the public.

At this stage in the process, you have a collection of forms with responses from residents indicating their priorities or perhaps a number of transcripts or minutes from focus groups, public meetings or other public outreach activities. This is your raw data: the information as it was collected by your team and before it has been further organized, cleaned,⁷⁵ processed or analyzed. Your goal now is to organize and analyze the data. 

Your methods for organizing and analyzing this data will depend on whether the data is quantitative or qualitative. 

• Quantitative data can be represented numerically and includes anything that can be counted, measured or given a numerical value. For example, asking people to select one option from several choices or to rank a series of options by “most important” to “least important” can all be quantified because the selections can be counted and compared.
• Qualitative data represents information and concepts that are not represented by numbers. This is the information that you collected in interviews, free-form responses or focus groups. 

Quantitative data

The information you collected in door-to-door questionnaires or surveys will (almost entirely) be quantitative (though some qualitative data may also be collected if you ask open-ended questions). How you ask your survey questions will impact how you analyze data, but overall, regarding quantitative data, you are looking to create a ranking of issues: What is the highest priority, the second highest priority, and so on? 

Scoring quantitative data

First, look at the responses you collected on surveys. Did respondents select one option (single choice) or rank multiple options? 

Single choice 

Refer to the sample survey from Moldova in Annex IX on surveys as an example. It asks participants to select one public works issue from a list of five options (water, roads, city cleanliness, parks and recreation, or other) as their singular priority. 

To analyze this survey, simply add up the votes for each option from the returned surveys. For the “other” option, you can create one subtotal of all “other” responses or sort individual “other” answers into new categories. Divide those sums by the total number of responses to create a percentage. 

Multiple responses – Sentiment and satisfaction questions and rank order 

Sentiment questions include Likert scale questions that ask about participants’ opinions, attitudes or perceptions about a particular subject, issue or category, such as level of satisfaction with or importance of a specific government service or infrastructure issue. Consider questions with responses like “Strongly agree, agree, neutral, . . .” etc.

Rank order questions ask participants to organize a set of options or categories according to a particular order, such as their highest to lowest priority or what they consider to be most and least important. 

Typically, both rank order and sentiment questions ask participants to provide responses on a numbered scale (1 through 5, for example) or on a scale that can be easily translated into scores (strongly agree = 5, agree = 4, and so on). Some prefer a 1 through 4 scale, so respondents cannot be neutral by selecting a 3. This can be used in scoring (see example below).

 Note that ranked and sentiment questions are more complicated to analyze responses to; however, the trade-off is that they provide greater detail on residents’ opinions. Compare the single-choice survey to an example of a question from Slovakia, which asks residents to assign five options with a score from 1 to 5: 

How would you score this question? One way to do so is to use responses to assign answers a score of points. For example, in the above survey, a higher points score would indicate a more important issue (answers ranked as 5 score 5 points, answers ranked 4 score 4 points, and so on, to answers left blank receiving 0). You can then compare responses by counting the number of points that each answer scored. Alternatively, you can create a percentage score (by dividing the earned score by the maximum number of points an answer could have received). See additional detail below: 

Tools for scoring quantitative data

Based on the type of questions you ask, how many questions you ask and your access to technology to support your analysis, decide how best to approach this scoring and analysis.  

Analog or pen and paper methods: 

Simply collect the hard copies of responses and tally participant selections with pen and paper, creating stacks of surveys based on which issue area the respondent selected. 

This is most useful when the information to be analyzed is very basic (as in the Moldova survey), and you are not collecting demographic data at all or are only analyzing demographic data in limited detail. If your question or questions are very straightforward (“Which priority has the most votes?”), then pen and paper (and a simple calculator like that on most smartphones) is perfectly acceptable. 

Data entry and analysis using digital spreadsheets:

However, using a spreadsheet or similar digital tool can offer additional opportunities for analysis; it can also generate visualizations and be shared digitally among team members for their own analysis. It is also essential if you plan to disaggregate the survey responses when you have collected demographic data.

The following guidance assumes your team will be using software like Google Sheets; this application has a free pricing tier, and your work can be used, shared and simultaneously edited by individuals without a Google Mail (Gmail.com) account. That said, if your government pays for a subscription to Microsoft Office, you can do a similar analysis using Microsoft Excel. 

For this process, you will take each survey response and enter the data into a table. You should assign each survey an ID number; this will help you to run disaggregations (the process of breaking down large data sets into more specific subcategories) on the data (presented later). Alternatively, you can create a copy of your survey on Google Forms (another free-to-use application), and then – with hard copies of returned surveys in hand – “take” the survey using the responses from real respondents. Google Forms will automatically generate a Google Sheet populated with the responses. Either way you choose, the result may look something like this:

For example (using the above example of issues A, B, C, but with an added question on demographics): 

Note: This can be time-consuming (and not always very interesting work), but it should be done quickly after all surveys are collected. Consider assigning a specific staff member or small team to this task; if resources allow, hire an enumerator to perform the data entry to ensure it is done quickly and correctly. 

Use a spreadsheet if:⁷⁷

• You want to conduct quantitative analysis beyond simple addition.
• You have collected demographic information.
• You want to share or give multiple people access to the data (and can keep it secure).
• You want to generate visuals (e.g., charts and graphs) of the data more easily.
• You have a team member with the skills to use spreadsheets and conduct data analysis.

Disaggregating your data and using cross-tabulations

If you have collected demographic data, you should use a spreadsheet (where each survey response has a unique identification number and is tracked as a unit). This will allow you to disaggregate data, an effective tool for understanding differences in responses among groups of respondents. Disaggregating means separating (something) into its component parts – in survey analysis, it means breaking your sample down into components to compare them. 

However, your survey’s sample size matters (refer back to the discussion of samples in Annex IX on Surveys): Disaggregating is most useful when the units of analysis are large enough to be statistically significant. If your sample is already small, then any differences that appear may be meaningless or misleading. This is also why it is important to ensure that each individual in a household is given a survey to complete, rather than having a household fill out the survey, as a household can contain people of various ages and genders. 

If you have a large enough sample size, consider the demographic questions you asked (you will find additional guidance on demographic questions in Annex IX: Surveys). For example, examining differences in responses between men and women is very common. Using your spreadsheet (it might be best to first make a copy), create a group for responses from women, a group of responses for men, and a group for other identities or responses (those who left this section blank or answered “prefer not to say,” for example). Then run the analysis again: Do you observe any differences in priorities selected by the groups? For example, did women have a different top priority than men? Repeat the process for other attributes; for example, if you asked about ethnicity, age, or other demographic attributes or geographic differences. 

The existence of differences – specifically large ones (especially twenty or more percentage points) – can be useful for your next steps. It may be useful simply to understand that these groups have different opinions, or it may indicate that you need more information to understand why there is a difference. Note: Some difference (even of 5 or 10 percent) is expected and may be meaningless (in that it is due to random bias from a small sample size, rather than actual differences of opinion between the groups you are analyzing). 

Qualitative data

This kind of feedback involves information and concepts that cannot be represented by numbers. This is the information that you collected in interviews, free-form responses or focus groups. Qualitative feedback is useful to understand residents’ views on issues but can be challenging to analyze due to the varied emotions and opinions expressed. We have already cautioned you about using open-ended questions in your surveys, given the challenges and costs of recording and analyzing these responses as well as expectations of response. Despite these challenges, qualitative data is extremely useful; we encourage you to review the sections on interviews and focus groups in Annexes VII and VIII, which are methods that can more effectively and efficiently solicit qualitative feedback for your team’s understanding.

In all cases, you will need a transcript or detailed notes of interviews as a written record of what was said. Having recordings of sessions becomes useful, as it allows you to revisit the conversations and take the time to write out the exact wording of the responses. If you cannot create audio recordings of interviews and discussions, you will need to assign someone (or maybe two people for focus groups) to take accurate and complete notes.

Analyzing qualitative data

Qualitative data are sentiments, and these can be analyzed depending on the following:

• Is this data identifying a problem?
• Is this data identifying a solution to a particular problem?
• Do responses seem to agree (pointing to the same solution or problem) or disagree (pointing to different solutions to the same problem)?

 You should focus on particular phrases or parts of responses that relate to problems. These responses can then be captured and grouped together. 

As with quantitative analysis, the team may find creating a table in Google Sheets easier. You can group responses by question, issue or a similar attribute (separating responses between focus groups with particular identity characteristics, such as gender, to identify particular trends or insights from different community groups). 

Alternatively, you can print out transcripts or notes of the focus groups or interviews and use a highlighter or marker to color code particular key words or important phrases by the subject of the conversation, its nature as a problem or solution, or by some other attribute you find important. You can then cut up the pieces of paper, forming them into piles sorted by a given attribute and using this initial sorting to inform your analysis. The next step in your analysis will be to look for patterns and trends, which will help you use these responses. Did a particular solution come up often or appear to be a popular one in the focus groups? On what questions did people seem to share common views, and where did they disagree? Did the focus groups raise additional questions that need to be answered through follow-up research?  

Create a list of the following: 

• Areas of agreement – problems and solutions
• Areas of disagreement – problems and solutions
• Three to four quotes that seem “typical” of the expressed sentiments around particular issues
• Questions that will require follow-up – issuing a new survey or going deeper during solution sessions

 This analysis will inform your initial report to the public in the following section.

Return to your research questions. If you have answers to them, you are ready to move to Step 6. If you need more data or believe that a question remains unanswered, you can return to Step 4 and collect further data.

In the next step, you will begin the process of Respond and Report. You will return to the public and share what you have learned. If the solution to the problem is not obvious at this next stage, you will invite them to help you solve the problem. 

Step 6: Publish findings and provide an initial response to priorities

“Cities happen to be problems in organized complexity, like the life sciences. They present ‘situations in which a half-dozen or even several dozen quantities are all varying simultaneously and in subtly interconnected ways.’ Cities, again like the life sciences, do not exhibit one problem in organized complexity, which if understood explains all. They can be analyzed into many such problems or segments which, as in the case of the life sciences, are also related with one another. Their variables are many, but they are not helter-skelter; they are ‘interrelated into an organic whole.’” 
- Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

“We must build a new narrative that places people at the center of development.” 
- Amina Mama, Nigerian scholar and activist

Summary:

• Findings are shared internally within the local authority to generate a series of initial responses (or solutions) to feedback.  Findings will be reported back to the public, and the general contents of that report – including advice on how to visualize and present the data – are provided alongside real-life examples.

At the start of this step, you should already have designed and implemented your data collection methodology, and now results have begun to come in. This section shares lessons on data analysis, provides troubleshooting advice if data collection is not going as planned and offers suggestions on how to know if you have collected enough data.

At this stage of the process, your team will develop an initial strategy or response based on your findings and report back to the public to inform them of the results and kick off a dialogue on next steps. 

To report back to the public, the team will need an initial strategy that the municipality can deliver. This means the team will need to engage key stakeholders within the municipality to present the report of relevant feedback collected in Step 5, discuss the feasibility of potential solutions responding to feedback, and then consider the costs, timelines and other factors necessary for delivering those responses. 

In short – there will need to be an internal discussion and process within the municipal administration and key stakeholders before an external, public publication. The complexity of and time needed for this internal process will depend on your context and is discussed next.

Overall, your team’s goal for this step is to prepare the public presentation of findings and next steps. While discussions and findings may need to remain internal for now, the core team may find it worthwhile to consult with civil society and similar external stakeholders before the publication in Section 6.2. These moments are flagged below. 

Get your team on the same page 

Convene the core team to discuss insights and feedback on the results of the data collection process. Ask questions of the team’s data analyst(s), agree on a list of key takeaways and draft at least one idea for what a response to public feedback will involve. Prepare to share a summary of the process, the key findings and this list of potential responses with internal stakeholders. 

Prepare to share findings with relevant stakeholders

Next, share your findings with relevant stakeholders. This initial sharing (or initial validation of results) should be targeted and involve members of the municipal administration and civil society rather than the community as a whole. 

You have a few different goals for the initial, internal presentation meeting (or series of meetings, for example, if you are meeting with leadership, agencies and a council body separately). 

1. Share the results of the survey with relevant colleagues and leadership.
2. Listen to and record comments and insights from colleagues and leadership for any potential revisions. Findings and next steps should be reviewed and discussed among local authority officials and staff to ensure the municipality can deliver on them.
3. Win the buy-in and support of leadership and colleagues on next steps. Your team will need to explain what findings and potential next steps mean in practice for colleagues, council members, agencies and municipal staff.
4. Prepare for the immediate public communication of findings and next steps.

Consider the following: 

If these priorities are acted on, who would need to be involved? Will political or budgetary implications impact feasibility? This will help you determine which agency heads, staff, council members and other stakeholders should be invited to discuss the findings before the launch/announcement of the data. At this stage in the process, your data should point to one or more public priorities that the local authority will address. Is a public or government service a major source of dissatisfaction? Will an investment need to be made to provide or repair infrastructure, such as a sewer or road? Anticipate and prepare to respond to critics or opponents of your team or potential plans.

How likely are internal stakeholders to accept your findings? Are your findings sound? This is an opportunity to bring in civil society leaders – if certain members of the local authority’s administration are reluctant to accept your findings or your data, they may be able to back you up by providing testimonials, additional and related data, or other information. 

Will findings be considered sensitive or antagonistic? Consider who within the local authority should be engaged before any public announcement and how your findings and proposed solutions should be phrased. For example, the local agency responsible for streets may take it as a personal attack if the survey indicates low resident satisfaction there. Briefing the mayor and top leadership first to discuss and frame the presentation of the data and then having them present findings to the broader municipal administration may be helpful.

What will the public think about your response? What are their expectations? This is another place where engaging civil society can help you plan your public outreach. They can provide insight into how the public will receive your planned responses, which can help to increase your ambitions or frame your publication if responses fall short of public expectations.

Does the presentation link to existing processes and discussions? Where possible, this internal presentation should be linked to existing processes. For example, if the municipality conducts a regular planning meeting, develops or periodically updates an internal or formal strategy, or otherwise convenes all local authority staff (e.g., all-hands or all-staff meeting, direction setting meeting), adding this presentation as a component of those events can help connect findings more directly to the municipality’s problem-solving and planning efforts.

Advice for presenting results

Designing your presentation

Your team may be asked to present the findings and lead discussions of next steps through a presentation. This should include the following elements: 

1. Remind the audience about the objective of the feedback loop process, the data collection approach and why public opinion matters for the local authority.
2. Clearly summarize your findings, preferably organized thematically.
3. Propose next steps based on your findings, discuss how you and your colleagues in the local authority can respond to feedback and report to the public.

When preparing your presentation, keep in mind your audience. 

• Who will you present to? Will this be a meeting to update the mayor on your findings? Will other stakeholders, such as the heads or staff of other departments and agencies, be in the room?
• Consider your audience’s perspectives, and most importantly, take a moment to think about what they will find valuable about your data. Does it align with their strategies and their views of how to improve the community? Are they likely to agree or disagree with it? Can it help them do their jobs better?
• Consider how people receive and process information. Will visuals be helpful? Do you have photographs of outreach or data collection activities? Will you prepare handouts or one-page summaries?

Consider the following tips when developing your presentation or PowerPoint slide deck:⁷⁸

• Make sure your data can be seen – Are you using charts and graphs, and are they large enough for the audience? Is the important text legible from a distance?
• Focus on main points – Use phrases like “This data shows [safe roads are the highest priority]” or “This chart illustrates [that young people preferred arts programs in schools, while older residents prioritized green space].”
• White space is your friend – If using a slide deck, make one point per slide, and write a slide title that states the point – “Resident preferences” is a weaker slide title than “Residents prefer safer roads.” Make sure the data on that slide backs that point up.

The core team member or members focused on data and communication can support the presentation by preparing different visuals for presenting the data. Review the differences in Box 20 to understand how visuals can be polished and prepared to be most easily read and understood.

Explaining and building trust in your data 

In your presentation, you should briefly describe your methodology. Your goal here is to build trust in and credibility of the data. For example, you should briefly describe how you distributed the surveys, how many surveys you handed out and how many you received in response. The same is true for other data collection methods. This can be captured in a graph or map of the local community, depending on what methods you used. It is important to be clear but also concise when describing your methodology.

Building trust in your data during this presentation is important to securing buy-in among leaders. It is especially important if residents describe dissatisfaction in a particular public or government service (as a responsible agency staff may feel understandably defensive and question the validity of your data). In addition, your data’s quality is important because the local authority will use it to make decisions. If you reached a sufficient number of residents, this should provide generally robust data. If your data outreach isn’t sufficiently robust (you didn’t hit your sample size goal) or is based exclusively on focus groups or interviews, you will need to explain its limitations – and frame your presentation accordingly as recommendations and anecdotes (rather than broadly representative of diverse and inclusive community views). Use phrases such as “This is what we heard . . .” rather than “This is what we know . . .”

