You just perfected the online meeting, and now you have to combine these new best practices with traditional engagement methods. We'll dive into how the City of Pittsburgh has used digital tools to create psychological safety, availability, and meaningfulness. Then we'll discuss big lessons learned and emerging trends in digital+ engagement.
[01] Introduction
How does digital engagement bring in new voices and improve outcomes?
- Reach overwhelmingly younger, broader and more diverse audiences
- Share information more effectively with passive engagers
- Create deeper understanding of outcomes with interactive communications tools
- Increase disability and language access across the board
- Empower project managers with actionable data, more efficient analysis, and remove barriers to follow-through
- Enable public agencies to build cross-project databases and newsletters
What does digital engagement mean?
[02] Engage Pittsburgh
EngagePGH is an online engagement portal open to the public where stakeholders can see City planning and policy projects, learn about their content and upcoming work, and provide input in interesting and innovative ways. The platform meets and exceeds ADA-accessibility guidelines (WCAG 2.0), and enables a more robust and transparent feedback loop for stakeholders. Users experience consistency across projects and can learn and engage on their own time, with ease, and with access to any smart-enabled device.
- Six City Departments and the Mayor’s Office use the portal and have published 145 projects in the last three years
- Residents and stakeholders know that they can come to EngagePGH for specific projects, or to find engagement opportunities for various topics and locations of interest
- Since July 2020, EngagePGH has been viewed over 435,000 times by more than 172,000 individuals (city population: 300,000)
- In 2022 alone, over 4,230 people responded to surveys, interactive maps, and visioning exercises, leaving over 6,500 comments
- Engagers came back for seconds – over a third of all engagers participated more than once, and about 18% of all comments came from people who were also registered on the site (total registered: 3,000)
In the summer of 2019, the City of Pittsburgh hosted two in-person open houses about urban design in Oakland. Each session lasted three hours (10-1 pm and 5-8 pm). In total, this open house reached 120 people (44 completed surveys). The meetings were broadly advertised and centrally located.
In the fall of 2020, during the pandemic, the City of Pittsburgh hosted a two-month, online open house for the Oakland Plan. This open house received 2,475 unique visitors, 256 unique contributors, 785 individual contributions, and 121 new followers. A little over 10% of visitors left contributions.
Top visited projects on EngagePGH during project period (July ‘20-March ‘21)
Lessons Learned in Digital+ Engagement
[03] Adjust Our Strategies
We need to adjust our strategies for key drivers of equitable engagement in digital+ settings.
- Psychological Meaningfulness: having a reason to engage
- Psychological Availability: having the capacity to engage
- Psychological Safety: having the freedom and safety to engage
[04] Powerful Data
Data is powerful, but hard to use.
- GARE Equity Toolkit (pg 8) emphasizes a data audit of your stakeholders before starting a project. Collecting non-project-based data can help with this.
- Use digital engagement tools that automatically show results to easily compare/contrast between input and final decisions.
- Use data to see if your “meet people where they are” strategies are working.
- Combine data collected from in-person & digital mediums. One is not more valuable than the other.
There is limited data to actually address questions about digital access and its implications for public engagement projects. Below, we've assembled some national-level and Pittsburgh-specific data to show how you can have these conversations in your own communities.
In responding to engagement needs today, we need to consider that “90% of U.S. households contain at least one... device (smartphone, desktop/ laptop computer, tablet or streaming media device), with the typical (median) American household containing five of them” (Generational Tech Use, Pew).
The City of Pittsburgh’sonline engagement platform is accessible from any smart device, does not require app download, and allows for asynchronous input.
According to the ACS, 86.8% of Pittsburgh households have access to a computer at home, and 78.8% of Pittsburgh households have access to broadband internet subscriptions at home.
While millennials (ages 23-38) have often led older Americans in the adoption and use of technology, the Pew Research Center shows that there is significant growth in tech adoption since 2012 among older generations, particularly Gen Xers (ages 39-54) and Baby Boomers (ages 55-73).
“The share of Americans that own smartphones is now 81%, up from just 35% in Pew Research Center’s first survey of smartphone ownership conducted in 2011… Nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults now own desktop or laptop computers, while… half now own tablet computers and… half own e-reader devices.”
By contrast, “Roughly three-in-ten adults with household incomes below $30,000 a year (29%) don't own a smartphone. More than four-in-ten don't have home broadband services (44%) or a traditional computer (46%). And a majority of lower-income Americans are not tablet owners. By comparison, each of these technologies is nearly ubiquitous among adults in households earning $100,000 or more a year."
Further Reading from Pew Research Center: Mobile Fact Sheet, Digital Divide, Tech Adoption by Age
“That 36-point gap in broadband adoption between the highest- and lowest-income groups is substantially larger than the 24-point gap in smartphone ownership between these groups” (Mobile Tech & Home Broadband, Pew Research Center)
Educational, race, and ethnicity differences follow a nearly identical pattern.
Reliance on smartphones means online engagement must be mobile-accessible. Zoom meetings struggle to access this group partially because they require more data to run.
[05] Innovate
Be innovative! What's new in digital engagement?
- Increase disability access. Tools should meet WCAG 2.1 guidelines as a base, but you can also train your staff to write good alternative text and make an effort to use fewer "flat" graphics. Consider adding a tool like User Way to your websites to go the extra mile. Using digital+ tools is a great way to incorporate "universal design" into your public engagement plans.
- Create meaningful language access. Explore tools for advanced language translation. Many public agencies have a budget to hire translators -- consider how you can use this resource to improve digital information without having to create separate language-specific forums.
- Get creative with communications strategies. Use tracked QR codes and URLs to see which door hangers and flyers are creating better interaction.
- Capture people as they walk by. This can be low-tech or high-tech! Try a trash poll (right), or use a fancier wayfinding tool like Hello Lamp Post (below) for more meaningful interactions.
- Build institutional knowledge of interactions. Consider investing in a stakeholder management system that will help keep track of interactions across your organization, whether you've left someone a voicemail or talked to them in the hallway; if they've attended a public hearing or left a comment on a virtual engagement.
[06] Interest-Based P2
What does continuous, interest-based engagement look like?
