Effective Stakeholder Engagement in the Public Sector

Overview

The challenge of governance has never been more complex.  Across many policy areas, public, non-profit and private sector actors share responsibility for policy implementation and even for policy design.  And like never before, policies formulated in one area of government, or by one organization, have ripple effects that are often underestimated or ignored entirely.  Government and multi-sector networks can often seem like Humpty Dumpty – fragmented and incohesive, with no one responsible for making the connections and ensuring policy coherence.

In addition, public sector managers and policymakers confront a massive challenge in the new public sector -- effectively engaging with implementation partners across the public, private and people sectors, political and community leaders at multiple levels of the system, and diverse segments of the public.  To take but one example: public managers are increasingly tasked with engaging with young people as a key stakeholder group; doing so effectively can increase the quality and appropriateness of service delivery and policy engagement, while doing so ineptly can lead to policy and public relations disasters.  The same can, of course, be said of private sector actors in an age of public-private partnerships, and of cross-departmental networks that are important in most areas of policy design and implementation.  

This program will provide participants with an appreciation for the emerging range of tools, techniques and approaches that can help steer them towards more effective stakeholder management.  Specific techniques such as coalition building, implementation analysis and change management will be explored and practices through a variety of case studies from Hong Kong and beyond.  Participants will also have the opportunity to reflect on how these tools and approaches can be applied to their own work.

Objectives

• Understand the changing context of stakeholder engagement in the 21st century – globally and in Hong Kong

• Explore new technological possibilities, such as a social media, and new stakeholder demands, such as an increasingly mobilized, demanding and well-informed youth population, NGOs, and many others

• Learn new approaches to improving policy coherence and integration while responding to diverse social and political demands

• Acquire and sharpen technical skills-related stakeholder mapping, implementation analysis, and network coordination.

Who Should Attend

The program is designed for civil servants as well as other public sector managers with responsibility for engaging diverse publics and/or coordinating across multiple agencies and implementation partners.

Curriculum

• Strategic management in the public sector: Where does stakeholder engagement fit in?

• Stakeholder mapping: from analysis to effective engagement strategies

• Engaging the political environment: what public managers need to know

• Citizen engagement in the era of new media

• Engaging youth: a rising challenge and opportunity for public managers

• Building and implementing effective coalitions

• Implementation mapping and forecasting in multi-stakeholder environments

• Participatory policy and program monitoring, evaluation and learning: a key site for stakeholder engagement

• Tools for balancing adaptiveness and flexibility with policy coordination and coherence

• Stimulating innovation through public engagement