If you have demographic data about your survey respondents, focus group participants, and interview subjects, share it if it relates to your findings or affects trust. For example, “We reached a roughly equal number of men and women.” In addition, share any interesting differences revealed by disaggregated data: “Women under the age of 40 tended to prioritize issue X, while men under the age of 40 tended to prioritize Y,” and so on.

Show the value and relevance of your data

To get buy-in from key leadership, clearly explain the value and importance of this data to their goals. Answer the questions, “So what? Why does this matter?” Connect the data findings (and the process) to the goals and daily objectives of the municipality. Refer back to the problem you are trying to solve, whether that’s to create a strategy, refine a plan, or set budget priorities. How does this data fill a gap? Data on public priorities should connect directly to the process of local administration and governance. Public feedback should not exist in a separate realm from the day-to-day business of your municipality. Use this meeting and discussion to create that connection to the work plans, strategies and processes of your colleagues in the municipal administration. 

Next steps – Determine what your response will be

During this process, work collaboratively with colleagues and leadership on a preliminary set of politically and fiscally feasible solutions – potentially within relevant time horizons (e.g., within a fiscal year, ahead of the next elections).

Your finance and operations department can help your team understand the state of the local authority’s revenues. If no money is available, consider the feasibility of raising money through grants from alternative sources, such as the central government, foundations or private groups and businesses.  See Box for an example.

Your team’s initial data analysis may indicate a prioritized issue is a “wicked problem” (see the discussion in Section 1.2) that is beyond the capacity or authority of the local authority to address it directly. In these instances, your presentation of solutions to leadership and civil society will be different, focusing instead on how the local authority might engage with regional (meso-level) or central government representatives (such as ministries or transit authorities), who are in a position to address the issue. In this advocacy role, your local authority can leverage data gathered to make the case. The problem may be shared across multiple municipalities or local authorities, necessitating outreach to neighboring peer governments for collaboration and resource sharing. 

It will also be worthwhile to evaluate whether any priorities shared by the community offer the opportunity to declare “quick wins” – are there small-scale projects or policy changes that can be implemented immediately?

After consulting with the local authority and initial outreach to civil society, your team’s next step is communicating with the public to validate your findings. Publish your findings with at least a brief outline of your next steps, including preliminary solutions.  

This report is the first time the public is seeing and hearing a summary of its feedback. This is a key moment for trust building, as your team directly answers the resident asking, “Did you hear my opinion? Does my opinion matter?” with a resounding “Yes! We heard you – here’s what we’re doing about it (and how you can get involved).”

Generate a publication: Reporting on results and next steps

The publication should describe the findings and indicate proposed next steps. Follow the guidance for presenting survey results discussed earlier and refer to the examples provided in Box 22. In addition, a template with detailed instructions for this publication can be found in Annex XI: Public Reporting Templates.

Regarding next steps, determine whether you intend to enter into dialogue with the public to codesign solutions (see Step 7) or – if you are already prepared to take specific actions on the priorities identified in the survey – whether you are prepared to present actions to be taken now. If you intend to seek further input from the public, provide instructions or further information on how residents can get involved.

Ensure the form and content of the publication (or handout, pamphlet or report) is accessible to diverse residents. Use simple rather than technical language, explain any complex terminology, structure the report in an organized way and avoid crowding the space with too much text. Consider also whether multiple language versions and easy-to-understand visual aids (like the bottom pie chart in the Moldova example in Box 22) should be used so that people with low literacy levels can more easily grasp the key issues being discussed. 

How will your team distribute and communicate this information to the public? It can take the form of a hard copy that is printed and distributed through the mail or a local newspaper, or it can be a PDF or similar file that is published online. You can distribute the materials through public meetings, local media, or online through the municipal website or social media. However, if you plan to communicate with residents, try to reach as many people as possible. 

Template: Report to the public

Below is a sample template based on country experience that can be used to share findings with the public. It is not prescriptive, and innovation is encouraged.

City name                                                                 Date

Picture(s) of outreach event or issue/problem if tangible and visible Overview of the process: What you did, why and when Provide a 2–3 sentence summary of the survey process. How many people were reached, by what method and when? How many surveys did you receive?  Consider including a photo of the outreach process – this is further evidence that you did, in fact, speak to real people in the community.  Results: Number of people who responded, with a graphic or image of the results Display the results of the process visually – a pie chart or other infographic is a simple way to do this, especially if you are simply ranking issues by vote count.  Quotes from participants (if any; check data regulations) If available, add 1–3 brief quotes from the public. These can be statements from the survey responses, quotes collected during interviews and focus groups, or simply messages you already receive during the regular course of your work. In the examples above, names are included, but you may consider making them anonymous. Anonymity is preferred for attribution to ensure compliance with data protection regulations. For specific requirements, consult your data governance framework or laws. For example, “Resident Neighborhood A.”

Next steps: With reference to the results, you should explain how the results will be used and next steps, including plans for dialogue. Briefly present the work done or progress made to date to address these prioritized issues in 3–5 sentences or bullet points. It is likely that the survey is not the first indication that the city has a problem with, e.g., roads or schools. You may say, for example, “Roads are also our priority, and so far, we have done . . .” If additional work is planned, explain what.

Call to action: Invite members of the community to get involved, and include one or two specific ways for them to do so (e.g., attend a dialogue activity). Now that you have reported back on findings, listed priorities, and provided a brief overview of your actions to date and plans, you should reopen the door to public feedback. How can the public get in touch with you? How can they stay informed of progress?

Step 7: Dialogue for solution codesign and public consultations

“Being human is itself difficult, and therefore all kinds of settlements (except dream cities) have problems. Big cities have difficulties in abundance, because they have people in abundance.” 
- Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

“Co-operation is no longer a choice but a clear imperative.” 
- Kofi Annan, Ghanaian diplomat and former United Nations Secretary General⁷⁹

Summary:

• If the solutions or responses to public feedback are not immediately evident and clear, a series of ideas on how to co-create or codesign responses with the public are discussed, including adaptations of the data collection methods previously discussed, as well as participatory action research and deliberative democracy methods.
• Remember: Some priorities, such as safer roads, better schools and lower cost of living, cannot be fully solved but need to be managed.
  

In this step, we explore different approaches for local authorities to codesign solutions with the public through various methods of public dialogue. “Codesign” or “co-creation” refers to a process or set of activities in which community members, local authority representatives and other relevant stakeholders collaboratively and jointly work together to create a solution.  

Codesign puts community members on an equal footing with local officials. One example of this process in practice is the Open Government Partnership’s cohort of local government members, who engage in codesign processes to develop open government action plans. 

In all instances, the local authority must communicate solutions clearly with the public. However, a separate set of activities co-creating solutions may not be necessary in all instances (see Box 26. Where the core team decides to organize a codesign process, the team can organize processes of varying intensity (e.g., fewer or shorter meetings, more focused selection of participants).

The core team – in consultation with municipal leadership and relevant stakeholders – can use the following as guideposts when deciding if a dedicated period for dialogue and solution codesign is necessary.

In short, implement a codesign process if you are concerned about maintaining trust with residents. The following is a brief list of situations where taking the time to meet with residents to discuss or codesign a solution can help build trust in the path you ultimately choose.  

The solution is not obvious or immediately clear.

This may be the case for an especially intractable or multifaceted issue, such as traffic, crime or employment. There are multiple avenues to managing or resolving this issue, and resources are limited. Through dialogue and codesign processes, residents can help you decide where to start. 

The ideal solution is infeasible, and an incremental approach is needed.

Even large municipalities need help funding large infrastructure projects such as access to drinking water, electrification or waste management. Residents will usually understand these constraints and, through dialogue, can help local officials develop a phased approach to tackle these projects over the long term. 

There is a risk of bias, disproportionate impact and exclusion of groups from the solution.

One characteristic of wicked problems is that efforts to manage them will have unexpected consequences. In other words, it’s possible that your solution will create new problems. Use dialogue to reach out to the people you expect will be affected by a solution, such as new development, increasing or reducing funding for projects, or other changes. By bringing their perspectives into the dialogue, these individuals (regular residents or engaged activists) can help your team anticipate and mitigate risks. They can also offer alternative solutions, work with local authorities to monitor implementation and raise alarms about unforeseen problems as they arise.

Residents have no other means to hear about, offer input on or affect this decision.

Before beginning certain projects, many local authorities must engage the public through a period of public consultation, hearings and input. For example, in Annapolis, MD, new construction or renovation on a building in the city’s historic district must first undergo a period of public consultation or review, where officials scrutinize architectural plans and residents can register their feedback, concerns or complaints about the development effort. In instances where such a process is generally perfunctory, biased against certain interests, closed to the public or nonexistent, the local authority can use dialogue and codesign methods to engage these concerns before breaking ground on new efforts. This can help to preempt complaints and backlash later when funds are expended, and it may be too late to start over.

At the end of Step 6, residents should have already received the report (or results letter, if the local authority is mailing the report) summarizing the results of data collection and outlining the community’s top priorities. As noted, this letter can also be used to communicate the actions the municipality intends to take in response to these priorities. 

However, if the core team decides that further consultation or dialogue with residents is necessary, then this publication or letter can be expanded to include an invitation for members of the public to participate. This could take the form of an additional survey, an invitation to attend a public hearing, a consultation or some other activity scheduled for the near future. 

When planning your solution codesign process, consider how you will foster ongoing dialogue and collaboration, keep residents informed, respond to their new feedback, and encourage inclusive and active participation. Readers may consider the concept of participatory action research helpful and can read more and explore related resources in Annex XII: Participatory Action Research. 

Methods for codesigning solutions

Codesign can occur in various ways. One approach involves revisiting Step 4 and collecting more data to prioritize potential solutions. This method was used by the municipal teams in Moldova, who repeated the door-to-door canvassing with new questions about the top priority issue. 

Focus groups

Focus groups may be helpful when determining solutions, especially if the issue is one that affects a relatively specific group of people: a language, ethnic or religious minority, youth, women, business owners and people with disabilities. Return to Step 4 and Annex VIII to review how to organize and moderate a focus group; in this instance, orient the discussion to explore solutions (and the costs, benefits and potential consequences of those solutions).

Interviews, expert presentations and study visits

Let’s imagine that the response to your survey indicated that crime, homelessness and unaffordable housing were top priorities for your community. These are complex, challenging issues, with multiple dimensions and potential ways to address them that must be sequenced. Your team and municipality may first seek to understand the issue better by bringing in an expert – perhaps an academic, housing advocate or an experienced urban planner – to discuss the dimensions of the issue in your community. These issues will not be tackled immediately, and you will likely find other communities in your region or country struggling and testing approaches and innovative solutions to these challenges. Consider sitting down for a discussion with an expert, bringing municipal officials from your city on a study visit to a neighboring city that seems to be making progress or seeking support or guidance from a consultant or civil society group focused on this issue. This will help you understand the salient parts of these issues to focus on as well as the data you need to collect on unemployment and school attendance. By achieving a baseline understanding of the issue within the local authority and identifying helpful, unknown and harmful variables in your community, you will be better positioned to approach the public and open a public dialogue on these solutions.

Open forum or public hearing

These kinds of large group discussions can be organized in various ways to solicit the audience’s feedback for the purpose of determining a solution. For example, organizers in Guanajuato, Mexico, hosted a public forum of nearly 60 residents – including members of NGOs, local universities and the private sector – and used the World Cafe methodology to collect inputs. In other contexts, a public forum may be arranged so that residents or attendees each have a predetermined amount of time to speak. Local officials and residents may not find these the most effective means of discussing solutions. First, they may not be scheduled or organized in an inviting or inclusive way (that allows everyone to attend and anyone to feel comfortable speaking). Second, community meetings often draw the same, already engaged individuals, preventing officials from hearing from new or different voices. 

Surveys

The goal of the survey shifts from prioritizing one issue to prioritizing one solution for key problems. When designing the survey, ensure an appropriate sample size, consider past surveys for insights and keep questions clear. Your survey may resemble the example provided above but should include additional background on previous results. For example:

The above survey is a rough example of a solution-oriented survey and forces residents to accept trade-offs. In Moldova, for example, mayors and local councilors aimed to address the scarcity of their resources by being honest with the public about their limited funds and asking residents if they were willing to help fund the project.

Other methods to refine solutions

There are many other ways to collect a final round of public feedback. For example, the latest drafts of plans can be posted online (such as on the government website) using software for public comments. In Guanajuato, Mexico, the city government published the final government plan online for residents to review the objectives, activities and indicators, promising to address any comments and suggestions.

The process of codesigning solutions with your residents may be iterative. This means you may need to repeat or combine the above methods so that your team and the process participants gradually refine the solution and build consensus.

“Refine” the solution means creating a more specific or exact plan of action. This can be as detailed as necessary to ensure that the plan is carried out, whether through measuring progress, creating specific instructions for municipal departments, or developing a particular budget initiative, law, decree or similar institutional mechanism to properly authorize the necessary work and hold municipal officials accountable. In the next step, we will discuss this implementation stage in more detail. 

Note: As you engage the public and refine the solution, you will need to continually verify that your municipal administration has the legal or constitutional power to take the actions envisioned; if the actions are within the competency of your local authority, you will need to determine whether your authority can take the actions envisioned within the solution. This is where your team lead can liaise with your legal advisor and follow up with relevant points of contact in municipal departments (refer to the earlier discussion of buy-in and your stakeholder mapping exercise).

With regard to building consensus, your main goal is for residents to be aware of the process underway so that – if they choose – they can provide input into it. However, it will also require consensus within the municipal administration – for example, if the local council needs to approve the decision as part of the annual budget. Consider what kind of formal approvals or government process is required to go from initiative or proposal to implementation. If the priority and its determined solution will require a line item in the annual budget, your team will need to advise on or draft that individual budget proposal or initiative and may be called upon to help shepherd it through the relevant approvals process. The next step will address this in more detail.

Step 8: From commitment to action

“Mayors can rule the world because cities represent a level of governance sufficiently local to demand pragmatism and efficiency in problem solving but sufficiently networked to be able to fashion cooperative solutions to the interdependent challenges they face.” 
- Benjamin R. Barber, If Mayors Ruled the World

Summary:

• Navigate the necessary internal processes to carry out the response.
  Implement the response.
• Prepare to monitor progress in order to stay on track and communicate with the public.  
  

In the previous steps, your team has worked with residents to set community priorities and dialogue with the public about those priorities. At the start of this stage, your team should clearly understand the actions to be taken in response to public feedback. During this stage, your team will navigate the necessary internal processes to implement the response and monitor progress to stay on track and communicate with the public.  

As a consequence of earlier stages, you will have created the expectation among residents that resolving this issue is a priority for your local authority – whether as a mayor, local councilor, staffer or other official. Thus, this stage is focused on what is necessary to move from commitment to action. Note: To be consistent, we will refer to the “solution as it stands” throughout this step as a “commitment” – through this term, we are referring to everything required to deliver on resolving the public priority.

In addition, you can take steps during this process to ensure that once implementation begins, you are well-positioned to monitor and inform the public on progress.
 

Local authorities are diverse, with various systems of oversight, bureaucratic processes and power sharing between bodies and decision-makers. This means that no one guide can capture the exact procedure your team will need to follow to move from the commitment as it stands at the end of Step 7 to the implementation of that solution. 

Consider the following questions as you navigate through these approvals:

Does this commitment fit into a particular decision-making process? This should have already factored into your efforts in the previous steps, and it is possible that the commitment covers multiple different processes. The commitment may have implications for the budget, zoning, local or regional development plans, or any number of local planning processes, such as those focused on the environment. Determine which processes the commitment relates to and use that information to revisit your stakeholder mapping exercise and answer, “Whose approval will you need?” 

If resource allocations will be required, you will need to authorize expenditures and navigate financial processes such as procurement and contracting (and likely require approval from the local council to do so and will need to follow legal guidelines and regulations of transparency, conflict-of-interest, and internal auditing and fiscal controls). Consult with the finance officer on the core team or, if there is no finance officer, with the local officials (including local council committees) and civil servants responsible for drafting the budget and managing expenditures. 

If the commitment or action is beyond the capacity of the local authority to implement and maintain (even if the project can be broken up into smaller pieces), how will you address it? If the local authority can borrow money, you will need to make a very serious and dedicated assessment of the local authority’s ability to pay off the debt (especially if there are cost overruns, an unexpected downturn in the economy or other shocks that undermine local revenue streams). If you take on debt and cannot repay it, there are significant consequences for residents who may face higher taxes and cuts to other existing services. Can you secure grants and other funding from sources, such as a national government body or ministry, from private or donor organizations, or perhaps from residents who have agreed to pay a fee for a new or improved service? 

