Julia Hahn, Stefanie B. Seitz and Nora Weinberger
Abstract
The Citizens Dialogues on Future Technologies (CDFT) marked a certain ‘participatory turn’
in Germany. Here, we take a closer look at the CDFT, their methodology, their topics and what such a large participatory process may entail for technology assessment (TA). Throughout the CDFT, different topics showed interesting changes in how the participants discussed and handled themes and how this, at times, diverged from the initiating ministry’s foci. For TA, participation processes, such as the CDFT, can be important practices for gaining insights into transdisciplinary knowledge through a ‘dialogue of many’.
Introduction
Since the mid-1960s, political sociologists have observed a ‘participatory revolution’ or
‘participatory turn’ (Joss 1999, Abels 2007, Jasanoff 2003). Demands for a greater public involvement in decision-making regarding science and technology policy, such as issues concerning urban planning, waste management, environmental policy or health risks, have arisen. Another indication of this trend has been the conceptual debate on citizen involvement in the field of TA since the 1990s. As many sciences and technologies have far-reaching and direct consequences for society, many organizations have begun to put theoretical considerations into practice and are active in developing participatory methods of TA (pTA), such as the Danish consensus conferences (Danish Board of Technology 2006). Simultaneously, the public criticizes the role of the so-called experts in advising decision-making, as it seems they disregard viewpoints and interests other than their own (Joss 1998, p. 3). Therefore, there is a “difficulty in trying to obtain balanced and meaningful information” (ibid.)
Against this background, it “was very important for proper democratic debate and decision-making that politicians, the public and the media are presented with the whole spectrum of viewpoints” (ibid.). As a result, politics that argue for public participation in policy-making and planning processes, e.g. public hearings on tunnels or wind turbines, have been manifested
Participation in Technology Assessment as this inclusion of affected people is connected with the hope of producing better and more robust policies.
A growing demand for more direct democracy, participation and involvement in decision-making in the political sphere can also be seen as a trend in all of Europe – e.g. numerous funding calls and strategic documents of political institutions explicitly require the integration of citizens and stakeholders (e.g. Irwin 2006, Bogner 2012).
Within this much-described ‘hype’ of participation we would like to focus on the question of what TA can essentially learn from ‘the people’. Do the citizens enrich the base for the decision-makers with regard to issues of science and technology, do citizens’ statement alter the foci of ‘the experts’ and therefore offer added ‘value’ to the perspectives and decisions regarding technology and society? To approach these questions, we exemplify the large-scale participation process, “Citizens’ Dialogues on Future Technologies” (CDFT, “Bürgerdialoge Zukunftstechnologien“), initiated by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and depict first insights and thoughts for further in-depth analysis. The project was organized by a consortium mainly made up of the consultancy IFOK, the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (KIT-ITAS) and the Center for Interdisciplinary Risk and Innovation Studies (ZIRIUS).
Three Dialogues – Three Topics
Starting in mid-2010, the CDFT aimed to incorporate the perspectives of citizens regarding future technologies. What was unique, at least for Germany, was that the initiating organization was a federal ministry that not just commissioned the process to an external organization but remained in an active leading role, keeping its organizational and political responsibilities. It was hoped that this would enhance the possibility of the results feeding into the actual policy-making process. Most importantly, the CDFT offered the involved citizens the opportunity to formulate concrete recommendations for science and policy and thereby shape the ‘handling’
of future technologies. In total, three rounds, each with different topics, were carried out.
Apart from the active role of the ministry, other unique aspects were the high budget, the dimension and extent of the Dialogues and the scientific evaluation of the whole process parallel to the methodology development.
The Dialogues themselves dealt with topics that posed certain methodological challenges – they related to future (technological) issues, were part of a specific context and were problem-oriented. In the aftermath of Fukushima, Germany’s highly discussed withdrawal from nuclear energy and the accompanied fundamental changes and transitions in energy production were subject of the first eight Regional Dialogues. These took place from July to November of 2011 with the goal of discussing and developing approaches to solve energy questions formulated by the ministry regarding energy efficiency, renewable energy, energy grids and bridging technologies. In the next round, the Citizens’ Dialogues took on the topic of high-tech medicine with a focus on telemedicine, neuronal implants as well as palliative
What Can TA Learn from ‘the People’
medicine and intensive care. These topics were again framed by the ministry itself. For each of these three topics, two Regional Dialogues took place. A total of six regional dialogues were conducted from September to October of 2011. The last Dialogue round from fall of 2012 to February 2013 focused on the challenges of demographic change with its repercussions in fields like working environment, education and lifelong learning, as well as social aspects.
