Citizen Engagement: Moving Beyond Traditional Communication

Traditional government communication often gets lost in a sea of marketing, making it difficult to engage the community, even for matters that will affect their lives.

Citizen engagement is all about two-way conversations. It means inviting people into the decision-making process, listening to their feedback, and proving that their input shapes outcomes.

In this article, we’ll look at what citizen engagement is, why it matters, and how public sector teams can use digital tools to do it better.

• Traditional communication methods like flyers and public notices aren’t enough to reach people anymore.
• Two-way engagement helps build trust and leads to better, more inclusive decision-making.
• Co-design, participatory budgeting, and digital tools make it easier for more people to get involved in meaningful ways.
• Platforms like our Public Sector Solutions can help governments manage and scale their engagement without adding complexity.

Citizen engagement is when people get involved in governmental decisions that affect their lives. For example, how public money is spent, which services are prioritised, or what local policies look like. Essentially, instead of governments deciding and dictating decisions down to the people, they invite the public to have a say.

When it’s done well, it builds connection and trust between local bodies and the members of the community they serve. However, if it’s done badly, it can lead to frustration from community members who feel that their government doesn’t understand their needs or care about supporting them.

At its core, quality citizen engagement means:

• Two-way conversations, instead of top-down messaging.
• Inclusive decision-making across communities.
• A mix of formal and informal feedback (like consultations, forums, and quick polls).
• Clear follow-through and accountability from the government.

This likely means a major digital shift is needed from government organisations to achieve better engagement. This was evident in our Connected Government Report, where we found that only 13% of service issues are resolved through self-service, compared to 45% in other industries.

This gap shows the huge opportunity that governments have to create more engaging, responsive, and user-friendly public services.

When the general public is meaningfully included in decisions that affect them, governments can make more effective policy.

Instead of guessing what people need, governments can get real insight into lived experiences. This leads to solutions that are more relevant to people's daily lives and, therefore, more likely to succeed.

Here’s a quick rundown of a few other reasons citizen engagement matters:

• Improved decisions: A wider range of voices leads to fairer, more effective policy.
• Stronger trust: Having full transparency and an open dialogue with the community builds lasting confidence.
• Increased accountability: When citizens know what your promises are, they can track outcomes and push for follow-through
• More efficient spending: Community members, who live across different areas with different life experiences, can often identify more impactful places for spending.
• Civic participation: When they feel that their voice makes a difference, people are more likely to vote, volunteer, or speak up.
• Innovation: Crowdfunding ideas is a great way to surface new and innovative ways to improve the community.

One example of successful citizen engagement comes from New South Wales. Their ‘Have Your Say’ platform invites residents to contribute to planning, infrastructure, and transport projects. It’s helped shape initiatives like Sydney’s cycleway expansions , where community input directly influenced route priorities and design.

If you’re looking to do the same at your organisation, tools like our Agentforce can help track citizen sentiment and adjust your strategies to overcome disconnection and rebuild trust.

Citizen engagement usually happens in two ways: when governments reach out to the public, and when people take the lead themselves. Both these ways of engagement play a key role in shaping better outcomes.

This is when government bodies actively seek feedback, ideas, or participation from the public. It can include a mix of traditional and digital methods.

Many citizens also like to take the initiative to influence their local policy and shape the outcomes that affect their community. This can look different depending on the issue, the goal, or the level of access people have.

Here are some of the many ways citizens share their preferences with their government.

• Citizen panels: A small group of everyday people is selected to represent the community and give regular feedback or advice on government decisions.
• Community workshops: These are events where people work together with government staff or planners to talk through issues and come up with possible solutions.
• Advisory committees: Formal groups of local residents that meet regularly to give input on specific topics, like housing, transport, or the environment.
• Petitions: Anyone can start a petition to gather public support for a cause. Once enough people sign, it can be submitted to a local or national government to show that the issue matters to the community.
• Protests and public demonstrations: A way for people to show collective support or frustration in a visible way, usually by gathering in public spaces to raise awareness or call for action.
• Online campaigns and social media: People use social media platforms like Instagram, Reddit or Facebook to organise events and draw attention to issues that matter to them.

Traditional methods of gathering feedback still have a place, but they often don’t work for today’s diverse and growing communities. Many people are left out, overlooked, or unsure how to take part.

Here are some of the barriers that make it difficult to engage the entire community with traditional approaches.

• Fragmented communication channels: People don’t all get their information from the same place anymore. The days of making an announcement over the radio or TV and having everyone see it are gone.
• Unequal digital access: Not everyone has a reliable internet connection, the right device, or the digital know-how to get involved. This can exclude older adults, those with disabilities, lower-income households, and those in remote areas.
• Cultural and language gaps: When everything is in English, it can leave out CALD communities , First Nations peoples, and anyone who speaks or reads another language.
• Information overload: People are fed volumes of content every day. If your message isn’t clear or relevant, it can be dismissed before the viewer even understands how it affects their life.
• Growing populations: As communities grow and change, it becomes harder to rely on traditional ways of gathering community input, like flyers or community meetings.
• Limited feedback loops: A lot of traditional engagement doesn’t show people what happened with their input. They may feel their feedback was a waste of time or made no difference if they can't see the result. This can erode trust and discourage people from taking part again.

Improving engagement means meeting people where they are, removing barriers to participation, and showing that input leads to real outcomes.