Whose approval will you need? This will depend on the process that the commitment is being addressed through. For example, many local councils or assemblies approve the annual budget. If your locality is divided into smaller communities or composed of neighborhoods or villages, do those smaller communities have local leaders (informal or elected) who must approve local projects (if they have not already done so)? Is the local authority limited in the kinds of revenue generation it can pursue? For example, some local authorities are barred by higher levels of government from adopting certain types of taxes (such as sales, property, income, business or corporate taxes) or must secure approval from voters in a referendum.  

What form should the commitment take? This question refers to the actual form that the commitment will need to take to navigate the formal internal processes of the local bureaucracy. In some contexts, this may be an action plan or legislative proposal that will be formally adopted by a decree from the mayor or local council; in other cases, it will be a budget initiative that can be inserted into the annual budget. See Annex XIV for an example of a commitment template used by members in the Open Government Partnership. 

Consider what this would look like for your local authority. Would you adopt a strategy, municipal or city development plan; create a legal entity, task force or working group within the local administration; or adopt a decree, legal initiative, or other kind of administrative work plan?

Formal authorization

The local authority will need to formally initiate and operationalize the effort. This often involves identifying resources, passing the budget, assigning staff, initiating tenders and procurement procedures, and putting into motion anything else necessary to deliver on public priorities. 

In short, at this stage, the goal, scope and general steps of the actions to be taken by the municipality should be clear enough that the municipality can communicate to the public the answers to the following questions: 

• What is the problem we are trying to solve? This can be brief and used in the title of the solution – for example, “Replacing lead pipes.”
• What steps will be taken to resolve the problem? List the discrete steps that will be taken to solve the problem. For example, first, we will map out the locations and addresses that have or are suspected to have lead pipes and verify where replacements are needed. At the same time, we will begin replacing the lead pipes we are aware of in high-importance locations (schools, youth centers, libraries, high-traffic public buildings).
• How long will it take? Consult with the core team and local administration to determine how long the various elements of the plan will take. For example, “After two months, we will have fully mapped all remaining lead pipes in the city. By the end of the year, we expect to have replaced the lead pipes in 50 percent of the affected households.”
• Who is responsible for implementing the plan? List the points of contact (offices, departments or people) for implementation of the plan, as well as individuals in the government that can be contacted (such as spokespeople or specific offices) if members of the public, media or others have questions. This is also a valuable opportunity for individuals to engage meaningfully – volunteer for a community clean-up, sign up to receive a water testing kit, or take other actions to provide data and support to the process.
• When will you hear from us? Provide a date or moment when the public can expect an update from the local authority on the process. 

Public declaration or commitment

If the local authority’s resources are insufficient to address the challenge at hand, the local authority and core team may use this step to formally declare their intention to pursue the priority, acknowledging that their first effort will be to identify and secure the necessary financial resources to follow through on the commitment. In this instance, the local authority or mayor may instead lay out its strategy and plan to secure funding – for example, communications and advocacy to the national level to secure grants; efforts to form an alliance, group or coalition with nearby mayors or local authorities to pool resources; or efforts to establish a public-private partnership to help secure resources or investment from the private sector.  

This declaration may be less formal than a budget allocation, but it still requires some form of authorization behind a formal and public commitment. These efforts are essential for accountability and for clearly communicating the local authority’s steps for residents’ priorities. For example, this can be an announcement by the mayor, local councilor or other local council. 

Once approval is secured and the commitment has become official and formal policy, you should communicate to the public.

Refer to the examples in Step 6 and focus on the results of your codesign process or the internal approvals process. This step will be essential to ensuring that the public is informed that the commitment is now being fulfilled and that the exact pathway of that implementation is being followed.

When developing your communications, refer back to the discussion of wicked social and public policy planning problems. These are long-term and universal issues and challenges that will never be permanently solved. Even after roads are paved and drinking water infrastructure is built, repairs and maintenance will still be needed. Similarly, social and political problems like housing, crime and unemployment can never be solved; instead, they can be managed. Rational people living in any community will understand these constraints and appreciate honest communication about the local authority’s steps to address them. However, they may still reasonably disagree with the approach, emphasis, ambition and timeline the core team lays out. These disagreements are unavoidable but can be mitigated through clear and ongoing communication and dialogue about these issues and the local authority’s response. 

To effectively update the public on progress, the team must first identify tangible metrics or benchmarks against which it can measure progress and success. In developing a strategy and action plan, the government should clearly outline its goals and objectives, i.e., what success looks like for each specific commitment and overall. 

Establish a monitoring body or point person, and create a reporting plan

Determine who will track progress and report on milestones and updates, along with their reporting structure. This responsibility can be led by the core team or handed over to a staff member from one of the departments responsible for implementing the actions under the formal action plan. In addition, these roles can be split and organized based on the hierarchy or distribution of responsibilities for implementation. For example, if a particular department is chiefly responsible for one or more pieces of an action plan, assign someone from that department to communicate updates to a particular member of the core team, who then reports those updates to core team colleagues or municipal leadership. 

Each individual must clearly understand their role and responsibilities for monitoring, such as: 

• What are they expected to report on? How much of this information is already produced or communicated by the administration, and what information will be new?
• When should they provide these reports and to whom? Is a weekly report reasonable, or is a monthly report more reasonable (especially with regard to longer-term deliverables)?
• What format should be used? Is a verbal update at an in-person meeting (perhaps the core team meets regularly to oversee implementation) sufficient, or should a written update be provided via a more formal channel?

As information is communicated and conveyed to the core team, leadership, council committee or those responsible for implementing the action plan, how and when will this information be shared with the public (as a part of closing the loop, Step 9)? The core team and those responsible for monitoring the implementation of actions under the plan should convene at regular intervals (monthly or every three months, for example) to compile reports and updates that can be shared with leadership (to address issues with implementation) or shared with the public (if tangible milestones have been achieved, or at relevant intervals in the year, such as before summer holidays and the end of the calendar or fiscal year).

Establish metrics to measure success and report on implementation

Consider here the data you will collect to determine whether the goal is reached, and to verify progress. Who will collect the data, who will report it, and how will the public and civil society be able to access it? There may be formal or informal obstacles to how open and transparent the local authority is (or the local administration is familiar with operating). 

How will you monitor and communicate updates to the public? Design your reporting mechanism and regularly update it as a part of your public reporting process. Consider the following examples: 

• Social media page for each big project: Creating a dedicated page for large projects will allow you to provide a steady stream of updates without crowding the main feed or channel of the local authority. Posting regular updates and checking the inbox regularly will allow people most interested in the project to stay informed and create an easy way for them to get in touch.
• Regular site visits: Regularly visiting the site of a construction or infrastructure-related project will help keep the team informed of actual progress (and photos of the visit can be used to update the social media page with pictures of the current situation).
• Regular neighborhood gatherings and listening sessions: These can be informal or formal meetings where the community can receive updates, ask questions and provide feedback on a topic, issue or project. Bringing along representatives of the team monitoring the process and the team in charge of implementation can help to understand issues that arise, answer questions on the spot and have a meaningful exchange with residents.
• Publicly displayed charts with clear steps for commitments: These can be printed or digital but should indicate to the resident the “what” and “by when” of each commitment. 

Core team members and leadership should be aware of information silos and obstacles to sharing information, data and updates that may need to be proactively and formally addressed. For example, these silos (where information is not being shared) may be the result of formal rules, informal practice, or simply the difficulty of knowing how and whom to ask for specific information. The result is that it may be difficult, time-consuming or contentious to receive data on expenses, levels of service delivery or other information about implementation in the absence of explicit requests or permissions. As implementation gets underway, the core team should take the time to identify these silos and address them ahead of time. First, the obstacles to internal information sharing will need to be addressed. Second, the core team should work to address any obstacles to sharing information with the public (allowing them to be open and transparent about actions taken toward achieving residents’ priorities).

These silos can be addressed by modifying procedures or by issuing clear requests and mandates that specific or relevant information be proactively shared with or made available to the core team or monitoring body. These authorizations may need to come from the mayor or local council and should be considered alongside the authorizations of the formal action plan in 8.2. 

Step 9: Close the loop

“The story of cities is the story of democracy. . . . Urban life entails common living; common living means common willing and common law making, and these define the essence of political democracy.”

- Benjamin Barber, If Mayors Ruled the World

Summary: 

• At this step in the process, the local authority – having had some time to deliver on commitments and implement its response – provides an (incremental or final) update to the public on the status of its response to public priorities. For example, local authorities should evaluate their progress after six months and again after a full year has elapsed. Feel free to leverage moments in the calendar to evaluate your progress (before summer holidays or at the end of the calendar year). Be proactive with updates: Do not wait a year or for election campaigning to begin – voters notice when officials provide updates that aren’t tied to ongoing campaigns.
• Open data and transparency standards relevant to local authorities are summarized.

Regarding wicked problems in public policy and social planning, you must recognize that some priorities, such as safer roads, better schools and lower cost of living, cannot be definitely “solved.” Progress can be made, but such challenges – like communities – are dynamic. Consider the following two strategies for managing this in the context of a feedback loop: report on incremental progress and report on a fixed schedule.

Report on incremental progress 

The team can refer to strategies from Step 8 and the clear and actionable solutions and tasks you codesigned with the public. You cannot close the loop on road safety by claiming roads are suddenly safe. However, you can report progress to the public by pointing to new infrastructure (street lights, pavement, safety bollards, etc), clearer signage and new or more visibly marked pedestrian crossings. Report progress on the larger problem by pointing to the incremental successes in implementation. These kinds of communications can be made ad hoc, i.e., once the incremental benchmark is achieved. 

Keep the communication proportional to the size of the accomplishment. A ribbon-cutting ceremony for the installment of bollards for bike lanes or pedestrian areas is less appropriate than a similar ceremony for a new school. Instead, consider publishing a handout or flier describing the progress that has been made or updating the local authority’s social media accounts. Where possible, pictures can be useful in social media updates. See the example in Box 32 of an “intermediate results” letter issued by a city in Moldova. 

Report on a fixed schedule

If implementation is complex and long term, it may be difficult to point to consistent or incremental improvements. For example, the results of an apprenticeship program for youth, subsidies to farmers or social assistance programs are difficult to identify in concrete or tangible terms. Instead, consider reporting on these programs on a regular basis, such as annually. This will allow the local authority to articulate expenditures, enumerate the number of participants in these programs and perhaps supplement the report with anecdotal data from participants and beneficiaries. 

These kinds of reports can and should overlap with the regular reporting schedule of the municipality – for example, the local authority may issue an annual report or monthly newsletter or hold periodic public meetings. Progress on feedback loop priorities can be presented in these reports or at these events. However, consider visibility and the profile of your communications: if you want the public to know you have accomplished a key priority that emerged from the feedback loop process, it may be worthwhile to highlight it in a dedicated communication. 

Reporting on delayed implementation, nonperformance or failure

You will not always be able to follow up with good news. However, that does not mean that you cannot still close the loop. Rather than leave the public guessing about what has or has not been accomplished, you should articulate the successes alongside the failures. 

In the case of delays or shortcomings, it is important to indicate why certain priorities were not achieved – such as due to budget shortfalls, an unexpected or urgent intervening development (such as flooding or a pandemic), or an unanticipated political, administrative or other hurdle. Communicate whether the priority is unachievable or postponed until resources become available or an intervening priority or challenge is resolved. It is worse to ignore the shortcomings and never provide updates on unresolved priorities than to inform the public that the priority has not been achieved – because the public and civil society often already know or can tell that the priority remains unaddressed. Proactively informing them about your intentions helps fill the gap in public knowledge and awareness that triggers complaints and undermines public confidence. 

Report when there is something to share or at regular and reasonable intervals (such as every three or six months or annually). Do NOT wait for elections – one of the central recommended practices and lessons learned from Listen, Respond, Report processes is that voters appreciate hearing from their elected officials between elections. Keep in mind that sharing good news is not always necessary, but you should be prepared to show the public that you prioritize their needs and are making progress. Relatedly, be prepared to explain why progress is slow if that is the case. 

Refer back to the timelines (listed in Annex IV) from local authorities in Moldova. Within one month after receiving survey results, Moldovan teams will distribute results letters to members of the public. After two to four months, the core team, including the mayor, will convene again to discuss the implementation of their strategy, identify tangible progress and prepare an initial report to the public. This initial report (an intermediate letter about results) to the public will be issued after four and no later than six months. After another four to six months, or at a key moment in the year (end of the calendar or fiscal year, for example), the core team will reconvene to identify tangible progress and issue another report. If the core team had achieved the result earlier (in two months, for example), then they would report on progress at that time.  

Try to align the local authorities’ updates with natural moments in the calendar, as well as their existing patterns of communication and outreach. Does the local authority issue a monthly newsletter? Perhaps the start or end of the school year or just before summer or winter holidays are traditional moments to reflect on the past year or months or to look ahead. The end of the calendar year (or the fiscal or budget year, if it is not the same as the calendar year in your country) is a natural time to report on the year’s progress and look ahead at plans for the coming year. Feel free to leverage regular administrative reporting schedules. For example, does the local authority issue a mid-year report on budget expenditures?  

Some common benchmarks that you can leverage in your communications:

• 100 days – This is a famous, if early, benchmark (with its origins in the rapid actions and legislation put forward by the first administration of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt). While likely too early for a local authority to complete its objectives, 100 days offers a clear moment to report on initial steps taken and progress, including an assessment of vendors or bids to implement work. One hundred days is approximately three or four months – this aligns with the experience of Moldovan mayors, councilors and their teams and their preferred reporting schedules.
• Six months – This marks a reasonable halfway point through the year and should be paired with an annual update from the local authority on progress. In addition, it marks a natural moment when the local authority should have some sense of how budget implementation is working: Are we on track to overspend? Are local revenues on track to be higher or lower than last year? Have big events at the national or regional level caused us to rethink and change course?
• One year – The end of the year (the fiscal year or the calendar year, if different) is an essential moment for the local authority to take stock and report to the public on progress. It can accompany and complement any number of official local government documents: an annual audit, the report on budget expenses and revenues from last year, this year, or next year, or the performance reports of various local agencies and departments to the mayor’s office or local council. 
  Is it customary for the mayor to provide an end-of-year report to the local council or national ministry, or to send a friendly annual message or summary to residents? Can this customary message be expanded to provide small updates on key local priorities, or should a whole separate event (a town hall, a district meeting, or similar gathering) be organized? 

The following is a template for a close-the-loop letter (see Box 31) that may be mailed or distributed to the public virtually, through a door-to-door campaign, or some other way. 

We use the term “letter,” but it could also be a more detailed report, a simple flier or a social media post. You can adapt this template for a public presentation at a public meeting. Whatever format you choose, your goal is to share it as widely as possible and to cover at least the following suggested contents: 

• Describe what you learned: Remind the public of the priorities set during the data collection. Briefly describe the process: for example, “Back in September, we issued questionnaires by going door to door, and 450 of you responded.” You may wish to re-share a chart of the survey results again and include quotes you have collected from the public (either through the surveys or through other communications) that relate to these priorities.
• Report how you took action to solve the issue (and if the issue is resolved): Next, take the top three priorities, and provide an update on what has been done so far. What has been achieved? How was it paid for? If the issue remains unresolved, explain (briefly) why – is funding missing, has the city issued a tender for bids or is the problem a technically complex one? For each issue, provide this information, as well as photographs of the progress made (for visual learners and to help people connect the changes they’ve seen with their feedback).
• Ask for more feedback (iterate): Finally, close with a brief note to the public. Are you looking for volunteers? Is there a social media or message board they can join to stay current? In the template and examples below, the mayors offer several ways for residents to contact them, including a slip of paper where residents can write down an issue and their contact information. This slip can then be torn off the publication and returned to city hall. Alternatively, include the email address or social media handle of a local authority office or officer that the public can contact electronically to share ideas.

 As always, keep in mind the importance of two-way dialogue – always offer a means for the public to stay involved.

Step 10: Iterate

“The city has undergone many changes during the last five thousand years; and further changes are doubtless in store. . . . Significant improvements will come only through applying art and thought to the city’s central human concerns.” 
- Lewis Mumford, The City in History⁸³

Summary:

• An after-action review is a useful tool for understanding what worked and what did not work for a given local authority. The findings from the after-action review are applied to future iterations of the feedback loop and government responsiveness process.  
  

You’ve closed the loop and reported the results to the public, or you’ve arrived here from the end of Step 8 and are starting the implementation process. What is next?

The feedback loop process is a powerful method when used to identify and resolve a single problem, but it has increasing power when it is used repeatedly. We recommend making the feedback loop process a normal part of business for local authorities. 

First, after closing the loop, convene the core team for a reflection session while memories are still fresh. We recommend using the after-action review as a template to kick off this discussion; you can add more questions, but we recommend keeping the process as simple as possible.

Figure 6. After-action review template

To organize a reflection session, convene the members of the team who participated in all or only a few stages of the feedback loop process. Designate a facilitator to guide the discussion and a notetaker. The facilitator should aim to have an open discussion, hear from all of the participants and focus on drawing out lessons. The notetaker should help the group organize its thoughts and focus on drawing out specific and actionable recommendations. The after-action review session should last approximately 90 minutes.

