Go Vocal (formerly CitizenLab)

The time has come for the next chapter: CitizenLab is now Go Vocal! 📣🎉 We have rebranded to better reflect our commitment to empowering communities and fostering meaningful participation. While our name and image have changed, we remain the same team, led by the original founders. Since our inception, we have partnered with over 500 local governments and organizations of all sizes to make local democracy more inclusive and have provided over 1,000,000 community members with a platform to actively participate in shaping their communities. We are excited to continue building stronger communities together. Want to learn more about our rebranding story? Visit our website: https://www.govocal.com/ #GoVocal #CommunityEngagement #GovTech #CitizenLab

Starting the new year also means measuring your success to date. If you're committed to continuous improvement in your community engagement efforts, you need a clear understanding of your current performance. Measuring community engagement KPIs helps assess your participation projects and strategy, improve processes, and show how public input shapes decisions. But which ones should you look at? Let's have a closer look at some of the key metrics to track engagement.

2024 was the year we stepped forward into our new identity: Go Vocal, more committed than ever to empowering communities and fostering meaningful participation 🙌 We hope wherever you are in the world, you’re taking some time, as we are, to reflect on a successful year, and get some well earned rest before a fresh new year ahead. Happy holidays and see you in 2025! ✨

Catching up with relatives over the holidays is a great reminder of the diversity of our opinions, and also the ways we use technology 📱 In our latest blog post, learn how to use low- and no-tech engagement methods to reach a broader spectrum of your community and make sure everyone gets a seat at the table. Thanks to Nicole Markwick for your insights! Link in bio.

As Go Vocal heads into its 10th year, we're looking for a creative, driven Head of Marketing & Strategic Partnerships to head up our marketing team and get their hands dirty with with brand positioning, partnerships and data insights. Sound like you? Take a look at the job description and get in touch if you have any questions. #GoVocal #MarketingJobs

Looking for an inspiring read for the holidays? 📚 We asked our team for their favourite books on democracy, decision-making and division (and how to solve it!): Conflicted: Why Arguments Are Tearing Us Apart and How They Can Bring Us Together – Ian Leslie draws essential lessons on how to disagree productively from world-class experts: interrogators, hostage negotiators, divorce mediators, diplomats, and addiction counselors. Solving Public Problems: A Practical Guide to Fix Our Government and Change Our World – Beth Simone Noveck’s radical rethinking of the role of the public servant and the skills of the public workforce. Power to the Public: The Promise of Public Interest Technology – Tara McGuinness and Hana Raviyt Schank inspire with successful projects ranging from a texting service for teenagers in crisis to a streamlined foster care system, all using tech to deliver more efficient, effective public services. Poles Apart – Alison (Ali) Goldsworthy, Laura Osborne and Alexandra Chesterfield’s groundbreaking work on why people become so divided – and how they can brought back together. Another World is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination – Sir Geoff Mulgan argues that we’re suffering from a crisis of imagination. Unlocking our creativity will help us see where want to go, and how we might get there. Let us know your favourite reads on participation and the public sphere in the comments. Here’s to some relaxing reading time over the holidays and an inspiring start to 2025 ✨

Congratulations to our clients and partners on a successful year of community engagement! We’ve identified 5 engagement personalities who made the big moves in 2024 – tag yourself or a colleague who deserves a shout-out 🙌 #GoVocal #CommunityEngagement #SpotifyWrapped

Wondering how to make the most of AI for community engagement? Go Vocal’s AI-powered Insights feature empowers you to dive deeper into resident feedback, and ensure you are running an inclusive engagement process, free from biases. Here's how: #GoVocal #CommunityEngagement #GovTech #AI

“We’re using AI to explore polarization and bridge-building – it’s a very ambitious goal, but we want to try it. There’s often a lot of common ground – it’s about using AI to find these statements of common ground, and then you can build policy upon them.” Hear our Co-Founder Aline Muylaert speak about Go Vocal’s work on participation and inclusion, and where we’re headed next 👀 Thank you to G-STIC: Global Sustainable Technology & Innovation Community for hosting this inspiring podcast series ⚡️

Democracy these days seems to suffer from “myopia” — partly due to the short-term incentives of winning votes. This makes it tricky to solve long-term challenges and protect the interests of future generations. Deliberative democracy offers a different path. So what is it? 👀 Deliberative democracy is a system of governance where political decisions are made based on thoughtful discussion and debate among community members – ie. deliberation. Community members engage as equals, weighing evidence and presenting arguments to reach a consensus 🙌 In deliberative democracy, community members are encouraged to hear and think about differing viewpoints, fostering a more nuanced understanding of complex societal issues.  Deliberative democracy tools like citizens assemblies and panels have proven useful for engaging community members in developing policies on the climate and other long-term issues. Keen to learn more about deliberative democracy and what sets it apart? Check out the link in the comments 👇 #GoVocal #Democracy #DeliberativeDemocracy