Page 193 - Enabling National Initiatives to Take Democracy Beyond Elections

Step 6: Testing Draft Recommendations 17 Sponsoring organisation feedback on draft One of the best ways to test whether recommendations are clear is to pass them to the decision maker (or source of the citizens’ choosing) and get feedback. This is most useful when the organisation can give clear comments on how they interpret each recommendation and what it would mean if it was implemented (this can only be done at the request or with the consent of the citizens). Some key things to keep in mind are whether or not a recommendation has a high cost or complex trade-off that may not have been considered or whether or not a recommendation is outside of the jurisdiction of the sponsoring agency. The focus here should remain on clarity of intent. If the feedback indicates that a recommendation is not doing what it was intended to do, then it will need to be reworded in a way that captures both the intent and the why of the recommendation so that it is not misinterpreted by the organisation. Facilitators should take care at this point to the remind the group it is their report and their recommendations: they should be informed by this advice, but not led by them. 191