For the discussion, it might be easier to reflect on discrete stages of the process one at a time. For example, the process could be broken into three parts: initial design and start-up (Steps 1–4), public consultation and solution codesign (Steps 5–7), and implementation and follow-up (Steps 8–9). 

For questions 1a–1c, first consider your objectives. What did you set out to do, and were you successful in doing it? Identify the particular moments where plans and reality differed, and consider the reasons why. These reasons will be useful when generating recommendations or adjustments for future processes.

For questions 2a–2b, focus on what went well and what can be improved. This differs from question 1 in that it should capture your team’s strengths and weaknesses. Ask the team to consider what actions they felt were most worthwhile and effective; conversely, ask them what they did not like or where the process fell short. During this stage, asking participants to write down one thing that went well and one thing they felt could be improved might be helpful. Be sure to follow up on each comment to understand why it was a strength or a weakness and more about the root causes of success or failure.

Finally, question 3 is where these reflections can be turned into recommendations. Facilitators should focus on prompting participants to provide specific recommendations (in that they clearly refer to a particular action or step) and actionable (in that they are within the team’s power to follow through next time). A facilitator can prompt participants to rate each step on a scale of one to ten, and then ask, “What would make it a ten?” Consider workable and actionable changes to a future process, such as additional materials, changes to timelines, collaboration between teams and the project budget. For example, “More time to collect feedback” isn’t specific or actionable; instead, “Extend the timeline to distribute questionnaires from two weeks to 20 days.”

Keep the discussion open, candid and professional. Avoid generating a list of complaints – there will always be calls for more time, money and help. Instead, focus on sustaining good practices and mitigating weaknesses. 

Following your session, the facilitator and notetaker should send participants a brief (one- or two-page) summary of key lessons learned and a list of specific and actionable recommendations. The document can be left open for additional feedback and comments but should be purpose-made to inform the design and implementation of the next feedback loop process. 

Now that you have completed a feedback loop and generated recommendations, you can return to Step 1 to evaluate your context and define a new problem.

Implementing feedback loops regularly can create positive results for your local authority and community: 

• Public consultation becomes the norm: Too often, local community members are surprised their local officials are proactively reaching out to them and asking for their input. Regular feedback loops create the expectation from the public that their voice matters and has a key role in local decision-making.
• Local leaders build confidence: Through a feedback loop, local leaders learn about residents’ priorities and can validate their solutions in collaboration with the public. Leadership requires taking responsibility for success and failure, but leaders who can point to a foundation of public input can plan with greater confidence. If things go wrong, leaders can leverage the same public outreach and consultation process to explain and adapt to new obstacles.
• Public trust: If, as a result of the public process, the local authority manages to deliver progress on local priorities, residents will feel heard and valued. Trust can translate into greater public engagement in government processes and electoral support.
• Zooming out: Perhaps a local authority is consistently receiving public feedback about an issue outside of its responsibility or authority to resolve. For example, extractive industries, highways or energy grids have local impacts but may be managed by a national ministry or agency. In this instance, the local authority can work with neighboring local authorities facing similar issues and – with the backing of their residents – lobby the national government for a policy response to address the issue. Local authorities might find associations of municipalities, leagues of cities or similar bodies useful as inter-governmental mechanisms to route their advocacy efforts.
• Moments of crisis: When a crisis hits, you will be able to turn to your skills and experience developed by consistent and regular public outreach. For example, you may be able to leverage the same outreach methods to share information widely and quickly. At the same time, residents will better understand how to get in touch with the local authority. You can rely on the public trust developed over time to combat misinformation about the crisis. You should also be able to identify and leverage nongovernmental community leaders and organizations you have collaborated with in the past to identify pressing needs and amplify your messages. 

While feedback should become the norm, your team should not constantly request public priorities at a rate faster than they can realistically be resolved. Listen for necessary data to establish priorities, and then use less-intensive means – such as town halls, public meetings and roundtable discussions – for dialogue and codesign solutions. Provide regular public updates on the progress. Collecting data on public priorities more than once a year is likely unnecessary. As a rule of thumb, if you’re spending more time and effort on identifying priorities and collecting information from the public, you’re likely not spending enough time addressing those priorities and communicating progress updates.  

Local authorities often talk to their residents, but they do not always talk with their residents. To effectively understand and respond to community needs, leaders must listen and provide clear, meaningful pathways for community members to participate in decisions. This guide offers concrete mechanisms for local authorities to establish two-way communication systems, suitable for a diverse array of local contexts, to deliver on these goals. 

Globally, democracy faces numerous challenges. But democracy is not in retreat. Rather, it should be understood that “democracy is a process, not a static condition. It is becoming rather than being”⁸⁴ – in this living process is the promise and hope of democracy. The strongest hope is at the local level. Local authorities strengthen democracy by involving residents in decision-making. When national politics appears dysfunctional, with gridlock and partisanship undermining effective problem-solving, local communities must lead the way. Building and sustaining a thriving and vibrant community, city or state offers local leaders the chance to engage residents. They cannot wait for others to solve local challenges. Effective leadership on meaningful local issues is crucial for democratic self-government. Ignoring challenges and delaying decisions risks leaving communities behind. 

This guide offers a flexible approach for local leaders to listen to their residents and respond using the powers, capacities and voices they have as leaders and individuals. It also encourages building accountability by reporting to their neighbors, peers and colleagues with honesty about the community’s status and priorities. 

Throughout this guide, we have referred to the community as a living thing, unpredictable in its nature, characteristics and direction. We refer to “residents,” but each one is an individual with their own unique dreams, strengths and weaknesses. There is no single, scientific approach to engaging one or all of them in local decision-making. This can be frustrating, but it is not a reason to give up; it is instead an invitation to experiment, try something new, innovate and learn what works for you, your community and the people who call it home. 

In the span of human history, democratic governance is young, a recent development; there is still plenty to learn, and often, we learn best from our mistakes and the examples of others. In that spirit, NDI welcomes your feedback about what worked (and did not work) for you and your community, and how we can improve this guide. This guide serves as a living resource that captures successes, failures and everything in between, with the aim of serving local officials wherever and whoever they may be well into the future.

1. Authorization refers to formal or official approval, in this case to undertake the feedback loop process (and make use of necessary resources, data, and staff time).
2. Buy-in relates to political will, and is meant to capture the interest, motivation, incentives, and other factors that - in this case - will get stakeholders to initiate a reform process and stick to it. Buy-in is never fixed, and matters for high ranked officials, but also the public and civil society who are participating.
3. Civil society organization is an organizational structure that operates distinctly from government and business, often playing a role in advocacy, service-delivery, or participating in and supporting other social, economic, and political causes and activities.
4. Citizen assemblies and citizen juries use representative sampling to select a representative group of residents (often around 100 or so for assemblies and fewer for juries) that is tasked to consider a predetermined problem or issue. The group then generates recommendations (which are sometimes binding for the government). A good process involves dedicated time for education and learning, where experts and stakeholders present facts or viewpoints to the assembly, who then deliberate on the best paths forward and arrive at recommendations through consensus. Dissenting voices may generate their own recommendations.
5. Co-creation or codesign is a process through which stakeholders (in this case, government, civil society and the public) convene to discuss, deliberate and reach consensus on a particular subject. In the spirit of the feedback loop, rather than informing the public of the problems they face and how to solve them, stakeholders enter into a dialogue that, through a process of consultation (through meetings, surveys, discussion or other platforms), generates consensus on the way forward.
6. Core team refers to the individuals chiefly responsible for the design, implementation and follow-up of the feedback loop process. These individuals may include government staff and bureaucrats within the local government administration and assembly, as well as civil society representatives, experts, academics and any other members of the public involved in supporting the process.
7. Feedback loop is a type of structured two-way communication designed to enable a local authority to gather, analyze and address the opinions, concerns and suggestions of community residents. Feedback loops are, in essence, a form of ongoing dialogue between members of the public and local government officials that can drive continuous improvement in services, policies and programs. They are designed to help local leaders identify and address community challenges in an iterative and participatory way; in other words – to “find, solve and tell.”
8. Focus group discussion (FGD) is a gathering of carefully selected, demographically homogenous participants to discuss participants’ beliefs, opinions and views on a particular issue.
9. Inclusion is an approach to governing and organizing people that accounts for and seeks to address the power imbalances between various groups, identities and members of the community.
10. Key informant interview (KII) is a qualitative research method in which someone (likely a person from your team, or possibly a contractor) poses a standard set of questions to stimulate an in-depth discussion with individuals about their observations and perspectives on the issues, processes and challenges impacting the community.
11. Leadership refers to the individuals primarily responsible for approving or authorizing the feedback loop process and, often, ultimately deciding on the course of action to be taken as a consequence of feedback. This may include elected or appointed leaders or managers of a given subnational government unit or agency, such as the mayor, governor or local executive; officials in the mayoral or executive administration; heads of local agencies; elected legislators (such as councilors, alderpersons or other representatives); and, potentially, representatives of national ministries responsible for subnational development or oversight of local and regional authorities.
12. Local authority is the catchall term used throughout this guide. It refers to any subnational government at any level. A feedback loop can realistically be deployed by any government with governments above and below it. Generally, we are relying on the experiences of the very lowest formal governing authority, such as the mayor and local council of a municipality.
13. Participatory and deliberative democracy (PDD) practices sit between direct democracy (where citizens make decisions directly) and traditional representative democracy (where elected representatives make decisions on the public’s behalf) and can be used as part of or in conjunction with a feedback loop process to codesign solutions to address complex community challenges.
14. Participatory budgeting is a mechanism where a percentage of the local authority budget is set aside for members of the public to propose and submit ideas for funding. After a vetting process to remove impractical ideas, residents vote on their favorite projects, which are funded.
15. Public participation or engagement in a democratic governance context involves the extent to which members of the public have access to and influence over decisions made regarding the affairs that concern them and their community. Participation can be facilitated by the government or demanded by community organizers and civil society. There are degrees of public participation, ranging from ignoring the public entirely and denying their access to decisions on one end to deferring to the public through community ownership on the other.
16. Qualitative data represents information and concepts that are not represented by numbers. This information is generated by your context analysis collected from interviews, free-form responses or focus groups.
17. Quantitative data can be represented numerically and includes anything that can be counted, measured or assigned a numerical value.
18. Residents, the community or the public are catchall terms for people within the jurisdiction of a given local authority. This includes people who live, work or generally inhabit the geographic jurisdiction. It includes citizens and voters, but also those who are temporarily or permanently under the jurisdiction but may not be citizens or voters in that locality, such as migrants, refugees or internally displaced persons, and those unable to vote (such as youth and children). The terms also include individuals who do not have a formal address in a particular area, such as unhoused people or workers who commute daily into a particular jurisdiction and regularly rely on its infrastructure or access its services. As will be discussed, the targeted population under a feedback loop process will likely be more limited than this and will be influenced by the goals of a given feedback loop and the outreach capabilities of the government unit in question.
19. Responsiveness (in governance) involves governments not just committing to change (with the commitment being an example of a response), but actually meeting its commitment and recognizing the legitimacy and relevance of the public’s input into the process; responsiveness can be enhanced when governments take the additional step to justify and explain their actions.
20. Sampling refers to the methods by which researchers create a random and representative sample of individuals to increase the accuracy and limit bias in the survey results. In surveys and public opinion research, a sample is the subset of the larger population you are seeking to understand. Because it is impossible to survey everyone, a good sample allows researchers to feel confident that their results reflect those of the broader population.
21. Wicked problems in public policy are uniquely challenging, and can be contrasted with so-called “tame” problems of engineering and mathematics, which can eventually be solved. A wicked problem is characterized by: a) complexity, in that its constituent elements are hard to track or disentangle, are influenced by external factors and trends, and may shift or change over time; b) uncertainty, in that you cannot predict all of the consequences or risks of proposed solutions, and it is difficult to tell when the problem is truly solved; and c) divergence between stakeholders, in that opinions on the problem and the ideal solutions differ, reflecting stakeholders’ unique values, intentions and contexts.

Deep dive into levels of public engagement

The feedback loop framework is a process for public engagement in decision-making, but it isn’t the only one. Public engagement in decision-making can have various goals and provide local residents with varying levels of impact on the final decision: Are they merely informed of the decision, or do they have the ultimate deciding power (via a referendum)? Depending on the approaches you select, a feedback loop can have varying levels of public participation and offer residents various levels of power. This annex explains public engagement and shares a few widely used frameworks. 

The International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) Federation developed a spectrum for levels of public participation promised by various government processes. This spectrum is increasingly viewed as an international standard. For example, it’s used as a key element in the Simon Fraser University’s Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue’s Public Engagement Toolkit.  Facilitating Power developed a similar spectrum, adding depth and an additional “Ignore” element to the spectrum, denoting the moments when citizens are entirely excluded from decision-making and no information is provided. In addition, Facilitating Power offers examples of methods and activities that support each level of community engagement.

In the Facilitating Power spectrum, there is also an “Impact” rating, spanning marginalization, placation, tokenization, and on to community ownership. Here, Facilitating Power drew inspiration from Sherry Arnstein’s 1969 “Ladder of Citizen Participation.” In the first two steps, the public has no meaningful impact, as the government has already made a decision and is simply aiming to secure public support for it. In the next three steps, legitimacy slowly increases, but the power afforded to the public is counterfeit or fake, as the public is informed (with no opportunity for feedback). Some feedback is solicited (although with no or minimal impact), until in “placation,” public engagement is institutionalized, but officials still control the process. Only in the final rungs of the ladder are power and decision-making actually ceded to the public. Joint committees combining increasing numbers of citizens and fewer officials, increasingly empowered to make decisions and demand accountability, become the basis of citizen control. 

Where does a feedback loop fit into these spectra? In the words of Arnstein, “There is a critical difference between going through the empty ritual of participation and having the real power needed to affect the outcome of the process.” The crux is intent and affording residents clout or actual empowerment. A feedback loop should aim to increase meaningful public engagement and allow residents to make specific decisions. It should not be a means of cynically engaging the public only as a token method of validating premade decisions. This guide aims to help governments move from nonparticipation toward citizen control or from merely informing citizens of decisions taken by the government toward collaboratively solving local problems with public input. Keep in mind, however, that as the level of engagement rises, the technical know-how needed and potential costs – in budget and human resources – also tend to rise. In addition, when considering the scale of your engagement – how many people and communities you will reach and the kind of activities you will use – consider the impact of the decision on communities, the cost of not engaging and the relationship of your outreach budget to the overall project budget. For example, is a survey of a representative sample of community members worthwhile if it will cost almost as much as the piece of infrastructure under deliberation? With the help of this guide, we hope you come to agree that – when it comes to high-impact decisions – achieving the levels of partnership, collaboration, “defer to” and empower are within reach in your feedback loop.

In Table 1, you can reference specific examples of methods for each level of public engagement outlined in the IAP2 Public Participation Spectrum. 

Table 1: Examples of methods behind each of the levels Inform, Consult and Involve

Guiding questions for context analysis

Consider the following areas of analysis for local governance. Keep in mind that not all of these questions will be relevant to your community. In addition, some of the below questions will be more relevant if you are a civil society representative using this guide in partnership with your local authority. As a result, please do not feel obligated to complete most or even a small number of these questions - many of these answers will already be known to you, and this exercise will waste time. Instead, focus your energies as a team to discuss the questions that most directly apply to the challenges you expect, for example, your team may find discussion of internal bargaining processes useful to refine their strategy for approaching opposition councilors or hesitant civil servants to engage in the process.

The following questions will help to create a political economy analysis, which is an understanding of the power dynamics in your community and the factors inhibiting or promoting change. In short, it is an effort to understand the overall context that the process you will implement will affect, so that you can better design the process to navigate (either by avoiding or taking advantage of them): 

• structural and contextual factors, which form the backdrop of your community (e.g., the state of the national economy, a nearby border),
• bargaining processes, which are the formal and informal 'rules of the game,' how agreement is reached and between whom,
• stakeholders or 'agents', who are the people and groups that participate in or are excluded from bargaining processes,
• incentives and disincentives, which drive the actions and attitudes of stakeholders who may stand to lose or win from change¹

Again - this is an intensive exercise, and you need to determine whether your team has the time to dedicate to it; note that once it is done, though, it does not need to be repeated as intensely; instead, some teams revisit their assumptions periodically (every three to six months, or after a big event) to discuss what needs to be updated.

Your goal is to think and work politically

The feedback loop, or Listen, Respond, Report framework, will invite public participation in a local decision. This endeavor has some risks: The main risk is not delivering on the decision, which will result in frustrating the public who participated and undermining the chances of success for similar efforts in the future. Relatedly, there is a risk of opposition that stymies or undermines the process. Your goal with this political economy analysis is to anticipate where those threats may come from so that you can design your process to be as strong as possible. Politics is not passive, and you will need to plan and react – this is called “thinking and working politically” and applies to policymakers, activists and anyone seeking to make a change in the public sphere. 

