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February 8, 2010: CSC is excited to announce the launch of our 2010 Online Public Engagement Program. Offered in collaboration with California’s own UserVoice, the program will provide at least five (5) platforms to cities, counties, special districts, and news organizations.

Applications will be received on a "rolling basis" with "Phase I" of the grant period concluding on March 8, 2010. New grant phases may be opened as availability permits.

"Our last two Citizen Engagement Grant Programs were extremely positive experiences, supporting dozens of California cities, counties, and school districts in their efforts to legitimately engage their publics on crucial local policy decisions," said Pete Peterson, executive director of CSC. "Seeing the improvement in online public engagement tools, we wanted to expand this year's grant program to offer these same institutions the opportunity to effectively engage their residents online with the award-winning UserVoice platform." Peterson believes that, while last year's program was popular, this year's will be more important: "Everyone has a sense as to the scope of the policy challenges confronting California – from budgets to land use to public safety. What many are still learning is that in our counties, cities, and school districts the situation is more desperate. In this environment leaders are reaching out to their residents to help them work through extremely difficult decisions. We have seen the UserVoice platform both involve and inform local publics on a variety of policy issues – not just budget. We are excited about offering this opportunity to provide this platform along with training free of charge to our grantees."

CSC Reports
December 2009: California Civic Health Index by National Conference on Citizenship, California Forward and CSC.
July 2008: CSC's "Inventory: Citizen Engagement Projects in California" report

Other Reports and Studies
October 2009: Civic engagement practitioners, Everyday Democracy, and the Kettering Foundation sponsored the report, "Sustaining Public Engagement" - a research study written by Harvard University researchers Archon Fung and Elena Fagotto. The monograph looks at a number of local public engagement efforts on a variety of policy issues.
July 2009: The civic engagement firm, Public Agenda, has published a report, "Promising Practices in Online Engagement", which covers a vast array of web-based public involvement processes on issues that are both local and national.
July 2009: "The Promise and Challenge of Local Democracy" - an excellent recent study on civic participation at the neighborhood and city levels across the United States. The report was written by the Deliberative Democracy Consortium's Matt Leighninger (scroll down to the report title for free PDF download).
May 2009: "The New Laboratories of Democracy" - a very thorough "inventory" of local level civic engagement efforts from planning to budgets to community dialogues. Features and lists a variety of methodologies and practitioners. This report was developed by PACE.
January 2009: "E-Consultation: Enabling Democracy Between Elections." Reports on online civic engagement in Canada. Produced by Canada's Institute of Research on Public Policy.
January 2009: "Civic Engagement and the Changing Transition to Adulthood" - studies youth civic engagement from the late teens through early 20's, evaluating the impacts of education, economics and other factors. Produced by CIRCLE.
June 2008: The UK's public participation organization, InvolveUK, produced the report, "Deliberative Public Engagement: Nine Principles", a great overview of what makes for legitimate civic engagement.
December 2008: "Its more than talk" - a "discussion paper about options for building knowledge, skills and values about effective community engagement" produced by the New Zealand Government's Office for the Community and Voluntary Sector (OCVS).

Citizen Engagement Project Website/Links in California
Spring 2009: “We Could Use Your Help” City of Santa Cruz budget website.
February - May 2008: Threshold 2008 in San Mateo County
August 2007: CaliforniaSpeaks on Health Care Reform

Citizen Engagement Links Nationwide:
City of Philadelphia: "Tight Times. Tough Choices." A participatory budgeting project developed by the City, UPenn, and WHYY.
City of Portland, Oregon (General Civic Engagement)
City of Philadelphia -"Great Expectations" project (Planning)
Envision Central Texas (Planning)
Envision Utah (Planning)

