Methods and Leading Practices for Advancing Public Participation and Community Engagement With the Federal Government

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has requested information regarding ways to enhance public participation and community engagement (PPCE) to enable agencies to more frequently, effectively, broadly, and meaningfully involve the public in government decision-making.

As OMB develops a Federal framework for PPCE, we are writing to provide input to enhance the role that academic institutions can play in government decision-making. Increasingly, social science research is being conducted in collaboration with state and local governments and nonprofit organizations, thereby generating highly actionable, non-partisan, and objective policy-relevant insights. Academic institutions are uniquely equipped to provide evidence on the impacts of policies and programs and the ways in which beneficiaries engage with them, offering a critical perspective for the PPCE process. However, historically academic participation in policy has been low.