Broadening Public Participation and Community Engagement with the Federal Government

Mathematica provided recommendations to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on the office’s draft outline for a toolkit to help federal agencies plan, implement, and assess the impact of meaningful public participation and community engagement.

“The federal government is taking critical steps to enhance how its agencies engage with communities by developing a comprehensive U.S. Federal Public Participation and Community Engagement Toolkit,” wrote Mathematica. “We offer specific recommendations to ensure the draft toolkit provides a road map for action. A process-oriented framework, tools that generate action, and a clear vision for implementation will empower agencies to develop their capacity for public engagement and embed equity into their practices.”

Specifically, Mathematica’s recommendations to OMB include:

• Ensure public participants are fully aware of what final decisions are and how the public participation process informed the decisions.
• Map public participation approaches—informing, consulting, involving, collaborating, and empowering—to the types of activities in which federal agencies seek public engagement.
• Provide resources to support agencies in identifying the communities they want to engage with and the specific needs of those communities, such as a community needs assessment and information on how to engage with trusted community messengers.
• Provide explicit guidance on how to identify barriers to participation that communities and individuals might face and determine the most effective ways to engage the public given these potential barriers.
• Support agencies in developing accessible, user-friendly resources that empower the public and remove barriers to participation.

In March 2024, OMB sought public feedback to inform draft guidance around public participation and community engagement. Recommendations provided by Mathematica in response to OMB’s request were reflected in the draft guidance.