The Dialogue Concept: Participation ‘Big Style’
The process itself was designed by the CDFT consortium in accordance with a generic model for dialogues (Decker/Fleischer 2012). In the first phase, the contextual basis and socially relevant themes were identified and reflected using the method of focus groups (e.g. Barbour 2007) and online opinions. On the basis of these outcomes, an impulse paper provided information for participants regarding the thematic spectrum, potential key issue areas, relevance and citizen approachability. This paper served as the basis for a more detailed discussion during the Regional Dialogues, which can be methodologically compared to “21st Century Town Hall Meetings” (Lukensmeyer/Brigham 2002).
All three topics were discussed in six to eight Regional Dialogues all throughout Germany with around 100 participants each.1 Each Regional Dialogue followed the same sequence: in the first discussion-round, the citizens’ concerns and expectations were documented and a second round was made up of developing more concrete approaches and policy recommendations for dealing with and solving the issues articulated. The goal of each Regional Dialogue was to put together a report with initial recommendations, which was then given to a representative of the ministry. Additionally, an accompanying online dialogue where citizens could comment on the topics and statements of the Regional Dialogues took place.
The third and final phase of each Dialogue round was a two-day-long Citizens’ Summit.
Here delegated participants of the Regional Dialogues were able to develop concrete recommendations regarding science, economy, politics and society and write a final summarizing citizens’ report, which was officially passed on to the federal minister.
The entire process was accompanied by an advisory board made up of representatives of research, science, the economy and civil society, including relevant ministries. The board members and selected participating citizens were able to comment on the documents produced at the end of each phase. The board itself had several roles within the CDFT process. Besides discussions and reflections of the resulting documents, members of the board were present during the Regional Dialogues and final Summit to offer their expertise to the participants. Moreover, dissimilating the results of the Citizen’s Dialogues within their communities and networks was an important role for the experts, thus carrying the results of the CDFT into organizations in the fields of science, economics, politics and society.
The project also included an element of self-reflection as the entire process was evaluated in a scientific manner. The evaluation included, inter alia, participant surveys, the observation of participants at various events and structured interviews with the moderators, participants
Participation in Technology Assessment and members of the advisory board. Findings of the evaluation were often discussed directly within the consortium in order to adjust and improve the methodology during the process itself.
Thematic Frame and Handling of the Topics
A first interpretative look at the Dialogues shows several overarching themes, specifically for energy and high-tech medicine, that differ substantially from the topics ‘assigned’ by the ministry. Participants of the Energy Dialogues were concerned with the decentralization of energy production, which was seen as a possibility to strengthen the regional participation of citizens and municipalities by helping them become more independent from large energy companies. Furthermore, participants stated that the political framework in the form of taxes, research funds and new laws was an important tool for encouraging energy efficiency, development of new technologies and education of the public. Overall, offering advice and guidance to citizens was seen as the main job of the government. The necessity of large investments in research for the improvement and development of technologies and economic aspects regarding the importance of supporting the enlargement of highly qualified people were also discussed.
During the High-Tech Medicine Dialogues, the three different topic areas (neuronal implants, telemedicine and palliative medicine and intensive care), which were specified beforehand by the ministry, characterized many discussions. Yet, similarly to the Energy Dialogues, certain overarching themes could be distinguished. Data privacy, informed self-determination, equality with regard to access to new technologies as well as assistance and human care in connection to the role of technology were the main themes of all the Dialogues.
The Dialogue on demographic change was thematically somewhat different than the others.
The ministry decided to change the strict technological frame to include more general social aspects. The Science Year 2013 “The Demographic Chance”,2 which was also conducted by the same ministry, also framed the Dialogues. The three different thematic foci (working world, living together and education) did not highlight the technological aspects of demographic change (i.e. care providing robotic systems, telemonitoring, etc.), but concentrated on more
‘everyday’ aspects. The outcomes of these Dialogues also show certain over-arching topics.
These included, for example, exchanges and collaborations between young and elderly people regarding all three of the aspects (working world, living together and education), e.g. integration of more experienced older employees in the workplace. Other aspects included support for families and assisting the integration of immigrants and individuals with a migration background in schools, workplace and society in general. Even though these wider topics were identified by the evaluating team when clustering the outcomes of the regional Dialogues, the ministry decided to stick to the original frame. This meant that topics such as collaborations between young and elderly people were discussed in each of the single frames, which proved to be difficult to discuss for the participants of the Citizens’ Summit.
