Innovative tool supports stronger engagement outcomes

The City of Stirling has recently adopted a revised Community and Stakeholder Engagement Policy, which has an innovative new tool at the heart of its commitment to helping the community more effectively participate in decision-making.

Home to 220,000 people and approximately 23,000 businesses across 30 diverse suburbs, the City of Stirling is a vast urban and social landscape.

A large number of projects in various stages of planning or delivery are in the works at any one given time, all affecting the day-to-day lives of those who visit, live or work in the area.

To ensure the City’s Community and Stakeholder Engagement Policy remains a living, embedded corporate practice, Council recently adopted a suite of in-house resources, the hero feature of which is the Engagement Planner e-Tool.

Developed by City employees – in what is understood to be the first of its kind in Western Australia – the tool recommends a bespoke, best practice engagement program for each project based on details provided by any given project team.

It allows project managers to explore each project and uses metrics and an intuitive line of questioning to help staff assess the level of impact their project has on the community and other stakeholders.

Mayor Mark Irwin said that the City’s Community and Stakeholder Engagement Plan established a best practice approach to community engagement, and that new procedures and tools reflected the challenges of consulting during COVID-19, as well as Council’s ongoing commitment to transparency and positive stakeholder engagement.

“Residents and stakeholders have a right to know what is happening in their area and to be included, where possible, in the decision-making process that shapes our City,” he said.

“The City is dedicated to communicating with our community openly and inclusively, as is evidenced by improvements to our Your Say Stirling engagement hub, which helps residents and stakeholders track projects and see clearly how they can contribute to specific issues.

“This innovative tool will join earlier improvements to help ensure a consistent but tailored approach to each of the City’s project’s using a combination of face-to-face, online, traditional and digital methods of engagement and consultation.”

“The City has won awards for programs and innovative methods to deliver quality customer service to residents and stakeholders, and these changes will support a more effective method of engaging people with projects that affect them.”

The internationally recognised engagement spectrum from the International Association of Public Participation (IAP2) was used as the foundation of this end-to-end engagement framework.

Click here to download a copy of the policy.