Communities provide low-quality feedback when the timing, context and likely action following an engagement process for an infrastructure project or service are opaque.
To encourage people to provide quality feedback, planning and project delivery agencies must be clear about a range of factors, including:
• project maturity
• aspects of the project open to review
• types of information required to inform decision-making
• triggers or thresholds for change
• the range of ways communities can provide feedback.
When feedback is received, the agencies must show they are responding by, for example, producing public reports. These should outline how feedback helped to shape decisions and the reasons for those decisions, and evaluate how effective engagement activities have been at meeting equity and accessibility objectives.
It is also important to prioritise measuring and quantifying the value of good engagement. This will support mainstream acceptance of transparent, inclusive approaches and increase demand for effective practices, both in the community and from other governments.114