Yesterday I was pleased to be invited to participate in one of a series of small Ministry of Justice workshops on the future of government public engagement. With the new government drive to put citizen engagement at the heart of activities, the Ministry is currently looking to put together a plan for the next few years, learning from experience in the government, academic and practitioner sectors.

Lots of interesting ideas came up, proving how immensely useful it can be to get people from different areas together to brainstorm ideas. However, the one that really struck me is on the neutrality of civil servants and government officers.

There is both an expectation and an assumption that people working within the structures of government will remain neutral from political bias in undertaking their activities, and thus refrain from engaging in political and policy matters in a public capacity. In many cases such people are actively restricted from so doing under the terms of their contract.

Now, I’ve always thought it odd that posts called ‘political advisors’ to council political groups are politically restricted, but the wider point was raised, that if we want to engage the public in political and policy activity, preventing those working in government from doing so does two major bits of harm.

First, it removes hundreds of thousands of people from being politically active. Whilst only some posts are officially restricted, being openly politically active as a council or government officer is often frowned upon and effectively prevented. Ironic, as the people most likely to be engaged by policy issues are those who have elected to work within the government policy field.

Second, the loss of these people causes a massive loss of experience and wisdom from the political debate generally. People often worry, especially in online terms, about the amount of ill placed vehemence and misinformation circulating about particular issues for public consumption. If you let, nay encouraged, the people who work in these areas talk openly about them, is it not likely that more rational voices might start being heard and debates become more balanced?

I mentioned on this blog before that one council i know found a very strong correlation between staff satisfaction and citizen satisfaction, as if each staff member told 10 people what they thought of the authority, a third of the city would in effect be listening to trusted first hand opinion on the matter.

If the staff of an authority or department are happy and committed to the work they are doing, then they could be your best advocates in the field of policy debate. In that context, it seems odd not to set them free to be so.