Comments on Goals & Dialogue

[Elizabeth Carlson <ecarlson@dnr.state.mn.us>]

I am a strategic planner, facilitator, and public participation specialist with the Minnesota Dept. of Natural Resources.  For some time I have been intrigued with the potential of the Internet for online dialogue and workspace.  This is my first experience with online dialogue.  First I will offer my initial reactions to the proposed Goals and then a couple of observations about this online dialogue.

My first reaction to the Goals is that they are fine.  However, after seeing many postings getting into "how" stuff, I noticed a problem - the Goals are stated as activities rather than outcomes.  Look at all those action verbs in the Goal statements.  It would be a simple exercise to rephrase those statements as desired directional outcome, which is what a goal really is.  Goals are about "what" is to be achieved; the "how" of getting there is through strategies and actions.

For example,

1st bullet:  "Mutual trust, confidence, and openness exists between the Agency and the public."  Will you be able to tell if this goal is being reached?  I think that's possible.

2nd bullet:  "Legal requirements imposed by various environmental statutes are fulfilled."  You will easily be able to tell if that goal is being reach over time.

Let's try a harder one:

6th bullet:  "EPA learns and uses the local knowledge, values, concerns, practices, norms, and relevant history that communities and citizens can contribute to environmental problem-solving and decision-making."  Just some proposed re-writing to make it clearer and to address the point another commenter made about EPA actually using the value that local knowledge can provide.  And now it's written in a way that we can tell if we're getting there over time with appropriate performance indicators. 

This separates the "what" from the "how."  When the desired outcome is clear, then it's a little easier to talk about how that outcome can be achieved.  The proposed policy is vague about the "how" although 6 general strategic actions are listed.  I will need to look those over carefully and perhaps submit a formal comment on that part of the proposed policy.  On the one hand, I think it would be a mistake to micro-manage the PIP actions but sometimes it is important to customize for the situation and to do more than just minimum requirements.  Finally, I second David Sale's comments about investing upfront time for dialogue and Sheila Foster's examples of activities that build collaborative relationships and trust.

Regarding the experience of this dialogue, I am not troubled by how "messy" it is because I am a facilitator and this sort of discussion is always sort of messy.  That's something participants have to work through.  However, I am struck by how much time it takes.  I could spend my entire workday trying to catch up with the postings, and I really do have to attend to my own workload.  I think this is probably a real disadvantage of an online dialogue, even though it has distinct advantages.  My second observation is that as long as Internet access and adeptness is so differentiated across our society, online dialogue can only be considered a supplemental, additional source of feedback and ideas.