[OSList] Government community engagement

Wed Jun 5 20:53:36 PDT 2019

You might try “Irrigation  Futures” 2005  with QJ Wang the leader.  The work involved extensive use of open space over 8 months with focus groups meeting every second week.

The scenarios developed have significantly changes the way the community conducts its conversations by being very inclusive and ensuring that there are more than one path to the future, then as the drivers change the community has already developed tactics to ensure sustainability.

After the 2009 fires in Victoria where over 150 people were killed and too many whole communities and towns wiped out.  Where OS principles were followed the recovery has been much more sustainable and positive.  Note it is not an example of OS technology as being the only way or that the technology was used in its pure form far from it.  What we see now is over reaction by the public sector to establish infrastructure that is not used and has become a massive burden to the Local Government.  This was done using controlling techniques.

After the fires in south west Victoria a couple of years ago it was found that the most successful process to gather and share data and information including gaining consensus was what they called a sausage sizzle.  It is OS principles in action.  Create a space that attracts people, leave it open so that any issue can be discussed, make sure the law of mobility is applied, create space for the bees and butterflies,  when it starts is when it starts when it is over it is over and what is done is all that can be done.  In this case the organisers ensured that at each sausage sizzle there were a number of people who could offer “expert advice” or support ie professional who were prepared to listen and from time to time interject topics for conversation.  From each event notes were taken to form the framework of community action.  I don’t think this has been written up but I have proposed the idea to Rotary International to be its basis for response to natural and other disasters.  The sausage sizzle site were close to the regular gathering point, in this case the local livestock market place.  A normal gathering site.  This is critical as it reflects a tendency to hold onto the past that has been destroyed by the “fire” in this case.

In your situation I suggest it is perfect and would form the basis of training people in effective gatherings by teaching the OS principles,  which really are about listening to what is is in front of head of those who are part of the conversation.

Please get back to me if you think I can help.  Note the Irrigation Futures Project was regarded as Exemplary by external evaluators principally because of the staff including me as the facilitator.  It was also said it would be very difficult to reproduce due to the need of a highly skilled team, the time allowed two years and the budget $4.5 million.  We were dealing with and industry that was valued at over 2 billion dollars annually with 85% of the products produced exported from Australia.  That is. VERY important part of the economy where the cost represented less than 1% of the annual worth.  Public bodies do not like spending money on facilitation even with this exemplary example.

I also used open space to debrief Incident Management teams to being the process of healing and minimise post traumatic incident syndrome.  It still is one of the best ever and it was almost our open space.  The cost of fighting the fires and primary recovery cost in 2003 exceeded $100 million and impacted on 1/6th of the state of Victoria.  In this case only one life was lost and virtually no significant infrastructure was lost in Victoria.  We can conclude it was a significant event that was well managed with minimal collateral damage!

Regards
Rob

> On 6 Jun 2019, at 12:54 pm, Eric M. Kapono via OSList <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org> wrote:
> 
> Aloha all,
> I’m looking for references to a similar situation (more below) where OS was the contributing factor of success, in particular to communicate to government and community leaders here why OS will get the results they need.
>  
> The context is the community engagement piece of recovery efforts from the 2018 volcano eruption in Hawaii. I’m consulting with the County Recovery Manager, who has been convening other types of gatherings much of this year. Now that disaster relief funding is closer to being on the ground, the County wants to convene a larger, multi-sector event, to encourage development of community-based recovery actions. The County is also planning to have a Disaster Recovery Fund setup, which would field a competitive process for proposed projects, some of which may have convened in the larger event and decided there to collaborate on a proposal.
>  
> As with other parts of the recovery effort, this event would be under public scrutiny. It may be the largest event they’ve held, and County leadership is worried of perceptions and actual results coming from the event. In other words, there may be tendencies to have more control over the design/outcome of the day, in which case OS wouldn’t be the chosen organizing framework, but something else they’re more at ease with or accustomed to. I do believe, however, those community-based recovery actions are what they want most.
>  
> Do you have links or references to similar public sector gatherings using OS, under scrutiny, and producing anticipated results satisfactory to government and community, that I might share with County leadership?
>  
> Mahalo!
> ~Eric
>  
> Eric M. Kapono, CPF
> Advancement Services
> for Native Nonprofits
> Hilo, Hawaii
> 808.969.3991
> www.advancementservices.org
> IAF Certified™ Professional Facilitator
>  
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