Here are six practical strategies for governments looking to build stronger, more inclusive connections with their communities:

1. Replace one-way messaging with interactive digital tools
2. Make social media a two-way dialogue
3. Bring digital engagement into everyday spaces
4. Make engagement more accessible for all
5. Build trust with transparent, responsive communication
6. Equip staff and local leaders to drive engagement

Traditional updates like newsletters or noticeboards don’t give citizens a voice. Instead, governments need tools that support real-time input and show people how their feedback is used.

You can do this by:

• Hosting digital forums, live polls or issue-specific feedback portals.
• Offer tools like Fix My Street , which allows people to report issues and track progress.
• Use participatory mapping tools so citizens can mark local concerns directly on maps during planning projects.

Using platforms like our Public Sector Solutions suite makes it easier to manage these two-way street interactions and respond at scale.

Too often, social media is used by governments as a digital noticeboard, full of their latest updates, but with no room for real conversation. To build trust and engagement, it needs to be interactive. Tools like Marketing Cloud can help monitor channels, respond in real-time, and tailor messages to what different communities actually care about.

You can do this by:

• Streaming Q&A sessions or council meetings on platforms like Instagram or Facebook, with moderated, but open, comments.
• Using interactive features like polls and quizzes to collect quick feedback.
• Actively responding to citizen comments and messages to show that input is being seen and taken seriously.

Not everyone has time to attend a public meeting or fill out a form at home. That’s why engagement should be built into everyday spaces where people are already going about their day.

You can do this by:

• Placing interactive kiosks in libraries, community centres, or transport hubs.
• Adding QR codes to signage in public spaces, linking to quick polls or planning updates.
• Using mobile forms so people can quickly give feedback in the moment.

Too many people are left out of government engagement because of language, disability, or technology barriers.

If participation is only available online, only in English, or only in written form, whole parts of the community are excluded, especially those without English as a first language, First Nations peoples, disabled people, older adults, and those without reliable internet.

You can do this by:

• Offering information in plain English, common community languages, and formats that support screen readers, captions, and sign language.
• Running in-person workshops alongside digital tools so that people who aren’t online can still be part of the process.
• Using an AI tool like Agentforce to automatically translate content or change how it’s delivered depending on the user, for example, switching from text to audio, or adjusting reading levels.

If governments want better and more inclusive outcomes, the process has to be inclusive.

People are far more likely to engage when they can see that their input actually makes a difference. One of the biggest barriers to trust is when people take time out of their day to give detailed feedback, and seemingly nothing comes of it.

To keep people showing up and sharing their voices, governments need to clearly explain the results and how community voices shaped the outcome.

You can do this by:

• Regularly reporting on what changed or improved as a direct result of community feedback.
• Sharing decisions and outcomes using clear dashboards, visual summaries or short videos that people can actually understand.
• Being upfront about what level of influence people will have from the start, and delivering on that promise.

Tools like Data Cloud can help track and visualise engagement data, making it easier to report back in a way that’s timely, clear and meaningful.

Citizen engagement isn’t the job of the comms team. It needs to be something everyone understands, from frontline staff to team leads, volunteers, and local community leaders.

If people on the ground don’t know how to listen, respond, or encourage participation, opportunities to connect are easily missed.

You can ensure you’re doing this by:

• Training your staff in inclusive communication, digital tools, and co-design methods that make engagement easier and more meaningful.
• Giving community leaders, volunteers, and local organisations the support they need to lead conversations and bring others in.
• Using internal tools to coordinate engagement across departments, so people aren’t repeating themselves or falling through the cracks.

Engagement works best when it’s practical, visible, and part of everyday service delivery. These two examples show how governments have improved the way they connect with the public, and what that’s meant for the people they serve.

In response to COVID-19, the Ministry of Health NZ needed a secure, central system to manage citizen data, engagement, and service delivery at a national scale. Existing processes were too fragmented for a fast, coordinated response.

They adapted an existing system built on Salesforce (using Service Cloud, Shield, and MuleSoft) to create an integrated platform for case tracking, communication, and service delivery.

The contact tracing system went live in a staggeringly short 10 days. It later expanded to support quarantine management, vaccine rollout, and more. Having a clear system that was easy to engage with built trust in the community and gave frontline staff the tools they needed to respond quickly and confidently.

Chicago’s call center was struggling to meet rising demand. With a shrinking budget and a large, diverse population to serve, their outdated system left residents waiting for updates or submitting repeat requests.

To modernise, the city rebuilt its entire call system on Government Cloud, using Service Cloud, Field Service, and Tableau. The new setup connected self-service portals, mobile apps, and backend workflows, making it easier for both staff and citizens to manage requests and track progress.

The results were significant. Case closure rates increased from 82% to 94%, and service request scheduling dropped from an hour to only five to 10 minutes. On top of this, residents could now access information 24/7, see real-time updates, and get faster responses to everyday issues like potholes, permits, and public events.

Engaging citizens is all about designing services that include the people they’re meant to serve. Through the use of the right tools, removing barriers to participation, and showing how feedback shapes outcomes, governments can build lasting trust and deliver services that better reflect community needs.

Salesforce helps public sector teams make this possible by supporting engagement at every level, from local feedback to large-scale service delivery. To get started, visit Salesforce for Public Sector or watch the free demo here.