What Can TA Learn from ‘the People’
As described above, the CDFT rounds all had fairly similar methodological structures; main building blocks were the Regional Dialogues and the final Citizens’ Summits. Yet the topics differed substantially from one another. Therefore, looking at the way the participants based their arguments and how the discussions were conducted can show interesting differences between the three topics. For the Energy Dialogues, the citizens often chose a more general societal frame to base their arguments on. Topics like decentralization or governmental responsibilities were dominant during the discussions, making the problems society faces as a whole the center of attention. In contrast, the high-tech medicine discussions were characterized by more individual perspectives. Here, participants often referred to their personal situation with experiences that ‘legitimized’ their arguments (such as sicknesses).
Even though health care in general and the fear of a two-class system played a role, the main focus was on providing people with the ability to make their own informed choices.
After these two Dialogue rounds, it already became clear that citizens often reframe and contextualize their arguments and statements. This was also the case in the Dialogues on demographic change. Without the strict thematic technology focus of the other dialogues, they were marked by citizens who often saw themselves as experts and therefore able to legitimize their arguments through their own experiences. Many participants were engaged in voluntary work and therefore had insights into projects and initiatives dealing with aspects of demographic change, which made this topic feel ‘close to home’ for many. The focus here was on individual as well as on wider societal problems and themes in the context of demographic change.
Conclusions
This general interpretative analysis shows that several overarching themes in the Dialogues differ considerably from the topics ‘assigned’ by the ministry. We could observe this multiple times, e.g. during the Energy Dialogues where citizens’ preferred to discuss the decentralization of energy production instead of “bridging technologies”. In retrospect, the citizen live up to the role they are assigned by the ministry, but in the role of ‘everyday experts’, their judgment and framing of topics does not always conform to political rationality.
Thus, this effect should be considered when planning and benchmarking lay participation and should be reflected with regard to the expectations of their outcomes. Nevertheless, the CDFT was a ‘real’ dialogue in the sense that one dialogue partner (ministry) set the frame and the other partner (citizens) was able to ‘answer’ and reframe, giving the ‘conversation’
a new direction.
Apart from these contextual findings, the Dialogues are also an interesting format for pTA.
Compared to other, usually much smaller, participation approaches, they gave a relatively large number of citizens the opportunity to take on an active role in the societal discussions on new technologies and the framing of possible policy decisions. Furthermore, the Dialogues had a qualitative level; going beyond, for example, referendums and enabling an understanding of citizens’ narratives regarding new technologies. Yet it can be assumed that the strong focus on
Participation in Technology Assessment consensus-reaching during the Citizens’ Dialogues and the fixed thematic framework given by the ministry constrained the outcome to a certain degree, which would have to be examined further.
In the context of TA, these formats can support a certain ‘sensitivity’ of TA researchers and decision-makers with regard to issues important to the public and the potential integration of these into wider policy-making by providing insights into normative frameworks, values and interests of citizens. Political consulting and public engagement go beyond simply assessing citizens’ perceptions or hopes and fears (e.g. Wynne 2006). They include the creation of new forms of participation that influence the development of policies in certain ways (ideally decided upon beforehand), which, of course, is not an easy task. This is grounded in the understanding that new technological developments are shaped socially and do not just occur linearly in a separate sphere, which also shows in the different expectations of actors with regard to the outcome and the impact of formats, such as the Citizens’ Dialogues. The participants themselves want to be taken seriously with regard to their recommendations and assessments. The actors from the political and scientific side often do not regard citizens as
‘fit’ to answer highly complex questions and are unsure as to what the participants’ role is, which results in difficulties when transferring the results into political and professional fields and coordinating these with actual policy decisions. It remains to be seen to what extent and in what form the suggestions, ideas and concerns articulated in the citizens’ dialogues will actually influence political, economic and social decision makers, thus having some kind of impact and becoming more than mere ‘engagement exercises’.
Nevertheless, including the public (i.e. social groups, stakeholders or laypeople) in the process of assessing and evaluating (future) technologies is an integral part of TA. The argument could be made that through participation, different kinds of (transdiciplinary) knowledge can become a part of the assessment process. During the Citizens’ Dialogues, it could be observed that citizens often applied complex technological developments to their own specific social background and context. The incorporation of this can enable a transdisciplinary approach to include the ‘dialogue of many’ for more networked and inter-related knowledge regarding TA.
References: Page 392
What Can TA Learn from Patient Narratives