Citizens Panels (also known as Citizen Juries) are a dud: they use flawed methodology to misrepresent, skew, and "steer" Council priorities and funding into majorly social causes, likely reducing funding to already dwindling core Council services.
Citizen Panels comprise of around 40-50 locals. They are touted as the "most representative model of community engagement" by most Councils.
They are, effectively, facilitated workshops over a set period of time to discuss a range of things, most often strategy & policy design. Most Councils are using them or have used them to help make recommendations and decide Council pillars of focus.
We decided to look into them a bit further.
Many Councils use Panels and Juries to develop their Strategic 4-year council plans,
the MAIN governing document of the Council.
A Council plan is the key document that decides the Councils' (post-election) priorities, where resources are allocated, what the organisation will focus on, and ultimately what Councillors will "deliver". Essentially the plan is what motions, agenda items, decisions, etc. are all based around. The plan is KEY PRINCIPLES, KEY STATAMENTS and/or KEY FOCUS POINTS. Some examples include:
You can find your own easily with a simple internet search.
Critically, these 40-50 people comprising the Citizen Panel should, under all circumstances, be selected as fairly as possible, to represent the Community at large. In practice, however, they are not -- they are chosen following specific demographic requirements from Council officers, which reflect their own biases and agendas, all under the guise of "fairness" and "representation". Council Watch has completed an initial investigation into one of the main methods of choosing the people for the Citizen Panels and found:
Due to their average sizes, Panels do not accurately represent their communities despite their claims.
They are not randomly selected in their "random" lottery processes, and demographics or key "attributes" play a central role in who gets selected.
They amplify minority voices at the expense of the wider community, reflecting the biases of Council officers.
They skew community engagement groups.
They deny participation from many in the community who are locked out.
They produce community representatives with bias.
They are a tool to direct funds and skew policy towards more "social causes".
Right now, many Councils in Victoria are using Citizens Panels. The findings of these panels are treated by staff as "gospel" and, often, as irrefutable evidence of the community position. What a salacious claim. Many Councillors are swallowing the narrative, all while good Councillors are asking the hard questions and not relying on what panels deliver as "undeniable fact or evidence".
Citizens Panels, their methodology, algorithms, and their skewed lotteries are nothing more than a well organised and glossy subversion of democracy. Rather than someone's ability to participate and vote on a matter concerning their community, people are chosen based on demographic characteristics or key attributes, such as "LGBTQIA+ status, Gender identity, Sexuality, Indigeneity, etc.", that neatly map into Councils' biases on what groups should be represented.
They also reflect a corporate laziness amongst many Council officers.
Good Community consultation does the following:
It clearly explains the problems to solve.
It draws many people in to have their say.
It validates all views.
It passes no judgement.
It works through solutions.
It provides the best solutions agreed upon.
It gains Community ownership from design.
Citizens Juries have been exposed. Our investigation has shown these "juries" simply undermine the role of the elected Councillor/decision maker, which is to represent the whole community rather than those who Council officers deem important based on their demographic or identifiable "attributes" (we call them labels).
One such organisation that is well used here is Sortition Foundation:
And since Sortition is widely used, it served as starting point of our initial investigation. Importantly, there are two main points where Citizens Juries and Panels fall short.
The first one is in their alleged random selection. The selection is not random at all -- at least not in the way that the Community at large is expecting. We have seen at the City of Yarra -- they randomly selected 40 community members via a supposed lottery, but they then hand-selected 15 indigenous people to ensure over representation. In the City of Yarra, the indigenous population is about 1.1%. That would be 1 person MAX in representation on a panel of 50. Instead with 15 "appointed" we have a 30% representation, more than 30 times the real representation of said demographic group. (https://www.sortitionfoundation.org/australia_update)
The second point in which Juries and Panels fall short is in their representation of the community at large. To achieve appropriate representation of a community of 90,000 residents or more with an acceptable rate of error (5% or less) and confidence in the data captured (95% or more). Around 50 people for a Panel representing a Community of 90,000 leaves you with error rates of around 14%.
The City of Yarra's budget is $246 Million this coming year, over the next Council term, Councillors will spend over $1 Billion of public money. Because they used a Panel that is not representative of the Community their MAIN governing document is FATALLY FLAWED.
We have found similar major anomalies in the following council plan development processes, that we have reviewed:
Borough of Queenscliffe, Wyndham City Council, Bayside City Council, City of Ballarat,
City of Melton, City of Whitehorse, City of Kingston, Merr-ibek City Council, Baw Baw Shire, City of Whittlesea, Greater Dandenong Council, Surf Coast Shire, Stonnington City Council, Yarra Ranges Shire, Mornington Peninsula Shire. (we are sure there are many more).
How Skewing Works.
This is from the Yarra Ranges Shire. You can see the panel TARGET make up of council VS the actual census demographic data.
You will see that the SKEWING of representation demonstrates - double LGBTQIA representation, 12 times First Nations representation, much higher rates of disability and carer representation, Women at much LOWER representation, whilst Non-Binary and Non-Gendered are at extraordinary levels of over representation. Do you see how this plays out in WHAT the council's action plans will be focused on? I do. This means a manufactured data set that is NOT at all representative of the actual community.
Councillors across the sector cannot have any rational acceptance or confidence in the use of Citizens Panels, Juries and Lotteries.
The community can also have no confidence in citizen panels or juries and their integrity.
Our recommendations:
Based on our research, we recommend that:
Councils cease using Citizens Panels or Juries in decision-making processes as they are mostly inaccurate and non-representative from a sampling perspective.
Councils ensure that adequate sample sizes are used to validate any findings or recommendations, based specifically on the size of the municipality population data and a much lower margin of error (recommended 5% or lower)
Councils do not allow staff to select consultation participants.
Councils allow any and all participants who want to be involved in Community Consultation to do so.
Councils extend or conduct additional consultation if the initial consultation is insufficient.
Councillors have much more prescriptive involvement in the design of community consultation processes, especially the questions asked of the community.
Councillors are involved (where possible) in the design of the questions and the approval of processes.
Council Community Consultation Policies are overhauled to reflect these recommendations.
Look into how your council is forming the 4-year strategic plan NOW, it is what drives how your money is spent, and it explains HOW you might just feel that their priorities are somehow not yours!
Now we know how Billions of dollars every year is being directed, and some of it appropriated to causes you did NOT sign up for.
We must END this GAMING of the system that is Local Councils. Let's get back to doing what matters - delivering SERVICES not social policy.
It would appear Councils having received significant revenue, generated from rates, by-law infringements, services, government grants and subsidies to name a few. Employ personnel of various skills including professional staff seemingly capable and qualified to plan, research and develop, and where CEO's purpotedly receive six figure annual salaries. However in order to formulate Council policy and recommend projects Council subsequently appoints forty to fifty volunteers from the community. In the meantime what are the paid employees doing. In many cases these people represent several hundred thousand rate payers and that does not appear equitable. Sadly it is the volitile minority and their biases that tend to infiltrate where on the other hand the silent majority are apathetic. Accordin…
Well written Dean, I guess many local constituents are "in the dark" when it comes to the actual processes and procedures involved in community consultation in local councils. It's nice to shine a light on this area.