Last summer, we, in partnership with NAPA, worked on a series of three pioneering National Dialogues for the US Department of Homeland Security. Excitingly, this project has now been nominated for a Citizen Service Award.
The awards, which are hosted by the U.S. General Services Administration, recognise innovative citizen outreach efforts by government offices. The Quadrennial Homeland Security Review was an initiative by DHS to engage their huge audience of stakeholders and staff, as well as the general public, in providing input on their four year homeland security plan. As the entry to the Citizen Service Award says:
The National Dialogue on the QHSR was one of the largest, most complex stakeholder consultation efforts that the federal government has undertaken. Rather than set policy internally and implement it in a top-down fashion, DHS undertook the QHSR in a new and innovative way by engaging tens of thousands of stakeholders and soliciting their ideas and comments throughout the process.
Read the whole DHS QHSR entry on the Citizen Service Award blog.
There’s always pride to be had when a project you’ve been involved in is up for formal recognition – but just as exciting to me has been reading the user comments alongside the entry; things like:
It was truly a pleasure to participate in the “Dialogues on the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review”. It was very helpful for us as citizens to be allowed to voice our opinions on the problems we see here in the trenches and provide input on focal points we believe should be addressed.
The format of posting ideas and allowing others to voice their opinions on those ideas was interactive and informative to both our government and its citizens.
In some ways, it’s so simple but it’s still always satisfying when projects work for the client and their end users and people looking for best practice. Hopefully, each one is also another step towards this kind of success story becoming the norm.
