Follow-up relates to all the ways in which the results of engagement process are used by those who organise it and those who requested it. This might mean including the recommendations of citizens in developing a new policy or programme, taking up their ideas in urban planning or using the knowledge gathered from them in research projects. Lack of follow-up in engagement of citizens in policy, research and planning processes is a major pitfall that undermines trust, leading also to disappointment and lack of interest on the side of participants.

Institutional & grassroots follow-ups

The crucial aspect in following-up is whether the process you design is requested by an institution or not. In the former case, there will likely already be a link to the actions of the institution (whether it is, for instance, policymaking process or research). In such instance, the important thing in preparing a follow-up is to define very clearly the outputs of the process with respect to what the authorities need. At the same time, it is important to clarify with the authorities how they will use the results of the process and what impact it can actually have, to set the expectations of citizens right, from the very start of the whole process. Indeed, the invitation letter sent to the participants should already contain information about the follow-up process.

If your process is a grassroots project organised by CSOs or citizens themselves and you aim to implement the results on your own or to use them to knock on the doors of decision makers, it is extremely important to make sure that participants understand this. This might mean that their work has less chances of being used. It is not in itself a problem, especially if the issue is important and citizens understand its urgency, but full transparency about the risk is necessary. 

Translating the outputs of the engagement process for instituions

The way in which the results of participatory process are communicated is also important in communication with decision makers. A hand-drawn map developed by citizens during workshops might be excellent to present to the wider publics but might be difficult for municipality to integrate within the formal planning process. Therefore, some translation of results might be necessary. Important here is however not to get things 'lost in translation'. To avoid it, you can include citizens also in this part of the process, that is in the translation and presentation of the results to authorities or other interested institutions.

Communicating the follow-up to citizens

In all cases, citizens should be informed from the start of the process about the concrete plans for follow-up. Once you enter the follow-up stage, information on the progress of implementation of citizens' ideas should be distributed regularly. The way this can be done is very open, but it should be easy for citizens to follow. Not many will regularly check municipality notifications or read technical reports. A feedback event should be organised with the participants, invited for that purpose. Those that were the receivers of the citizen participation outcomes should be in the room.

Dissemination of results might be directed not only to decision-makers, but also stakeholders and experts for whom the perspective of citizens might be very interesting and important.

Follow-up evaluation

Finally, citizens can also be involved in the evaluation of the institutional follow-up to assess the extent to which their recommendations or ideas have been implemented, whether they have been well understood and what were the results of the implementation.

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