Announcing the U.S. Public Participation Playbook

Today, the Administration is proud to launch the first U.S. Public Participation Playbook—a resource built through open collaboration among government, civic partners, small businesses, and the public to help give people a stronger voice in government decision making.

Identifying best practices in public participation has been an open government priority, and was included in both the first and second U.S. Open Government National Action Plans as part of the United States effort to increase public integrity in government programs. The playbook is meant to help government better build more responsive and efficient public participation programs and measure their effectiveness.

Over the last several months, a team of 70 leaders across the government have worked side-by-side with civil society organizations and citizens in a collaborative effort to deliver this tool. One of the most unique aspects of the engagement is that the playbook was built using the same inclusive principles that it champions.

In developing this new resource, the team opened three comment periods for anyone to participate. Using the Madison platform, hosted by the OpenGov Foundation, more than 100 contributions were reviewed in the first week alone.

This resource is a living document in Open Beta stage, and stakeholders from inside or outside of government are encouraged to continually offer new insights—including new plays, the latest case studies, or the most current performance metrics—to the playbook. The team will continue to evaluate, incorporate, and publicly report on new contributions.

We look forward to continue working in partnership with agencies across the government, civil society organizations, and citizens to further develop and enhance this new resource and empower the public participation programs that give a strong voice to the people our programs serve. 

Corinna Zarek is the Senior Advisor for Open Government to the U.S. CTO.

Justin Herman is the SocialGov lead for the General Services Administration and is managing the U.S. Public Participation Playbook project.