Start with your own analysis, and ask others to fill in gaps

You and your team should convene to answer these questions. You do not need a professional expert to conduct a political economy analysis. As someone who lives in your community, you likely already understand the local “rules of the game,” who has power and who does not, and who will support or oppose your desire to increase participation in decision-making. If possible, your analysis should draw from formal interviews or informal chats with government representatives – including elected and unelected officials – and civil society organizations and activists, especially local media, whose understanding of key figures in society and politics will be helpful to map power dynamics. 

Conduct the analysis at the beginning, but keep checking your assumptions

Getting a baseline or initial understanding of the context is important before you design your process. This will help you and your team to secure buy-in and cooperation from the necessary stakeholders (whom you will identify in the analysis), as well as to design the process to “fit” within (or at least be neutral regarding) the rules of the game that you cannot change. However, the analysis is never 100% complete – power relations shift, and new influences come to light. You and your team should plan to revisit this power analysis regularly, and you may determine that your plans need to change as a result of new findings – therefore, the timing of your check-in or update should be planned accordingly. For example, plan to revisit your assumptions with the team for an hour or so just following or sufficiently in advance of key moments in the process. 

First, do no harm and plan for inclusion

The principle of “do no harm” requires your team to think ahead about how your efforts and actions will interact with visible and hidden power dynamics. In a conflict context, the above processes – which decide “who gets how much and when” – can be extremely politically contentious and risk exacerbating divisions. International development organizations apply a “do no harm” framework to plan for and mitigate risk. There are different approaches, but a common framework involves mapping “dividers” – actors and factors that push communities apart – and “connectors” – actors and factors that promote peace. Then consider your intended actions (what you will do, the resources you will deploy, and how) and patterns of behavior (how your team interacts with the community and the message this interaction communicates). We have included an additional section of questions to probe these issues below. 

Context analysis and do no harm worksheet

Additional resources for context and political economy analysis

Plenty of resources exist that define and offer guidance on political economy analysis, and several explicitly mainstream gender and inclusion into their analysis. 

The Beginner's Guide to Political Economy Analysis (PEA), Alan Whaites, July 2017 [Link].

This is a quick and effective overview of PEA and should be sufficient for your team's purposes. Of note, the author includes a series of guiding questions on page 9 that should start the conversation on the four analysis dimensions: structure, bargaining, stakeholders and incentives. 

Making Political Analysis Useful: Adjusting and Scaling, April 2015 [Link].

While more directed at development organizations, this guide helps you to shift your frame depending on whether you are “learning the game” (geared toward setting an agenda), “winning the game” (more helpful with problem-solving), or “changing the game” (to understand influence and how you can tap into it). It also offers useful advice on how to start small with one-hour conversations (compared to a month-long research project). 

Everyday Political Analysis, Developmental Leadership Program, January 2017 [Link].

This guide offers a “stripped-back” framework for political analysis and is composed of two steps: 

1. Understanding interests: What makes people tick?
2. Understanding change: What space and capacity do people have to effect change?

The guide includes a series of yes/no questions for each step, making it easy to quickly understand what information you need and where to find it. 

Understanding Political Economy Analysis and Thinking and Working Politically (Published 27 February 2023), Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and the Thinking and Working Politically Community of Practice, 2023 Authors: Alan Whaites, Laure-Hélène Piron, Alina Rocha Menocal and Graham Teskey [Link].

Written by the same author as the Beginner's Guide, this is a more comprehensive (and jargony) guide from the U.K. government. It covers the following: What is the purpose of a political economy analysis? What are the main elements of a PEA? Thinking and working politically (TWP) and planning and undertaking an in-depth PEA process. It also lists and defines some key political economy concepts. 

Thinking and Working Politically Through Applied Political Economy Analysis: A Guide for Practitioners, USAID April 2018 [Link]. 

This is USAID's version of the FCDO guidance above and covers much of the same ground. It is likely more advanced than your purposes warrant, but notably, it includes an annex of some helpful guiding questions for analysis at different levels (see footnote for link).³ 

Additional resources for do no harm and inclusion

The following resources provide additional perspectives and guidance on do no harm and inclusion for local and regional governments: 

Urban Institute's Do No Harm Guide: Applying Equity Awareness in Data Visualization (2021): This guide – and especially the general recommendations on page 41 – describes how the language, colors and icons used when collecting and communicating data can be improved to be more inclusive and easily understood.⁴

Council of Europe Congress of Local and Regional Authorities' Human Rights Handbook for Local and Regional Authorities Vol. 1: Fighting Against Discrimination (2019): This guide focuses on the European context and offers concrete recommendations and examples for how various local authorities have promoted equal rights for various discriminated and vulnerable groups in their communities.⁵

International City Managers Association (ICMA) offers two resources: 

• Equity and Inclusion Toolkit (2018): Offers examples and lessons from the United States and Canada on how to approach community relations, service delivery and internal practices through a lens of promoting equity.⁶
• Governing for Equity: Implementing an Equity Lens in Local Governments (2020): Based on experiences from the United States, this guide offers recommendations for local authorities seeking to reform their internal practices and processes to improve their engagement with diverse and underrepresented communities.⁷

Budget

Consider your municipality’s budgeting process, as well as the funds and approvals you will need to form a team and implement the feedback loop. Do you need specific approvals to allocate your time and those of your team members to the project? Will you need to work with procurement and finance staff to purchase supplies, hire consultants or rent space?

Timeline

The feedback loop process is political, as you are consulting the public in a meaningful way on local decisions that matter. Therefore, it makes sense to consider your timeline alongside the political calendar. The first event may be an election, especially if it brings a team into office for the first time and they are hoping to “do governance differently.” In some ways, the final test of your success in engaging the public is the following election’s results – have you earned public trust in the intervening years or lost it?

From the outset, the feedback loop process should be seen as an integral part of the governing team’s agenda. Information will be collected to set priorities, which are then acted upon. Therefore, the data collection and outreach process must align with the municipality’s calendar, accounting for the fiscal year, various financial and strategic documents and reports that must be or are traditionally created, legislative sessions of the local council, and, of course, elections. Below are actual timelines from four countries where NDI has worked with local authorities to implement a Listen, Respond, Report cycle. The shortest processes were eight months, with the longest taking up to 11 months or more. This is because the cycle must, by its nature, include time for the local government to implement the response – to provide an update on progress, you must have made some progress. Data collection design and outreach may be time-consuming, and teams may encounter unexpected obstacles, but it still only accounts for the initial few months of the process. 

Note that it is important to move at a steady pace, but this is conditional on the methods you deploy and the context in which they are deployed. In a municipality of 700 households, it is not unreasonable to expect to hand out surveys in person to 10 percent or 70 households in one week and return to each one a week later; in a city of 10,000 residents, however, that math becomes more difficult. The overarching goal should be to consistently communicate in a regular, scheduled way and not leave residents guessing about whether their response matters or what is happening in response. 

Examples

Moldova

In the experience of Moldovan municipalities, the following is an example timeline: 

The process often takes between 10 and 14 months for a full cycle. Note that in Moldova, municipalities are often quite small (fewer than 1,000 households), and the process is implemented by teams of at least four elected officials and staff: 

• Month 1
  • Step 1 – Kickoff meeting and identification of core team
  • Step 2 – Development of the questionnaire on local priorities
• Month 2
  • Step 3 – Distribution of the questionnaire on local priorities through a door-to-door canvassing method, reaching at least 10 percent of households in the community
• One week later
  • Step 4 – Questionnaire collection (going door to door again)
• Months 3 to 4
  • Step 5 – Analysis of survey results and development of the results report and local strategy
  • Step 6 – Distribution of the results report and local strategy, this time reaching as many households as possible via door-to-door or mailing publications
• Months 6, 7 or 8
  • Step 7 – Verification of the strategy’s progress (Two to four months later, the team should convene to discuss tangible results and progress.)
  • Step 8 – Development of the publication on intermediate/final results
• Month 8
  • Step 9 – Distribution of the report on intermediate/final results
• Month 10 or later
  • Step 10 – Development and distribution of final publications, outlining additional progress to date and future plans on priorities identified in the survey (and other issues as relevant) (This publication may coincide with an annual report or other large occasion.) 

Slovakia

In the experience of Slovakian municipalities, the following is an example timeline: 

• March – Kickoff meeting of the feedback loop team, door-to-door questionnaire and strategy created
• April – Survey questionnaires finalized and printed
• May and June – Questionnaires distributed via door-to-door canvassing
• August and September – Questionnaires collected and returned, data analysis begins
  • (September – National elections held, leading teams to delay results publication)
• September – Data analysis, and publication on the results of the survey created
• November to January – Reporting back to the public on priorities identified through a public communication online and in the municipal newspaper, through meetings with citizens, and through a leaflet (distributed via the municipal newspaper) that describes the survey’s outcome

Mexico

In the experience of Mexican municipalities, the following is an example timeline: 

• October to November – Over the course of five meetings, city government staff and city council members created a plan to integrate public feedback into the three-year municipal action plan, deciding which outreach methods to use and then planning how to report back their findings to the public.
• February – The core team prepared to host a social forum based on the “world cafe” methodology. This involved training staff to engage with the public and hosting the event, where input from residents on the key issues within the municipal plan was collected.
• March – The data was analyzed and incorporated into the draft municipal plan.
• April – The municipal plan text is made publicly available for comment.
• May – The municipal plan is adopted.

El Salvador

In the experience of El Salvadoran municipalities, the following is an example timeline: 

• February – Kickoff with core teams, planning for the feedback process
• March – Core team and municipal representatives meet to conduct political economy analysis and stakeholder mapping, decide to focus on key stakeholder inputs into municipal strategic plans
• April – Data collection instruments finalized, surveys distributed to key stakeholders in civil society, business and local professionals
• June – Surveys closed, data analyzed
• June and July – Strategic plan drafted, with presentation of survey results and draft plans at public meetings for feedback
• August and September – Local council receives plan and conducts additional public meetings; plans placed on the council agenda for adoption

Forming a team

This guide refers to the local authority as the primary unit responsible for implementing the feedback cycle process (ideally in cooperation with local civil society and the public). However, local authorities come in all shapes and sizes. The following offers guidance on forming the team responsible for overseeing the implementation of the feedback process. 

Team members can come from the government or be nongovernmental. 

Government team members can include: 

• Political leadership – These are usually elected officials such as mayors and local councilors but could include appointed officials with influence over local decision-making.
• Political staff – These are the professional staff who enter government with the elected official, serving as chiefs of staff, legislative aides, assistants and others. They tend to be partisan and support the agenda of the politicians for whom they work.
• Professional civil servants – These are the permanent professional staff who work for the local authority, potentially in one of the departments or agencies that make up the local government administration. They tend to be nonpartisan (to the extent that they do not rely on political patronage or connections for their employment) and often have deep technical knowledge of the issue area or bureaucracy in which they work. 

Nongovernmental team members can include: 

• Civil society, local activists and volunteers – These include the community organizers, members and staff of local civil society, or other international or multilateral organizations willing to work with you – either as equal team members or as a consultative body supporting the process. They may also be a source of volunteers. Volunteers are those willing to give up their time to support some or all of the process, including going door to door and handing out surveys. These individuals may not need compensation for their time, but offering some remuneration or at least recognition of their contributions may encourage people to volunteer and stay engaged in the future.
• Private consultants, subject matter experts and firms – This group includes the technical experts, especially in research and analysis, that you may hire if your team lacks the in-house expertise and has the funding.
• Others – This could include private business, interested members of the public, local media and more. This group is less likely to be a part of the team but will be important sources of information and messengers that – depending on your issue and context – you can try to work with to achieve shared goals. For example, for popular community projects that are beyond the scope of your municipality to fund, the private sector or residents may be a source of donations or investment. 

There are two ways to structure the engagement of elected leadership in the process: directly or as supervisors. In Moldova and Slovakia, mayors and elected councilors affiliated with the mayor (either as members of the same party or formal or informal governing coalition) formed the team, conducting outreach, analysis, and communication directly. In Mexico and El Salvador, elected officials supervised the process and received conclusions. These structures and the advantages and disadvantages of both are discussed below.  

1. Direct engagement – A team of elected officials

• This process is started, designed and led by elected officials (and potentially their staff). As these are political officials and positions, they can be referred to as political teams. At the local level, many politicians are independents, and polarizing debates between national political parties may be less important; the result is that party representatives can more easily work across partisan lines. The local majority or government team can invite the opposition to participate in the feedback cycle, but the opposition may decline if they do not want to support a shared agenda; further, the opposition or an individual council member (perhaps in a majoritarian system) may choose to run their own feedback cycle. 

2. Supervisory engagement – A team of public sector staff and civil society

• With a supervisory engagement, the process may be instigated by elected officials, civil servants or civil society. Elected officials – as the key decision-makers – will need to formally commit to the process, receive regular updates on the process and feedback results, and provide updates to the public on progress made, but they may take a less active role in outreach and data collection. This may be more suitable for large municipalities with larger civil servants and well-developed citizen engagement teams. 

Forming the core team

In all cases, the core team will need to fulfill the following roles and responsibilities.

Identifying budgeting processes

Local authorities around the world, and even those within the same country, use various methods to organize their budget. There is also wide variation in how open or closed the budget process is to public contributions and public scrutiny. Understanding how your local authority structures the annual budget and whether or how the public already engages in the budget-making process can help you tailor the feedback loop to be the most efficient and effective to suit your needs.

Consider how open your local authority’s budget development process is to the public. In many communities, the budget is drafted behind closed doors through inputs from local finance department staff, internal lobbying on department priorities and final decision-making by leadership. Introducing public participation in this process can provide several benefits, such as increasing public knowledge and trust in local institutions, enhancing public understanding of the capabilities and limits of the local authority, and strengthening transparency of the process and accountability. For powerful interests, public accountability and the introduction of new and potentially competing priorities may be viewed as a threat to their influence. Revisit your stakeholder analysis and consider ways to mitigate any conflict or obstacles that may arise; buy-in from leadership may be needed to navigate political challenges. Budget discussions are always politically costly¹ because they are negotiations about “what government ought to be doing” – what services and values matter the most – and how financial resources can be harnessed to serve those purposes.²

If you are using the budget process as the focus of your feedback loop, we recommend starting with the following questions: 

• Review last year’s budget (or the budget from two or more years ago): Examine revenues and expenses. Huddle with your local finance department to understand their projections – can you expect similar revenue levels and similar expenses this year compared to previous years? Does your local authority customarily overspend, underspend or hit your targets? If you customarily end up with savings, how are savings reallocated?
  • Use this information to understand what priorities or concerns are already funded and how well. Priorities sourced from the feedback loop can fill the gap or give direction on cuts.
• How much spending is decided on locally? Does the central or higher-order government attach strings or requirements to transfers or other chunks of funding?
  • Use this information to understand how much funding is discretionary (how much is “up for grabs” and could be directed to priorities) and the issues or topics where priority-setting can be useful.
• Consider the politics, including internal and public negotiations that surround the local budget. Is there difficult or amicable negotiation between departments? What role does the council play in these debates and negotiations? What sources of information or justifications are common in these internal (to city hall) budget discussions?
  • Use this information to understand and anticipate internal conflict or pushback within city hall, questions and lobbying by local elites, and other roadblocks in the budget process. A feedback loop, by relying on public voices, can be a useful guidepost to organize and limit the contentious internal debate, which may not accurately represent community needs and interests. 

Simulations, scenarios and games can be deployed during public engagement or education efforts to educate residents about costs and trade-offs. Take, for example, the Balancing Act software used by city governments in the United States (such as Charlotte, North Carolina) to allow residents to view revenues and expenditures, and then see the impact of increasing and decreasing expenses.

Consider as well the type of budget your local authority uses. This will help you frame your questions to ensure public responses can be directly inserted into the public budgeting process. There are four main types of public budgets: line-item budgeting, program-based budgeting, performance budgeting and zero-based budgeting. 

Line-item budgeting: This budgeting is the most basic and common format. Budgets are subdivided by department or agency, with different expenses (personnel, supplies, etc.) enumerated accordingly. Developed to exert managerial and legislative control over administrative departments, the line-item budget is widely used. It is clear and easy to create, understand and monitor. But the method has several weaknesses: (1) it focuses on what will be purchased, rather than efficiency or the quantity or quality of service being purchased; (2) it pays little attention to policy or meeting local needs and objectives, and usually preserves a status quo (departmental budgets tend to stay static or increase slightly); and (3) it is difficult to set priorities because the size of allocation may not relate to the importance of the service or function. In addition, line-item budgeting can encourage end-of-fiscal year spending sprees (as departments that underspend may get less funding the next year).³ 

A line item will list general, high-level allocations on a department-by-department basis, with some general categories of expenses. For example: 

 Program-based budgeting: Program-based budgeting or program-planning budgeting (PPB) differs from line-item budgeting in that it provides more details on the costs for each of the activities, services or programs the departments perform. For example, the emergency services department would create “mini-budgets” for each subcategory based on their functions, such as fire-fighting services, flood prevention and control, emergency medical and ambulance services, or police.

