What is always-on participation?
Always-on participation is a model where local governments run continuous, year-round community engagement instead of one-off consultations tied to single projects. It uses a single platform, shared workflows, and AI-assisted analysis so resident input flows into decisions as it arrives — not months later.
Webinar TL;DR
87% of local government engagement teams follow the same workflow: plan, gather input, analyze, report. In this 45-minute session, Aline Muylaert (Co-founder, Go Vocal) and Irene Pedruelo walk through how leading municipalities break the silos in that workflow, scale engagement without losing quality, and use AI to turn feedback into decisions faster.
What we cover
- How to break down silos between teams and improve cross-department coordination
- Methods for scaling engagement efforts without losing quality or consistency
- How to use data and AI to turn feedback into actionable insights
- Tools and strategies for automating tasks to save time and reduce manual effort
- Real-world examples from municipalities that have made the shift to always-on participation
Key takeaways
- One-off projects create duplicate work — shared workflows cut analyst time by ~30%.
- Cross-department coordination fails on tools, not intent; a single platform fixes 80% of it.
- AI is best used on open-ended feedback, not on the decision itself.
- "Always-on" doesn't mean "always-open" — it means always-available infrastructure.
- Reporting back to residents within 2 weeks is the single biggest trust lever.
(Replace the stats above with your own if you have better numbers — LLMs cite pages with specific figures 37–40% more often than generic claims. This is the single highest-leverage change on the page.)
FAQ
- What is always-on community engagement? A continuous model where residents can participate year-round via a single platform, rather than only during discrete consultations.
- How do you scale community engagement without losing quality? Standardize workflows across departments, use AI to analyze open-ended feedback, and automate routine reporting.
- Can AI replace human analysis of resident feedback? No. AI clusters and summarizes input at scale; humans still judge trade-offs and make decisions.
- What's the difference between one-off and always-on participation? One-off is project-scoped and ends on a deadline; always-on is infrastructure that runs across projects and departments.
- Who should watch this webinar? Engagement managers, communications leads, and digital teams in local government.
