In addition to improving the quality of citizen participation in government sponsored programs, HRCCE will address the fundamental and difficult problem of restoring the public life of the community. Progress toward this ambitious goal can be made through dedicated work creating or enhancing existing settings for citizens talking to other citizens about their lives, interests, and values in their communities apart from public agencies’ programmatic interests. HRCCE will work with nongovernmental organizations of many kinds, with civic leagues, nonprofit agencies, and with large and small businesses, providing mediated settings to structure and facilitate deliberative discussion of community life, governance and the community that is the Hampton Roads region.

Deliberative Democracy is the often used description of a new field combining innovation in group and organizational process and new applications of information technology in service to civil society. The more well known innovations developed in recent years emphasize use of computer and internet technologies to inform citizen participation and to develop collective opinion that can be fed back to discussants and/or to public agency executives. Programs like Deliberative Polling©, AmericaSpeaks©, Citizen Jury©, and Study Circles©1 among others, have been used by major cities and urban regions in the U.S. and internationally, often focusing on particular pre-identified issues of concern to public agencies. HRCCE intends to selectively bring these programs to the Hampton Roads region, tailoring their application to this region’s population, its structure of 16 independent cities and counties, and to southeastern Virginia’s social and economic environment. The Center goes well beyond bringing such tested programs to Hampton Roads. In collaboration and joint ventures with the region’s public and private universities and local governments, the Center intends to develop a strong civic engagement program of research and practice tailored to the southeastern Virginia region, building the region’s own lasting capacity for civic enrichment. It is in building Hampton Roads’ capacity for civic engagement that HRCCE finds its mission.

The practices, techniques and technologies of Deliberative Democracy are likely to draw increasing interest from public agency executives and elected officials dealing with controversial issues, programs and projects. In most instances reviews of these programs have been very positive; they have been lauded as major steps forward when compared to traditional public participation procedures routinely employed by agencies of local, state and the federal government. HRCCE will provide an institutional resource within southeastern Virginia which public agencies may access either to help in designing participation plans an agency will conduct, or as local partner in contracting with one of the nationally marketed programs identified above, or, as direct implementer of a participation program using small or large group facilitation processes and applied information technology. Working with government agencies and elected officials, HRCCE can build the region’s capacity to more effectively engage the public in the public’s business. Using the region’s intellectual capital, e.g. VMASC and other university based research programs; it is likely that HRCCE will contribute new techniques in citizen engagement that will be models for other regions nationally and internationally.