Op-Eds/Essays:
February 6, 2010: Essay on participation in local government's "new normal" in Fox & Hounds Daily
February 19, 2010: Peterson writes essay on the City of Los Angeles' attempt to engage the public online in Fox & Hounds Daily
November 29, 2009: Peterson discusses California Civic Health Index in SacBee
November 13, 2009: Peterson highlights Gen X civic engagement in City Journal
August 28, 2009: Peterson discusses the health care "town hall meetings" in Fox & Hounds Daily.
June 22, 2009: Peterson discusses localized online civic participation in an essay entitled, "Canoes and Online Communities" for the tech/politics blog, Personal Democracy Forum.
June 3, 2009: Peterson describes CSC’s participatory budgeting project in Salinas for the blog, NewGeography
May 22, 2009: Peterson highlights a civic engagement effort in Kauai for City Journal Online
May 1, 2009: Peterson highlights CSC's participatory budgeting projects and the changing nature of the citizen/government relationship in Fox & Hounds Daily
April 17, 2009: Peterson describes participatory planning efforts on the blogsite, NewGeography
March 24, 2009: Pete Peterson writes on national online civic engagement for the tech/politics blogsite "TechPresident"
Jan 14, 2009: Pete Peterson authors essay on new California civics study for Fox & Hounds Daily
Jan 7, 2009: Pete Peterson writes essay on the budget deficit and civic engagement in Santa Barbara's Noozhawk
October 28, 2008: Pete Peterson co-authors piece on partisanship in Santa Barbara's Noozhawk
October 16, 2008: Peterson writes essay about the reasons why we're seeing more civic engagement efforts around California for the blog, Fox & Hounds Daily
July 26, 2008: Pete Peterson co-authors piece on partisanship in Santa Barbara's Noozhawk
May 19, 2008: Pete Peterson describes Threshold 2008 in the Santa Barbara Noozhawk
February 28, 2008: Pete Peterson writes on civic participation in Ventura County Star
February 23, 2008: Pete Peterson writes about political polarization in Santa Barbara's Noozhawk
January, 2008: Co-chair David Davenport publishes article on citizen engagement in Hoover Digest
January 6, 2008: Co-chair David Davenport writes article on citizen engagement in SF Chronicle

Speeches/Conferences/Interviews:
January 28, 2010: Peterson gives closing keynote, "Hula Lessons: What a Beach in Hawaii Can Teach Us about Public Engagement" at MMANC's "Winter Forum" in Dublin.

January 26, 2010: Peterson gave brief presentation, "Public Engagement in California" to the CCSESA (California County Superintendents Educational Services Association) quarterly meeting in Monterey.

September 25, 2009: Peterson facilitated two roundtable discussions at the "Taking it Upstream" conference on participatory planning and sustainable development, hosted by Pepperdine's Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution. He was also interviewed for a podcast about the event by organizer, Steve Zikman (just click “Podcast” on the conference website).

November 6, 2008: Exec Director, Pete Peterson, gave a speech, "Citizen Engagement: A Statewide View" at Threshold 2008's report release event in Palo Alto.

Oct - November 2008: Executive Director, Pete Peterson interviewed by Cox Media in Orange County about the importance of civic engagement. The 6-minute video can be seen here.

October 3, 2008: Executive Director, Pete Peterson, spoke on a panel entitled, "What the Deliberation & Dialogue Community Can Learn from Conservatives" at the National Coalition of Deliberation & Dialogue National Conference in Austin, Texas. More here.

September 6, 2008: Executive Director, Pete Peterson, participated on a panel entitled, "Teaching Democracy in Public Administration" at the Minnowbrook III Conference in Lake Placid, NY, sponsored by Syracuse's Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Administration. More here.

March 27, 2008: CSC City/Region Task Force co-Chair, Ed Everett, and Executive Director, Pete Peterson, co-facilitated a half-day seminar entitled, "Citizen Engagement & Community Development", at the March Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) meeting. Ed and Pete lead a discussion with role-playing about how standard town meetings can be more engaging and interactive.

January 4, 2008: Co-chair David Davenport participates in PBS television special on American democracy: "By the People - Dialogues in Democracy." The broadcast was facilitated by PBS and Stanford Center for Democracy's Dr. Jim Fishkin. See the show online here.

February 23-24, 2007: CSC's Deliberative Democracy in California Conference at Pepperdine's School of Public Policy.

Organizational Links
Institute of Local Government/Collaborative Governance
Deliberative Democracy Consortium
National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation
Harvard/Kennedy School's Saguaro Seminar on Civic Engagement in America
National Conference on Citizenship

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