Michael McCall: Seeking good governance in participatory GIS

Michael McCall's paper "Seeking good governance in participatory GIS" (2003) has recently caught my attention and is quite relevant to discussions about Gov2.0. McCall is an associate professor of regional planning at the International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation in the Netherlands.

A few key pieces:

Accountability (open government) is not the end in itself; it is a means of supporting higher-level social-political goals of:

• Legitimacy, Participation;

• Respect for Rights, Empowerment;

• Equity (not simply equality); and

• Competence (including efficiency).

...

‘Participation’ means different things to different people; one reason is that many analysts confuse the intensities, with the purposes, of participation. Four intensities of PSP [participatory spatial planning], from the least to the most 'participatory' level of the ladder, are recognisable:

• PSP as 'Information Sharing' implies one-way or two-way communication between ‘outsiders’ and local people, primarily technical information, such as needs assessment. Topics and most information-gathering techniques are set by the outside agencies.

• In PSP as 'Consultation', outsiders refer certain issues to local stakeholders for refinement or prioritising, but it is the outsiders who pre-define the salient problems; and analysis is controlled by outside.

• If all local and external actors are involved in 'Decision-making', they jointly identify priorities, analyse current status, assess alternatives, and implement. 'Participation seen as a right, not just as the means to achieve project goals'.

• PSP as 'Initiating Actions' means that independent initiatives are made and ‘owned’ by empowered local people, e.g. people self-mobilise to perform community activities; a different situation from simply implementation with their own labour inputs.

There are critical differences in the underlying purposes or intentions of the agencies (external or internal) which are ‘pushing’ PSP as a strategy and/or promoting P-GIS:

• Facilitation - ‘PSP is promoted’ in order to ease outside interventions and interests, to improve external project efficiency, or to pass a share of the cost burden onto the "beneficiaries".

• Mediation - PSP is promoted to link (mediate) outside demands and local people’s priorities in order to increase programme effectiveness, to build up local community capacity, or to modify outside interventions towards local aspirations and needs.

• Empowerment - PSP is promoted to reinforce local decision-making and responsibilities towards community empowerment, to support equitable social redistribution, and to empower weak groups in resource access and control.