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.