Types of Techniques

[Jim Creighton <jim@CreightonandCreighton.com>]

I'm Jim Creighton, and I'll be one of your panelists today. I've been in the public participation field since 1972. I've conducted more than 300 public participation and dispute resolution programs. For ten years I headed the team of consultants that provided support to the Army Corps of Engineers Alternative Dispute Resolution program (which won the Hammer Award the year before being decimated by a new Chief of Engineers). Somewhere along the line I was also the founding President of the International Association for Public Participation.  

Since today we're talking about "collaboration," I'd like to encourage people to be precise about what they mean by the term, since it can cover a number of things. I worked with an EPA stakeholder group awhile back that argued that within EPA very different kinds of involvement processes are being called the same name, or called inappropriate names, or names are bing used interchangeably that are not, in fact, interchangeable.

That group found it was helpful the distinguish along two scales: the role of the public in the process, and EPA's role in the process.  

On the "role of the public" dimension,there are three basic levels:

   Information Exchange: At least one party provides information or advice to the other, and often times there will be an exchange of views and concerns. The participants are not expected to reach any agreement. Public meetings and hearing are the most notable examples of information exchange processes.

   Recommendations: The participants reach a general agreement on recommendations to the agency, but no one is "bound" by the decision and the agency is not expected to implement all aspects of the advice. The agency will give the advice serious consideration and will flesh it out before making a decision. The outside parties are not bound to refrain from crticism or legal actions. Examples of processes that fit in this category are advisory committees and policy dialogues.

    Agreements: Affected parties or stakeholders, including the agency, negotiate to reach a specific agreement, and each is expected to abide by it and implement its terms. The closest examples to this are negotiated rulemaking, negotiated or consensus permits, and the settlement of enforcement or other legal action cases.

On the "EPA's Role" dimension, EPA plays three different roles. These include:

    Decision Maker: In most permit decisions, EPA is the decisionmaker. The same is true for national policy decisons.

    Partner: In programs such as the National Environmental Performance Partnership System, the goal is to promot joint-planning and priority-setting with the states. So EPA is playing a "partner" role in relationship to the states. EPA also plays a "partner" role in the Brownfields Program.

   Capacity Builder: EPA's Technical Outreach Services for Communities program is an example of a capacity-building program, providing technical assistance to communities dealing with hazardous substance contamination questions. Other examples include the Sustainable Development Challenge Grants and the Community Based Environmental Protection Program.

These distinctions may be helpful to us as we discuss "collaboration." If you want to pursue this typology further, it is contained in the Report of the Common Sense Initiative's Stakeholder Involvement Workgroup which is in the briefing book or can be found at www.epa.gov/stakeholders/pdf/sifindf3.pdf .

I look forward to our discussion.

Jim Creighton