Encounters with the organisation: how local civil servants experience and handle tensions in public engagement

Figures & data

Table 1. Tensions in public engagement.

Tension	Old ‘classical’ expectations	Newly added expectations
1	Act according to formal rules, policies, procedures and politics	Be flexible, responsive to citizens
2	Focus on effectiveness and efficiency according to pre-set standards	Work with open-ended processes
3	Work from a central discipline (united in department)	Collaborate with multiple disciplines (integrated approach, across departments)
4	Adopt an expert role and work from professional expertise	Adopt a facilitative role and work from local knowledge

Table 2. Tensions and responses.

Tension	Response	Example(s)
Acting according to formal rules, policies, procedures and politics vs. being flexible and responsive towards citizens	Biasing, negotiating or aligning to expand the limits created by the rules, procedures and policies	Weighing values/policy goals and choosing between them (biasing); Negotiating with colleagues and superiors (negotiating); Connecting external needs and initiatives with policies and budgets (aligning)
Focus on effectiveness and efficiency according to pre-set standards vs. working with open-ended processes	Biasing or aligning to create time for the initiatives and ideas	Spending (extra) time on external initiatives (biasing); Connecting external needs and initiatives with policies and tasks (aligning)
Working from a central discipline (united in department) vs. collaborating with multiple disciplines (integrated approach)	Aligning people, processes and resources for inter-departmental cooperation	Initiating new structures for cooperation (aligning)
Adopting an expert role and working from professional expertise vs. adopting a facilitative role and working from local knowledge	Negotiating and looking for shared solutions with colleagues	Negotiating with colleagues and superiors to get their cooperation or permission (negotiating)