Around the world, governments at all levels have generally shifted to this budgeting model, allowing them to demonstrate in greater detail to their constituents where their priorities lie and how those priorities are being funded. The challenges of this model are that (1) the quantity and quality of services being purchased are still unclear, and (2) programs and activities may overlap between departments. In addition, it is more administratively difficult to collect and organize this quantity and level of information.⁴ However, this information can be clearly published for accountability purposes – see the online budget webpage of the City of Nitra, Slovakia, as an example.⁵

Performance budgeting: The difference between this kind of budgeting and program-based budgeting is the performance budget includes an estimate of the level of service provision being purchased. For example, a budget for a public works department would indicate the amount (in miles or kilometers) of road being paved or maintained in a given year. The council could use this information to determine, in actual currency, how much it would cost to pave an additional kilometer, or how much would be saved by postponing paving activity. It also allows leaders to measure the performance of local departments – i.e., did they hit their targets? This kind of budget poses a few challenges: (1) estimates of performance are very difficult to calculate and depend on a variety of factors, and (2) many public goods are difficult to quantify, such as education or public safety (i.e., you cannot budget for a percentage decrease in crime).⁶

Zero-based budgeting: In this budget, which builds on performance budgeting, the local authority begins building its budget “from zero,” requiring each department to justify its continued existence and budget allocation every year. In this system, local departments are requested to provide a variety of funding scenarios for consideration by the local council. For example, what is the impact and expected service provision in the event of (1) no funding, (2) funding at current levels, (3) funding at 75 percent of current levels, and so on? This process provides decision-makers with a great deal of information to weigh impacts and various funding scenarios. However, this kind of budget process can be politically contentious and requires intense administrative activity to collect information, conduct analysis, develop justifications and advocate internally.⁷ 

Asking the right questions

It will be helpful to work backward based on your budgeting process to ensure the responses to your questions can be used and fed directly into your budget process. Imagine you have already collected public feedback – how will that feedback be used in your process? What is the most helpful format or structure for public responses to take? 

“What are your budget priorities?” or “Where should the government increase spending?” are often too broad. Consider focusing on particular services, objectives or other ways to focus feedback. 

If your local authority uses a line-item budget process, you could organize your feedback loop process to contribute to or generate specific line items. Your line items may be at a high level of generality, meaning specific priorities may disappear, lose meaning, or appear “business as usual” if simply siphoned into more or less funding for general departments, services, or programs. In this instance, you should try to be as specific as possible to point to particular line items (new or expanded) when you report back to the public on whether their stated priorities were met. 

Imagine you won an election on a campaign platform to improve transportation in the city center, but you have limited funds and need to know where to start this year to show some progress. 

Consider the following ranking list that may be shared with community members. Each of the priority options could be further broken down depending on how specific or detailed you want to get:

• “On the topic of local transit options, what is your greatest priority for improvement:
  • Sidewalks/pedestrian safety
  • Bicycle lanes/bike racks
  • Parking/Personal vehicle access
  • Buses
  • Train station/metro
• Why or what about this issue or topic makes it your greatest priority:_______”

The responses with the greatest number of answers are your list of priorities. The open-ended responses from these answers will help you to frame codesign sessions. Note: Open-ended answers are extremely time-consuming to compile and analyze, and teams should prepare for this process ahead of time.

At codesign sessions, you can get a deeper understanding of the issue. Is it that more sidewalks are needed in a specific area, they are not wide enough, they are in poor condition, road crossings are poorly marked or something else? All of these topics will involve expenditures within a limited number of departments – ideally one – such as your local department of transportation. This will make the line-item allocation clear, as well as the line of accountability clear. Work with them to determine what corresponding line items in the coming budget will look like. 

If your local authority uses a program-based budget process, you can seek feedback from residents on a broader set of objectives or the means or approach the local authority will take to deliver on objectives. 

In this instance, especially within larger communities, gathering public feedback via open-ended answers will be time-intensive to analyze; avoid it unless you have the skills and capacities to put it to use. Using a higher level – where residents offer a basic ranking of objectives or programs will be easier to analyze. For example: 

• “Of the following programs and objectives, which are your highest priorities (select up to 2):
  • Crime and public safety
  • Clean energy and green projects
  • Road, sidewalk and biking infrastructure
  • Childcare and kindergartens
  • [And so on . . .]”

Drawing on these rankings (which priorities rank highest compared with which rank lowest), you can plan your codesign engagements to dive deeper into one or two priorities and understand what makes people interested. Given they are priorities, you should also be able to attract residents’ attention and participation. 

If your local authority uses a performance-based budget, or even a zero-based budget, you likely have the administrative capacity to delve more into the values of residents and examine public perspectives of trade-offs between services. This expands the kinds of questions you can ask – i.e., your local authority can go beyond asking residents to rank their highest priority or indicate their favorite among a selection of proposed projects. Understanding where your residents perceive the local authority is delivering effectively, and where it is failing to meet their expectations, can help set the agenda for the coming year beyond budget allocations. 

 You can ask particular questions relating to the performance of specific agencies (see Step 4’s discussion of surveys, including the concerns survey). For example:⁸ 

“Of the following topics within the responsibility of the local authority, what is your view?

• Crime and public safety services:
  • How satisfied are you with how this issue is currently addressed? (5) Very satisfied; (4) Satisfied; (3) Neutral; (2) Dissatisfied; or (1) Very dissatisfied
  • How important is this issue to you? (5) Very important . . . (1) Very unimportant
• Road, sidewalk, and transportation infrastructure:
  • How satisfied are you . . .
  • How important is this issue . . .
• [And so on…]”

Analysis of these responses can then be fed into your local authority’s budget process. Analyzing the responses into percentage scores (all 5s would be a score of 100 percent, while all 1s is a score of 0 percent) will indicate “trouble spots” in the local administration. Those with high importance (mostly 5s) and low satisfaction (mostly 1s) are your top priorities. “Throwing money at the problem” is not always the solution, however – consider options for dialogue and codesigning solutions (Step 7) with the public that may reveal no or low cost means of improving resident satisfaction.

Exercise: How will you store and safeguard responses?

Managing and storing data raises several key questions that a data governance framework can address. Consider the following thought exercise as you and your team plan ahead.

Imagine you have held the outreach activity (collected questionnaires and surveys, conducted focus groups, or interviewed community members and leaders), and now you will need to manage and store the data. What is the data’s format (hand-written notes, audio files, transcripts or filled-in surveys)? Are there privacy concerns, or was personal data collected? Is it necessary to transfer hand-written or hard-copy notes and surveys to digital formats and storage? If so, can these be safely stored on the local authorities’ computer systems? Will they need to be shared between departments for analysis? What will the protocols to access this information be (i.e., who will have access to view, edit or download these files)? 

In the long term, what will happen to the raw data? Will you retain the original forms (or copies of them), or simply retain the analysis and anonymized compilation of responses (and destroy the original forms or raw data)? 

In responding to these questions, you should be aware of your obligations under the law, your team’s capacities and infrastructure, and the expectations of residents (i.e., what would be the consequences if this raw data was made public?).

Defining key informant interviews

Key informant interviews (KIIs) are a qualitative research method in which someone (likely a person from your team or possibly a contractor) poses a standard set of questions to stimulate an in-depth discussion with individuals about their observations and perspectives on the issues, processes and challenges impacting the community. The interview subjects’ social positions give them extensive and specialist knowledge about the community in focus, so they can provide you with valuable insights and information into the causes and manifestations of community issues. They might also provide possible recommendations or solutions to the issues and may be able to recommend additional people to interview. You could select community leaders, heads of professional associations, leaders of neighborhood groups, nongovernment organization representatives, activists or other well-connected individuals to interview. 

An important feature of KIIs is that they are open-ended discussions that enable the interviewer to dig into the subject’s answers to given issues. These conversations can provide a rich understanding of the context, which subsequently informs your further data-gathering activities, helping you to plan your outreach better. For instance, the information generated by KIIs can help you shape and frame the questions you ask in focus groups with a broader set of representatives from the community or the questions you put to larger groups of people through a survey. These latter two research methods also provide qualitative data but do not (typically) yield as much detail as KIIs. Additionally, KIIs can help you develop risk mitigation and do no harm strategies.  

Depending on your preference, available resources and the interviewer’s personality and experience, KIIs can be carried out using a structured or semi-structured interview style or simply following a list of themes that you have predetermined to be the most important to understanding the needs of your community. However, keeping the interview style and structure consistent across all subjects is important to enable accurate comparison when you analyze the data. 

There are many benefits to KIIs, especially as part of the feedback loop process. However, it is important to state upfront some of the drawbacks of this particular data collection method. KIIs can be a labor-intensive process in both the planning and execution of the interviews. This is dependent on the number of community members that you will interview. Additionally, selecting the “right” key informants (people with substantive experience and who are representative of the community) can be a difficult task and potentially a divisive issue, depending on the political context of your community. The guidance on how to conduct KIIs below includes ways to overcome these challenges. 

The purpose of key informant interviews

As mentioned above, there are multiple reasons why you might pursue KIIs, and it will be necessary to distill your goal for KIIs before initiating planning and executing them. This option may be useful to the data collection team to frame their data collection efforts, refine wording and understand gaps and risks.

• Framing data collection efforts: You can present your initial plans for data collection, such as a draft survey questionnaire, and ask the interviewee how they or their peers may respond to this outreach.
• Refining wording: Inquire about the language used in government communications and whether changes should be made.
• Understanding gaps and risks: How is the local authority perceived by this individual, their peers and their community? How likely are they to respond to the questionnaire or participate in dialogue activities? 

With these functions of KIIs in mind, it might be most beneficial to undertake KIIs at the beginning of the data collection process. They may also be a helpful tool, perhaps with fewer interview subjects, to sense-check the implementation of your actions to address the (eventual) priority issues later in the feedback loop process.

Furthermore, KIIs can effectively gather information from the various groups within your community, helping you identify the most salient local socioeconomic categories. Through these discussions, you might also identify and recruit other members of the community who can help with other stages of the feedback loop process, for example, individuals who are effective at communicating with and engaging hard-to-reach members of your community. Additionally, and while this is not the goal of KIIs, conducting interviews with key community members can provide you with meaningful opportunities to strengthen relationships with key stakeholders in the community.

Viewing KIIs as part of a “suite” of community engagement tools may be helpful. This type of interview is most helpful in gathering information about the observations and perceptions about issues in your community. However, KIIs are not an effective or efficient tool for gathering information from large numbers of people or collecting direct number data. In this case, a survey would likely be more appropriate – this tool is covered in the next section. 

Preparing for the key informant interviews

The first step in preparing for the KIIs is to determine what information you are seeking to get. You and your team should have a solid understanding of the research question – you’re interviewing people to discover the issues within and affecting the community. Be clear on what you want to know. You are a member of the community, so you will know foundational information about it. However, try to gather as much supplementary information as possible beforehand to ensure you get the most out of the interviews – information that cannot be found in community records or datasets. 

Next is selecting the KII candidates, which, as already mentioned, can be a challenge. What follows are some considerations that might be helpful as you brainstorm possible interview subjects. Select informants who are both experts in and on the community. Given that KIIs are a direct method of communication, it is important to select experts who are willing to be interviewed. When contacting these potential interviewees, stress the importance of their input and inform them in advance of the time commitment required for the KII process. Of the candidates who are willing to be interviewed, you should understand their (possible) stake in the feedback loop process. This is pertinent because the feedback loop process will entail resources, funding and engagement across the community as it aims to foster better engagement between the local authority and all members of the community and ultimately to deliver for them. 

Your data needs, available time resources and community structure will determine the number of candidates you interview. This will also help you determine how many people are needed to conduct the interviews. If you use more than one interviewer, conduct a training session to ensure they all ask the same questions in the same way. Consistency when conducting interviews is integral to the eventual data analysis process. 

When selecting the interviewer(s), consider their gender, socioeconomic position and their position in the community. Is there a power differential between the interviewer and subject? Are there certain topics that are inappropriate with particular interviewer-subject pairings? If so, try to adjust accordingly – use another interviewer if necessary. 

The next step is to decide how to conduct the KIIs. The most common techniques are either face-to-face or via telephone.

Face-to-face key informant interviews

Face-to-face KIIs are the most frequently used format. This technique gives the interviewer greater control over the discussion: they can repeat questions, probe answers, use discretion in which questions to ask, engage in a more complex questionnaire, control the ambient of the interview and capture nonverbal and spontaneous answers from the subject.

At the same time, face-to-face interviews can be time-consuming and expensive as you might need to book a venue for the interviews and provide stipends to subjects who miss employment to attend the interviews. In this vein, scheduling face-to-face interviews with some subjects may be difficult, especially for those with other responsibilities, including caring responsibilities and professional commitments. If you do conduct face-to-face interviews, consider the accessibility needs of the interview subjects, especially for people with disabilities.

Telephone key informant interviews

Telephone KIIs can be a practical method to reach subjects who are hard to reach due to time constraints or geographic restrictions. This format is typically more cost- and time-effective than face-to-face interviews, as telephone interviews are typically shorter. They can also be the most convenient and least time-intensive way to interview busy key informants. The downside of telephone interviews, though, is that it might be harder for the interviewer to build a rapport with the subject, and you cannot capture nonverbal behavior.

As you decide how to conduct your interview, you can also consider the structure of the KIIs. The types of interview structures exist on a spectrum. Highly structured interviews are when the interviewer draws from a list of questions that are asked identically to all subjects. Semi-structured KIIs typically follow a predetermined list of questions, but there is scope for the interviewer and subject to digress into other topics as appropriate. Finally, a loosely structured interview will likely not include a predetermined list of questions but will consist of a conversation that raises contextually appropriate questions that meet the objectives of the interview. 

Whatever degree of structure you choose for your KIIs, it is essential that the interview questions are prepared in advance and that the interviewers have sufficient time to familiarize themselves with the questions and the objectives of this information-gathering process. Consider the order of the questions. It can be helpful to build up to the complex and sensitive issues through the course of the KII, using earlier questions to establish a relationship with the interviewee to encourage them to give as complete and honest answers as possible. Questions can include:

• Simple, introductory questions that can establish a rapport between the interviewer and the subject
• Questions that relate to the central focus of your interview, with to-the-point specific answers
• Questions that check the reliability of other answers, including the answers from other interviewees – this is sometimes referred to as triangulation
• Questions that probe for more complete answers – this might be particularly helpful when talking to KIIs about the roots of community issues and possible solutions

When asking questions, be sure to ask separate questions on separate issues – do not ask two questions in one. Additionally, during the KII, the interviewer should pace the questions to ensure they get every subject’s answers to key questions. It is important for later analysis that the data collected is comparable.

Documenting the key informant interviews

Before the interviews, consider with your team how you will document the KIIs and, subsequently, how the data gathered will be organized and stored in preparation for analysis. Consider which documentation methods will best enable you to perform efficient and consistent data collection. Whichever method you choose, make clear what are direct quotes from the subjects and what are the interviewer’s notes to ensure the subject’s words are not embellished.

Taking notes during the interviews can be a useful method of capturing first impressions of the subject’s answers. However, the interviewer should not let the note-taking process disrupt the flow of the conversation. Immediately following the interview, the interviewer should review their notes and fill in as many further details as possible. 

Using a tape recorder to document what key informants say can free the interviewer to focus solely on the conversation. It may still be beneficial to take some brief notes, though. If you do use a tape recorder, you must get informed consent from the interview subject to audiotape the conversation ahead of the interview. 

As you determine which documentation method to use, consider how you will store the data collected from the KIIs and protect the confidentiality of the interview subjects. The goal of the KIIs is to get as complete and honest answers from the subjects as possible, so you should reassure interview subjects that your interest is in the content of their answers rather than in who said what. Even if a subject’s answers are not sensitive or controversial, it is important to ensure that the information gathered is not attributable to any particular individual. Consider keeping all identifiable information in a separate and secure location from the answers, which should also be kept securely.

With these confidentiality and data management considerations in mind, it can be helpful to assign one person in your team to manage the “chain of data.” Their role will be to organize the compilation and storage of this large amount of qualitative data. Throughout the feedback loop process, they should always know where the data is during the data collection and analysis process. 

After the KIIs are conducted, the interviewer or another person on your team should formalize the interview notes, using the audiotapes (if applicable) to fill in the gaps, into one document. In line with the above guidance on confidentiality, assign each person with a unique number, for example, “Person 1 . . .; Person 2 . . .” This document has the potential to be very long, so it can be beneficial to think of the organizational categories for the qualitative data before the data collection. You might decide to group different answers according to the question or perhaps different geographic areas of the community. The goal of this categorization is to make the data comparable and usable. 

