How Do We Determine Sucess?

[David Hahn-Baker <dhahnbaker@aol.com>]

>From my perspective one of the key issues surrounding public participation is the question of what the goals are for our actvities and how we measure success.

I think that unfortunately many businesses going through EIS type processes and many regulators going through rule-making processes merely view public participation at best as an exercise they are forced to go through and even worse a barrier to be overcome on the road to the "real goal" of producing regulations or getting a project done.

Under this formulation and initial proposal for a project is produced or an initial rule is drafted.  This project or rule is then steered through the reefs and shoals of public participation and success is measured by how quickly you are able to navigate public participation obstacles and produce a rule or get a project done.  Success is measured by how little the final project or rule has changed from the original proposal.

Personally, I prefer that a modle would be followed where success would measured by how much has the original rule or project has actually changed and been improved through the public participation process.

When public participation is finished if the P@ has been done correctly, the person responsible for the process should be able to present tangible examples of how the initial proposal has been changed and been improved by the P@ process.  If the final proposal is the same as the one which began the process then it is either the case that the original proposal was perfect and didn't benefit from having more good heads look at it or bringing more perspectives to bear or it means that public participation didn't truly occur.  I think it is usually the later.

I believe that in order to make P2 more of a reality, tangible objective change and improvement must be shown in the proposal being conidered whether it is a proposed rule or a project.  If improvement or at least change cannot be shown, then I question the P2.