Table

Tension 1. Acting according to formal rules, policies, procedures and politics vs. being flexible and responsive towards citizens	When we say: okay, we’ll go outside, we have all this baggage …. What bothers me is that you don’t feel you can speak freely because you are sort of cornered. You cannot take this outside, this option is not possible anymore …. […] I want to be able to go outside and really collect input, have open conversations. (Civil servant, Municipality D) We would like to facilitate urban farming, people starting a garden in the city … yet, often it does not fit with the zoning laws, so you need a formal procedure, which is costly, and those people do not have the money. […] It also costs time, but these people would rather start tomorrow. Yeah, that’s how those things related to policies and rules … don’t fit with these kinds of initiatives from the city that wants to start straight away. (Civil servant, Municipality A) Even then, it can still break down due to a lack of support from the aldermen. I am working on this case at the moment: everyone is very excited about it, and then there is an alderman who says: ‘well … let’s not do this right now’. … even if it fits will all the policy goals and programmes …. There was another personal position of the alderman. […] That the alderman says: ‘we’re not doing it, we’d get into too much trouble, we’re not going to do that’. (Civil servant, Municipality G)
Tension 2. Focus on effectiveness and efficiency according to pre-set standards vs. working with open-ended processes	Many of us work outside and interactively with the city, but we also have this whole battery of managers that direct to … well, chores, and those things are based on the organisation, or team or department goals. They think we are just playing outside, they don’t find it important, while those people outside find it very valuable. The mindset and understanding of what is going on outside and what those colleagues are doing. (Civil servant, Municipality H). Dialogue in Municipality C: Civil servant 1: we tell citizens: if you have ideas, we’ll take care of it, but inside the organisation, everyone who is not directly involved with that citizen thinks: yeah, I have other things that I need to do first. So, a broadly shared starting point in our organisation, is that what is missing? Civil servant 2: well … also the time we have to take care of those things that pop up. Right now, one hundred percent of our time is full, while we should have a shift towards seventy-five percent of the time booked for regular tasks and twenty-five percent to deal with requests from outside. The administration’s priorities are great, we have all planned them, but we do not save any time in our schedules to do what we are actually there for. I think there is a tension between our ambitions and resources. On the one hand, we have this ambition for participation – which is not even equally shared by everyone […] And that ambition is expressed, the resources often lack. If we find this important in your department, that means we need to have the time and resources. (Civil servant, Municipality B)
Tension 3. Working from a central discipline (united in department) vs. collaborating with multiple disciplines (integrated approach)	I experience that our organisation is in a phase that it seems that we have two modes of organisation existing next to each other: area- based working versus what I would, call centralised working. While really they are the extremes of the same model. Some things we do at the city level because it is the ideal scale, actually, we should ask ourselves that question for every problem: what is the right area or scale? What complicates this is that it seems to be some kind of power play. (Civil servant, Municipality E) Getting rid of the boundaries is not a solution, I think, nor is it an ambition because you need those boundaries. Otherwise you would lose our overview. I think the challenge is to make sure that you have some cocktail picks poking through those structures, to have an integrated view. (Civil servant, Municipality H) What I was used to, working in other municipalities: there is an initiative that enters through a city planner or advisor and then they talk to the traffic specialist individual, and they will give their advice … Then you usually get all this different contradictory advice. Here, when we get a plan, all specialists receive the plan a day in advance, I think, and then you have a meeting with all specialists together. So if there are any contradictions at the table, you can talk them through, immediately. (Civil servant, Municipality A)
Tension 4. Adopting an expert role and working from professional expertise vs. adopting a facilitative role and working from local knowledge	On personal experiences and colleagues As a government, you can’t oversee everything when you design a plan. And you’ll find that many citizens have some kind of fascination or hobby: house sparrows – we were just talking about that – insects … there are people working on green and sustainability, and they can contribute to the plan, which is fun. (Civil servant, Municipality C) I think it is a difference in mindset, a mindset of getting as much things done as possible within the organisation, and the mindset of people who spend much time outside. A manager who doesn’t have a clue about what you are doing outside and sees it as some gimmick, while you think: I am actually working for this city, why don’t you get that! (Civil servant, Municipality H) It has a lot to do with the person, and I think it also has to do with how good you are at your craft. People who find their work difficult tend to be more rigid than people who easily rise above the matter. For example, in conversations with citizens: do you dare talk openly because you know it all, or do you want everything to be strictly regulated because you are afraid? (Civil servant, Municipality I) You are doing something as a professional, you are designing something or you have come up with something or know all about something, and then you enter an environment in which you think: these are all lay people, and they want to have something to say about your area of expertise. Like: ‘’that doesn’t make sense!” Or ‘’I also know about parking” … I have noticed that it can be difficult for colleagues who work in their area of expertise to open up and talk and listen without prejudice, and actually do something with it. (Civil servant, Municipality D) We have been working on [municipality-wide participatory project Y]. Sometimes you hear from people in the organisation who have not helped with the project: that’s their thing, they’ll do it. Well, I also have my other work here that needs to be done […] Really, it should be part of the work, but that’s not how they experience it. (Civil servant, Municipality J)
Biasing	Those goals are so abstract … with some creative thinking you can consider a lot of things under those labels (Civil servant, Municipality G) Dialogue in Municipality J Civil servant 1: Aside from your formal competencies, you need to have some status or credibility that people will accept things from you, and believe they make sense. … you know? Civil servant 2: like what you say is true Civil servant 1: yes, or maybe it is trust. Look, you also have your preferences, and you know if you go to some colleagues: we’ll get it done; while with some others, you think: I’ll work around them or it’ll take even longer.
Negotiating	I think that as long as you have a good story to tell about why we should cooperate, you can get a lot of people on board, eventually. (Civil servant, Municipality G) [I have a colleague] who was assigned to make the bus route to [neighbourhood X] through [street Y] go faster, like four minutes faster. She worked on it, and you come up with: removing bus stops or traffic lights, making a separate bus lane, all kinds of measures, just to get the bus there four minutes quicker … At some point she thought: what nonsense, this is not what it really is about! So she said: we need to deal with this in a more integrated way, broaden the project to refurbishing the entire street. […] She talked to her supervisor: ‘’you really need to broaden the scope. If we go through with this, we are planning for resistance”. (Civil servant, municipality I) If you want to get things done or take someone along in a process, you need to go and meet them. You have your network outside, but you also need to work on your network inside, don’t think: ‘’I’ll just send an email, that’ll do the trick”. (Civil servant, Municipality B) I don’t have any technical knowledge, so I work with colleagues who do. Sometimes you get to deal with colleagues who have such a one-track mind when it comes to their area of expertise, and they fail to connect with: who are we doing this for, really? What helps, for me, is to take them along outside, for example, people from the traffic department, join me, look around, talk to people. (Civil servant, Municipality B)
Aligning	We are working on collecting input for formulating the neighbourhood challenges. We go to all kinds of places to collect: what do people find important issues to tackle? In the city centre, we found people want better walking routes [free from obstacles] […] So, I was working on that last Monday, with colleagues from traffic and maintenance, to translate those requests into specific measures. At the traffic department, they had just received a new budget, four times 300.000, I think, for accessibility. […] So, there was a project manager who had to operationalise that – very top down. And he was like: wow, how am I going to do this? So, I came in with my list of places in the city centre where there had been complaints about the accessibility of the pavements. And yes, then you get to bring those together. What was urgent for me, was urgent for him, because he could use this to fill part of his accessibility programme. (Civil servant, Municipality J) There was an empty lot, some initiatives wanted to develop something there, but they did not want to buy or rent the place. How do we deal with that? What do we find important? From that project, I learned that collaborating with stakeholders can do much for building ownership, that people take responsibility. I remember thinking: ‘well, this is nothing like project management, it is all ad hoc responding to everything … ’. I think, maybe that is the new way to go, moving along with opportunities … (Civil servant, Municipality C) With most people who are at the table here, we have a meeting about every two weeks to talk about certain themes. Then you’ll find that you start seeing all kinds of connections. Those close contacts really help. You walk into each other’s’ offices: I am working on this, what does that mean for you? (Civil servant, Municipality G)