Conducting the key informant interviews

During the KII itself, the interviewer should reiterate the nature and goals of the project to the subject, which will include the purpose of the interview and an explanation of why the key informant’s good faith engagement in identifying local priorities and challenges is essential to the broader feedback loop process. The interviewer might consider restating information about the organizer of the KII (the leader of the team) and the procedures around data collection and protection. 

After the interview, thank the subject for their cooperation, and provide them with the proposed next steps in data collection and broader feedback loop processes. Demonstration of your appreciation for their time and input can help strengthen relationships with key community stakeholders. The next stage of the KII process is analysis, which is covered in Step 5. 

If you are not aiming to collect feedback from the broader community, it may be worthwhile to convene a focus group that brings together a particular group. For example, to ensure the voices of language minorities or women are reflected in the process, a dedicated session in which these groups can discuss their views on certain issues can help gather a broader understanding of the priorities and lived experiences of the public.  

A focus group is a group interview of up to 10, carefully selected, demographically homogenous participants. Focus groups require a facilitator to ask the participants questions about their beliefs, opinions, and views and guide discussions on certain issues. Another facilitator is needed to observe and record the participants’ reactions and responses to the issues raised and analyze their responses after the interview(s) have taken place. 

Focus groups can elicit open-ended and broad responses, revealing common and divergent views within a community. Often, these responses have more depth and nuance as participants can stimulate others to share their views and experiences, helping to tease out further the issues at hand and utilizing vocabulary that is commonplace in the community. This interactivity can enable the convenor of the focus group, in this instance the local authority, to get closer to what community members are thinking and feeling on the matter.  Distinct from the previous two public engagement methods, focus groups engage with multiple respondents simultaneously, so the convenor can obtain qualitative data more conveniently and effectively. However, as focus groups yield qualitative data it is likely harder to score on a scale, in other words, to quantify the different responses. There are computer programs available that can assist in the analysis of qualitative data which will be highlighted in a later section of this guide. 

Preparing for and Selecting the Focus Group

Effective focus groups rest on the establishment of an “egalitarian” context in which the conversation(s) will take place–participants must be comfortable to interact and share their views freely. As such, prior to convening a focus group, there are a few important aspects to consider. Firstly, the different group members in each focus group should be carefully selected. Each group’s participants should speak the same language, be of the same age range, socioeconomic status, and especially if discussing sensitive topics, of the same gender/sex. Where possible, group members should not know each other before the discussion. As necessary, conduct separate focus groups to gain an understanding of the views of different communities within your area.  

The physical setting of the focus group should also be carefully considered when planning the research. Consider whether the meeting space is associated with anything, such as a particular group within the community or a certain event(s). The space should be accessible, inviting, and comfortable for all participants to convene in a circle with space for the facilitator(s) too. Before the discussion begins, it is important to obtain informed consent from all of the participants, reiterating the confidentiality terms of this research.

To ensure that all your desired participants are able to attend the focus groups and fully engage in the process, consider the visible and invisible (social) constraints that might impact their ability to participate. Consider if participants have caring responsibilities, such as for children or elderly relatives, and provide accommodations such as holding the focus group at certain times where those with caring responsibilities are able to more readily join the discussion, or providing childcare/eldercare arrangements for when the discussion is taking place. It might be helpful to offer a stipend to participants to cover the worktime that is lost as they attend the focus group. Think about these issues at the beginning of your research design phase to ensure that adequate logistical, time, and financial resources are budgeted into your plan.

Those wishing to go deeper on this topic can consult the following two guides for focus groups by University of Minnesota’s Professor Richard A Krueger:

• Designing and Conducting Focus Group Interviews (2002) Link. - This document offers guidance and advice for moderators and note-takers, includes sample questions and dialogue, and also offers guidance on analyzing focus group feedback.
• Focus Group Research Methods (2015) - available as a download at this link: Link.  - This document contains the essential information needed to conduct focus group interviews; it is presented in outline form and is intended for quick reading.

Focus Group Facilitators

As previously mentioned, one facilitator will moderate the discussion, establishing the ground-rules of the conversation (no interruptions when someone is speaking, try to answer based on their own views and experiences), encouraging participants to share their views, and keeping the discussion on track. Through open-ended questions and smooth transitions from one issue to the next, the facilitator should ensure that all the research goals are covered throughout the meeting. The facilitator should explain the purpose and format of the discussion at the beginning of the session to establish a common understanding of the proceedings for all the participants. At the end of the meeting, the facilitator should provide an oral summary of the discussion, reiterating the purpose of the research and attempting to capture the common themes and differing perspectives raised during the meeting. 

The role of the other facilitator is to record the important points of the discussion, including verbal and non-verbal feedback, but who does not take part in it. This facilitator may wish to also use audio or visual recording devices to supplement their efforts, but these are not required. If you do opt to record group discussions, it is important to transcribe them after the meeting to help with their eventual analysis.  

Both facilitators should note what was not said during the discussion. It is important not to assume consensus when some participants do not speak, especially if the majority of the group shares the same or similar views on an issue. Participants may not have expressed a view because they agree with the majority, or because they are unwilling to voice their divergent views.

Many guides on focus groups suggest that facilitators have training and/or qualifications in these methods. This is not always possible, nor is it absolutely necessary. Having said this, it is important not to underestimate the value of the facilitators. This guide from Richard A. Krueger and Mary A. Casey lays out the skills and tasks, as well as valuable tips, required of the facilitator(s) when conducting a focus group. This resource is a comprehensive guide on how to prepare and conduct a focus group, and analyze the data gathered from it. 

Focus Group Activities

While many focus groups rely on a structured discussion in which the primary facilitator asks a set of questions which participants answer, there are other activities which can be included when conducting focus groups that might be fruitful for the research question(s) you are seeking to answer. These activities are relatively inexpensive and can be quick to execute especially when being run concurrently with the focus group. All of these activities can help to combine the qualitative insights gathered through the discussions with quantitative data. For example:

• Free listings: Group members are asked to list all the things they can think of that relate to a particular topic. This exercise can help researchers to understand the terminology, framing, and extent of what focus group participants think about an issue. The frequency of similar responses can be plotted, and help to identify themes or patterns from the other qualitative data gathered throughout the focus group.
• Pile sorting: The facilitator(s) will ask focus group participants to organize individual, unsorted items related to the research questions into groups. You might ask participants to sort the piles according to their similarities and differences (a “closed card sort”) or within a different series of classifications that you provide (an “open card sort”). Alternatively you may prefer that the participants provide their own labels to these different categories/groups. Pile sorting software is available, but index cards and self-adhesive notes can work just as effectively. Similar to free listings, pile sorting activities can help you to identify commonalities and divergences in focus group participants’ perspectives on various issues within and between different focus groups.
• Ranking: In ranking exercises, groups members make decisions between available options, either ranking a list of items according to a specified criteria, or coupling items and comparing them in pairs. There are different ways of conducting these comparisons. Different ways to measure the ranking positions include assigning points to the position of each option (for example, ranked third corresponds to three points) for every member of the group and then calculating the total points awarded to each option. Another option is to assign an equal number of votes to each participant, and ask them to assign votes to the proposed options–this is often referred to as “Dot-Voting.”
• Rating: The facilitator(s) will provide the group members with a list of items, which they must position on a scale to indicate their levels of agreement, frequency, and/or satisfaction. Typically, rating exercises use numbers or adjectives, such as “Very Satisfied/Satisfied/Neutral/Dissatisfied/Very Dissatisfied).

Consider the creation and distribution of a questionnaire on local priorities. The questionnaire on local priorities asks residents to identify their most significant issues, challenges and needs. Local governments can deploy various types of surveys to collect data on citizen priorities, each of which is explored in further detail below. 

Illustrative example: Moldova local priorities questionnaire

Take the following example of a questionnaire, which is translated from one used by an actual mayor and her team in Moldova: 

This questionnaire is straightforward and easy to understand. It aims for the respondent to place a check next to one of five preselected options, allowing residents to tell city hall more about why they selected a particular option. In Moldova, the mayor and her team went door to door in their community, aiming to hand the survey to residents from each neighborhood; they returned after some time to collect the survey. The questionnaire also captured both quantitative and qualitative data from community members. 

• Quantitative: Residents were asked to rate a preset list of local issues in order of priority.
• Qualitative: Residents were able to define the most important negative effects or challenges associated with these issues. Structured as an open-ended short-answer question, residents could provide additional detail on why they rated issues as they did.

When it comes to analyzing the survey results, the mayor and her team simply counted the number of checks for each issue; this will help them determine which issue or issues are the most important to residents. Once those issues have been identified – let’s say, for example, roads earned 50 percent, and water supply scored 30 percent of responses – the mayor and her team can look back through the “roads” pile of questionnaires to read what people wrote about why roads are a particular issue. There are likely a number of subordinate challenges making roads an issue – poor snow clearing, prominent potholes or degraded paving – the mayor and her team may need to conduct further consultations. This could include discussion with the local transit department to see what maintenance is planned and may involve public meetings in various neighborhoods to discuss the conditions of their roads.

Consider the quote from a Moldovan mayor using this survey-based approach. Overall, the survey serves as a guide for further action, directing the mayor and her team toward a general priority that requires follow-up and attention and guiding their efforts throughout the year. Ultimately, some action should be taken, such as funding for repaving a particularly troublesome stretch of main street. In addition, the mayor can use the contact information provided through the survey to update residents with the survey results, send invitations to public meetings to discuss roads or other top priorities, and send summary letters of actions taken or planned on these priorities.

There are multiple types of surveys, differentiated by their goals and the methods used to get responses, and the Moldova questionnaire is an example of a “concerns survey.” 

Before issuing a questionnaire, it will be worthwhile testing the questionnaire on a small number of residents (perhaps 10 individuals). This can help to identify any potential issues with the questionnaire: unclear wording, a confusing ranking system, or missing priorities or options that should be included. Additional recommendations include: 

• Wording the questionnaire in accessible and locally specific language
• Including valid contact information and be receptive to residents’ questions
• Ensuring compliance in data collection information and methods with any confidentiality and privacy legal obligations (e.g., GDPR)

When to conduct a survey 

Analysts and pollsters rely on surveys for three reasons: (1) direct, often quantifiable, answers to questions; (2) anonymity; and (3) randomness. Note that often, these pollsters and analysts have funding, technical training and capacity, and human resources (paid enumerators and interviewers) to help them collect, analyze, and present data. But even if you don’t have those resources, you can design simple surveys to serve your purposes.

You should conduct a survey when: 

• You want to learn about community needs or identify top priorities.
  • Relatedly, you want to hear about needs you didn’t know existed (affecting people or groups outside your immediate social circle or neighborhood).
• You want objective feedback.
  • You want respondents to be more honest and open than you might get through existing or public feedback channels (due to privacy concerns, fears of reprisal, embarrassment or social stigma, or even a simple fear of public speaking).
• You want a reliable and systematic way to document or quantify community needs and priorities.
  • This proof of needs can be used to apply, lobby or advocate for funding (from government ministries, international organizations or other sources).
• You plan to take actions or set an agenda based on the responses.
  • You can point to the survey results as the basis for taking action. Results can be further used to drum up support for your plan of action (should you face resistance from opposing stakeholders) and aim to get more people involved in your effort.

Other reasons to conduct a survey: 

• You’re involving community members early on and helping them start thinking about pressing issues in the community. This can be helpful if you want greater public engagement down the road, such as in the dialogue and monitoring stages.
• Surveys reach community members directly, meaning that you do not have to rely on professionals, service providers or others with vested interests in the issues.

Writing your questions

This guide assumes limited funds, time and technical resources or know-how (such as how to conduct rigorous statistical analyses). 

Strengths of a simple survey

Consider replicating the strengths of the simple survey issued by the Moldovan mayor above. 

Strength 1: It is short: 

There are two questions: What issue is most important to you? How would you recommend solving this issue?  

Note on framing: After asking “what” issue is most important, it is better to ask “how” that person would fix it (rather than “why” it bothers them). Asking “how” puts the respondent in a solution-oriented frame of mind (which is where your team should be already) and offers ideas that you might find useful. Asking why may simply be asking the obvious. For example, it’s clear why a pothole or unemployment is a problem. What may be less clear is the solution: take the pothole. Perhaps the pothole is regularly filled, but oversized trucks quickly degrade the road again somewhere else; the solution would be weigh stations or redirecting oversized traffic to roads.

Strength 2: Responses contribute to scoring or ranking: 

Each checkmark indicates the issue is a problem. The scoring system is also simple: Add up all of the checkmarks, and the issue with the most checks is the top priority, and so on.

While there are instructions to respond with only one checkmark, respondents can theoretically still select more than one. In that case, your team would need to decide how to score those responses – would these responses have equal or lesser weight in the overall count? For example, if they selected two issues (say “water” and “local roads”), would the sums for each of those issues rise by one (+1) or by one-half (+0.5)? There are advantages to both: If each gets a vote, you have a clear count of the exact number of residents who said, “This is a top priority for me.” If instead you split the votes, you ensure that each resident’s opinion is counted equally (picking one issue gives that response more “weight” compared to someone who picked multiple issues).

Strength 3: The survey is flexible and has an open-ended option: 

Respondents can reject the choices provided and give their own top priority. Respondents also have space to write why a particular issue bothers them the most (and perhaps how it should be solved). These comments are more difficult and time-consuming to enumerate and analyze (even if the space provided is small). But these “open-ended” elements are not so open-ended – nearly all comments will generally relate to one of the four provided issues and can more easily be categorized and tracked. The exception, of course, is if someone writes in their own issue (although, as mentioned, this has advantages).

Strength 4: The survey provides information to the respondent: 

The respondent learns the name of their representative and how they can be contacted by phone or email. The survey also shares (although with minimal detail) the next step: We [the government] will respond to your answers. 

Strength 5: The survey asks for contact information: 

The respondent can volunteer their contact information; it is not required. If the respondent selected a particular issue and wrote a specific enough complaint in the provided space, a member of the feedback loop team may follow up with them to learn more about the problem and fix it. Otherwise, their contact information will be used to provide general process updates (results of the survey, invitations to public meetings and progress reports). 

If possible, use a contact management system that the municipality already has to keep track of this information and leverage it for future communications. Note, however, that having this information may pose a legal concern if it is protected, personally identifiable information – consult your data governance and legal framework to ensure you have the proper permissions to handle this data. 

More advice for writing questions

In addition to the above, consider the following when writing your survey questions: 

Keep in mind your objectives (and keep your objectives specific)

Your objectives should guide your question design. What do you want to know? How can you frame your questions to get that data? 

Note that the Moldovan example offers a small subset of general issue areas: water, roads, playgrounds and cleanliness. The municipality has authority over these services, but the municipality has other responsibilities – why were these four selected? While the survey allows you to write in your own response, this initial list is a form of choice architecture. Choice architecture is the idea that “presenting choices in different ways will impact decision making” about those choices.

By listing these issues, city hall is encouraging respondents to pick one of them. You can also take advantage of choice architecture in your survey, but you should not abuse it. For instance, if you want a ranking of priorities, do not simply list your campaign priorities, forcing the results of the survey to inevitably result in the endorsement of one or more of your priorities. Instead, like the Moldovan example, create the option for a write-in/other answer, but also direct responses to predetermined categories. Focus on areas your team thinks are likely priorities and those within the control or remit of your local authority. 

Ensure that your objectives are specific enough: You are not trying to discover every resident’s issue related to the local authority administration. The survey should be focused on its goal: from a preselected list, rank specific priorities, and identify key problems. 

Keep in mind your audience

If you hope that anyone and everyone in your community responds to the survey, it must be clear and straightforward. A resident should not require specific or technical knowledge to answer the survey. 

Be clear and test your survey 

Your survey may seem clear to you and your team members, but you must test it on someone who – like your average resident – has never seen it before and may only have a vague understanding of what it will be used for. They will help you understand which questions are unclear, whether they are confused by ranking systems, and if you need to make edits before printing several hundred more.

Case study: In one partner city, a survey asked residents to select their top five issues from a list (of more than five) on a scale of one to five. A score of one meant it was most important to them, and five least. Some residents reported being confused by the numbering system and responding instead with the reverse (5 points being more important, 1 point being less). Had the municipal team tested the survey on a select number of residents, they might have identified the issue in time to redesign the survey. It would have been better to instead offer a predetermined scale, where each issue is scored between 1 and 5 (see concerns survey below) or to allow residents only to pick one issue as a priority. 

A warning about open-ended questions and knowing your limits

As discussed above, responses to the Moldovan example survey will be extremely easy to analyze. Check marks can be added up. The write-in sections are small, making it manageable to read and track a few hundred – some residents may go off script, attaching pages of text about a specific issue (maybe a dangerous intersection) that they are passionate about. But most will use the survey as directed. 

Case study: One partner city included an open-ended “any other feedback” question at the end of their survey. They received feedback amounting to more than 1,000 additional issues through those written comments. The city’s feedback team did not have the time or skills to sift through those responses and categorize them; a skilled data analyst had to be hired, but the comments were only usable in a general sense. The city could not individually respond to these comments. The key lesson is to use open-ended questions extremely cautiously. If you expect to receive hard-copy responses, open-ended comments will be prohibitively burdensome and complicated for the city to analyze and respond to effectively. Instead, leave only a small space for written topics on preselected issues. Save open-ended questions for public meetings and dialogue sessions, where additional detail can be gathered and individuals can be followed up with on a case-by-case basis.

Suggestion about framing: Open-ended questions create the assumption that the government WILL respond to the issue. Governments that are unprepared to respond to each open-ended response should change the framing or wording. For example, asking respondents for a comment (or similar word/phrase that does not imply a response) eases this concern.

Self-administered vs. interviewer-administered survey

Finally, note that the Moldova survey is an example of a self-administered survey, meaning that the person responding to it is also filling it out. Conducting a self-administered survey assumes that your respondents can read and write in the language of the survey. If your community has a low literacy rate, however, or is linguistically diverse, you may need a different approach in which interviewers (who should be trained to reduce bias and not influence a respondent) survey respondents; this can be done in person or over the phone.

Types of surveys

The following box describes sampling, its relevance to your data collection, and the kinds of surveys that may be useful to you as you seek to understand community priorities. 

Resource considerations and constraints

Conducting a survey presents a logistic challenge: How will you get your questionnaire to respondents, and how will your respondents get the survey back to you?

You have, generally, two options: a written survey or an online survey. There are other methodologies, but we are excluding in-person and phone interviews (as they pose practical challenges, and interviewers must be trained and remunerated). Instead, we are looking for a survey that respondents can respond to in their own time and with privacy.

Consider the following when deciding which survey design and distribution method to use:

• Cost of materials
  • Printing costs
  • Postage (if mailing)
  • Survey design software (if conducting an online survey and not using Google Forms)
• Staff time required for distributing surveys
  • How many staff hours will be needed for door-to-door canvassing, staffing booths if convenience sampling, or filling and addressing envelopes? If you select door-to-door canvassing, how far will you need to travel: will you need a ferry, bike or car to reach your sample, or can you walk?
• Staff time required for following up and collecting surveys
  • If door-to-door canvassing, will you have staff return to each door and follow up on or collect surveys, or can residents drop the survey off somewhere?
  • If you use drop boxes or mail surveys, will staff need to periodically check mailboxes or drop boxes?
  • If you do not receive enough responses, will you have staff send reminders via mail, expand convenience sampling efforts, or conduct other outreach to encourage survey return?
• Staff time required for analysis of surveys
  • Once you collect a sufficient number of surveys (based on your goal sample size), you can begin analysis. If your survey was issued online, transferring responses into a single tracker is very easy – Google Forms will automatically create a Google Sheet of the responses.
  • For hard-copy surveys, you will need to enumerate the responses – i.e., manually count with pen and paper, or type the responses manually into an online format (Google Sheets will work well here and is free). Depending on the complexity of your survey, this process can be time-consuming and a little repetitive, but accuracy is important. If this is your process, think ahead: Surveys with open-ended questions and responses will take significantly longer to type than simply marking a “1” in a column for each response.
• The cost in time and effort for the respondent
  • You should also consider the cost for the respondent – how long will it take to complete the survey, and how difficult or easy is it for the respondent to return it once they are done? You should aim to make it as easy as possible to return the survey – there should be no monetary cost and as minimal time or convenience cost as possible.
    • Online surveys are easiest to return – simply click submit, but you do need an internet connection, etc.
    • Mail-in surveys should come with an addressed and stamped return envelope so that the respondent can simply mail it back. Paying for this postage may incur a cost for the municipality.
    • Surveys acquired by door-to-door canvassing, convenience sampling, or otherwise handed out or picked up may be returned via mail (if postage and an envelope are provided) or in a drop box. Depending on the size of your community, drop boxes should be conveniently located, secured against weather (and vandalism/mischief, perhaps within view of someone or the public), and easily accessible (e.g., in a first-floor lobby).

Real-life example: In Moldova, feedback loop teams repeated their door-to-door canvassing routes and returned in person after two weeks had passed to collect the survey; Moldovan municipal leaders consider this step an important part of demonstrating accountability and interest in the responses. In addition, picking up a survey in person makes it clear to the resident that their response has been received and will be counted, compared with clicking “submit” on an online survey or dropping a response in the mail or a drop box. That said, Moldovan communities are usually rather small in geography and population, making a repeat of the canvassing approach slightly easier. In Slovakia, city officials initially made efforts to pick up surveys but had to do so on their own time and often missed residents who were not at home; to compensate, they opted to create a drop box in city hall, which helped to address the issue.

Door-to-door canvassing

One common request to NDI by elected officials participating in feedback loop processes featuring door-to-door canvassing is for a script. Even those who publicly campaigned and won elections to public office get nervous about talking face-to-face with their neighbors. In reality, there is nothing to be stressed about. People love being asked their opinion, meeting new people can be fun and interesting, and it gives people a chance to meet their elected officials and public servants. In addition, canvassing is a chance to observe: getting outside and walking around your community is a great way to observe issues you’re asking about in practice, get a sense of quality of life, and see streets and neighborhoods you might not have visited before.

Door-to-door canvassing tips:

1. Have a script (see below).

You do not need to memorize the script and should avoid reading it when the door opens. Instead, view the script as the key pieces of information you think the resident should know about why you are standing in front of them: who you are; why you are giving them a survey; what is in the survey; how to return it/hand it in; and what will happen next.

2. Be prepared for questions.

Your team should generate frequently asked questions (FAQs) and answers about the preselected issues on the survey so that volunteers or other team members can refer to them during canvassing. This can include responses to expected questions: “Why only these issues, not X?” “Who will see this survey?” Your team members should be prepared to answer questions about how data – such as contact information – will be stored and kept secure.

If you are a volunteer and the question has a subjective response (or you don’t know the answer), it is likely best to direct the resident to contact city hall using the contact on the survey. If you are the elected official and don’t know the answer, you can take down the resident’s contact information and follow up with them later.

3. Have a plan for outreach and map your route.

If you are trying to reach a certain number of residents, have a sampling plan, or otherwise have a large area to cover, you should have an accurate map of the area and plan your route with your team members. This way, you can avoid knocking on the same doors and break up the outreach into manageable metrics and timelines. Is it realistic to reach 10 to 15 doors an hour? How many days of outreach would it take you to reach 100 residents? Use the tools of the municipality (such as census data) to your advantage. For example, do you know which homes or buildings are empty and can be skipped?

As part of your plan, consider when people are most likely to be home. If you are canvassing at noon on a Wednesday, who is most likely to answer the door? If you canvass on a Saturday morning instead, would more people be home? Consider work schedules, times of prayer and worship, care duties, and other social activities and reasons that would have people out and about.

4. Keep things moving but be polite.

Related to the above, canvassing can be time-consuming, but in order for the survey to be representative and useful, you will need to reach a large number of residents – or as many as possible. You should aim to be courteous and respectful, but you have a job to do, and efficiency is important. At times, an excited resident (perhaps someone you know) may want to keep you talking or have a debate, and you’ll need to find a way to politely move on. Having a script can be useful in these situations. If you spend more than 10 or 15 minutes at every house, you will spend significantly more time than your schedule allows collecting responses.

5. Have a plan for when all family members are not home.

Depending on your survey’s goals and sampling (or its lack of sampling), you may want responses from everyone in the household (or at least everyone older than 18 years old, for example). If only one member is home, give them the required number of surveys so that all eligible respondents can participate in the survey if they choose.

Some respondents may suggest that they (a married couple, for example) can respond to a single questionnaire together. Politely ask that even if they agree, they must respond to separate questionnaires; the rule “one person, one questionnaire” is important because the priorities will be ranked based on the number of responses.

6. Be flexible and don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Your initial outreach plan may not work. Bad weather may cause issues. Be flexible and consider alternatives. Canvassing is low cost and has benefits, but it is time-consuming. For various reasons, it may not be the most effective choice for your particular geography or community. You know your community best – innovate and adapt this approach to what feels comfortable for you and your team. In addition, don’t be afraid to ask for help. One person can knock on hundreds of doors (as one city councilor in Vrable, Slovakia, did, reaching every door in his district), but it’s a huge undertaking. Ask for help – get support from volunteers, team members, civil society organizations and others. Just be sure that if you do recruit others, you provide them with FAQs (see above) and offer guidance and support.

7. Don’t forget the practicalities: Hydrate and wear comfortable clothes and shoes.

Think ahead! Test your survey

The next section will deal more in depth with the analysis of survey results. However, you should consider this process when planning the kind of survey you will use and the distribution method.

As noted above, you should test your survey questionnaire’s design on a small group of individuals. Your testers can be a small group – at least four or five individuals – and can be people you have reasonably easy access to: colleagues in the municipal administration, your friends or family members. These individuals should have as much knowledge of the survey as the average respondent and should not have had a role in designing the survey. This way, they can give feedback from a fresh perspective. Consider asking your testers the following questions:

• Was the survey too long?
• Are the questions clear? Was it clear what was being asked?
• Is anything important missing? Should information be added on how to return the survey, what the survey will be used for, etc.?
• Are there any sensitivities or concerns the tester thinks should be accounted for? Should some questions not be asked or be asked differently?

Think ahead! Plan enumeration and scoring methods

Now that you have a final survey questionnaire, you should think about the data you will receive. Skip ahead to the following section, which discusses how to analyze feedback from the different survey questions. Understanding what your analysis might look like – and how it will (or will not) answer your team’s initial question – will help you answer the key question at the moment: Should I use a survey? If so, what kind?

What kind of data do I want to collect? Will learning this data be worth the effort (of your team and your respondents)?

• Will I find that data meaningful? Meaningful data teaches you something or helps you to make a choice. Ideally, your data will help you and your team plan a local strategy – which issues to address first and some ideas about how to address them.
• Will I be able to analyze that data quickly and efficiently? As mentioned above, open-ended questions can be more trouble than the value they provide. If you are concerned about time, resources and being able to respond effectively, use your surveys to collect quantitative data only.
• Will I be able to act on my findings? Related to the idea that data is meaningful, your data should point toward concrete action, even if that concrete action is the need to learn more about one issue in particular.

To get started in answering these questions, gather your team around your draft survey, and imagine or guess what the results of 100 responses would be. If 70 percent of respondents pick an issue, what will that mean for your team? Will you have learned something new or just confirmed anecdotal evidence or assumptions?

• More data: Would it be useful to know that 70 percent of respondents picked an issue, but also useful to know something else in addition, such as the gender or ages of the respondents? By useful, we mean that this data point would impact the action you would take. If that additional data would matter, you should add in a demographic question asking respondents to identify their gender.

Planning ahead by considering these questions, testing your survey questions and evaluating survey length BEFORE you issue the survey to the public will help you design an accessible survey that yields useful information. Planning ahead by considering these questions, testing your survey questions and evaluating survey length BEFORE you issue the survey to the public will help you design an accessible survey that yields useful information. 

Teams should use this worksheet to determine which of the three listed data collection methods they will deploy and anticipate needs for data analysis.

In reality, you may choose to rely on a simplified version or a mix of all three methods. Your team may start with a series of stakeholder interviews with local officials, experts and community organizers to generate a list of priorities and then conduct a survey for the public to rank those priorities. After receiving responses and developing options for solutions, you may hold focus groups with particular residents or interviews with community leaders to understand whether or not they agree with the solutions.

Template: Report to the public on priorities and next steps 

The following is an outline of the sections that could be included in the report to the public on the outcomes of the data collection and public outreach activities, along with the initial next steps. 

Template: Report to the public on outcomes and progress

The following is a template for a two-page (one double-sided sheet) handout that reports on priorities and progress made. 

Standards of co-creation relate to participatory action research (PAR), which is an approach that brings together researchers (in this case, your feedback loop team) and members of the community (who are viewed as experts in their own experiences). The goal is to understand a problem or situation and find solutions to improve it. It uses a variety of methods, quantitative and qualitative, and has a number of definitions, but there are common elements: 

• PAR puts a premium on local knowledge, compared to what the experts think. It is context-specific, concerning a certain community or group of people.
• It is often focused on social change, leveraging the practical wisdom of the community to address some inequality and promote democratic inclusion and pluralism.
• It is iterative, working in a cycle of research, action and reflection.
• Finally, there is an element of empowering or “liberating” the participants and community to take action, either due to a greater awareness of their situation or something else. 

Note that PAR is a developing field of social science research and thus is deployed by scholars, academics and researchers in various contexts and situations far different from the relationship between a local authority and residents focused on here. However, its approaches and call to inclusion and action echo the goals of this feedback loop process, and its existence as a method of social research bears mentioning. Many of its approaches will mirror the interview, focus group and survey methodologies discussed in greater detail in Step 4. 

Participatory and deliberative democracy (PDD) practices sit between direct democracy (where citizens make decisions directly) and traditional representative democracy (where elected representatives make decisions on the public’s behalf) and can be used as part of or in conjunction with a feedback loop process to codesign solutions to address complex community challenges.¹ These approaches focus especially on achieving informed consensus, or general agreement among the participants. 

PDD practices enable community members to make informed recommendations or decisions with the government about the policy issues that affect their lives. Deliberative democracy is the theory that political decisions should result from fair and reasonable discussion among citizens.² A central tenet of participatory democracy is that it must increase the capacities of citizens to participate, which often necessitates reform of democratic institutions to make participation more meaningful.³ This means changing the rules of how decisions are made to ensure local residents have a direct say. Common models of PDD include mini-publics, deliberative polling, participatory budgeting, participatory policymaking, citizens’ juries and assemblies, and legislative theater. 

To support resident dialogue, deliberation and co-creation of solutions to complex problems in a feedback loop process, mini-publics and citizen juries may be particularly useful. For example, if the results of a public survey or initial outreach from Step 4 point to a particularly complex challenge, such as food insecurity, poverty, crime, social issues or issues related to climate change or the environment, then the local administration may decide the best path forward is to organize a separate, dedicated process in which members of the public play the role of decision-makers. 

A mini-public is a randomly selected sample of citizens that reflects the diversity of the local population. Deliberative mini-publics are used as the basis of several PDD mechanisms, including citizen juries and assemblies. These methods can provide an effective, legitimate and representative means for residents to help the local authority resolve particularly thorny issues. 

Citizen juries and assemblies are examples of deliberative processes; juries are simply smaller than assemblies. A representative group of 20 to 150 residents is randomly selected. This random selection process – called sortition – ensures they form a representative sample of citizens that reflects the diversity of the local population. For example, in some cities, letters are issued to thousands of residents, and each respondent can agree to volunteer their time to the process; from that group of volunteers, a small selection is made to ensure the group matches the age, gender, income level and other demographics of the community. This final group forms the jury or assembly. Often, assemblies and juries take the form of a series of meetings or convenings organized in a concentrated timeline that allows for maximum participation, such as consecutive weekends (allowing participants to avoid missing work, for example). Led by independent facilitators, the citizens are given evidence by a range of speakers (experts, advocates and those with lived experience). This learning phase is essential to the process; members of an assembly hear from all sides before deliberating and generating recommendations. After a period of discussion and deliberation, the group produces a set of recommendations. Depending on the process, experts can assist assembly members in drafting recommendations. Finally, the assembly votes on recommendations one by one, formally endorsing those that earn support from a simple majority of the assembly.⁴ 

Additional PDD methods include: 

• Participatory budgeting was first introduced by Porto Alegre in Brazil in the 1980s, and the practice has spread worldwide. In participatory budgeting, a specific percentage of discretionary budget funds are set aside for the public to vote on projects proposed by residents. The process for proposing projects and voting and the amount of budget set aside differ from place to place. In addition, the process can take place in schools to encourage civic education and participation on the part of students. See People Powered’s page on Participatory Budgeting to learn more about the approach: Link.
• Legislative theater also originated in Brazil and uses role-playing to engage community members in identifying solutions to unjust and inequitable systems and institutions, and then translating those ideas into new laws. Communities watch an original play based on community members’ lived experiences and issues, join the play by acting out various interventions to resolve the problems, propose policy changes in deliberation with officials, and vote on proposed changes. Learn more about the legislative theater technique on their website. 

Participatory policymaking is an umbrella term for a variety of in-person and online interventions; all include elements of debate, proposal, decision-making, and follow-up accountability. In addition, it is necessary to “engage the full community at each step of the process and ensure that deliberations result in actual decision-making, with a plan for guaranteeing accountability throughout implementation.” You can learn more about this approach at the People Powered website here: Link. 

Adapted from OGP Local Handbook: Link