Healthier Democracies: The Participatory Governance Index
The Participatory Governance Index (PGI) is a rubric, an assessment tool made up of categories and criteria designed to help you understand the many component parts of a healthy government engagement system. This rubric is designed to be used by individuals or small groups to support the exploration of key concepts and their relationships to the daily work of engagement in government contexts.
You can use this tool to better understand your system’s successes and challenges within each engagement category or across categories, to plan or prioritize your own development, or as an opportunity to bring people together for conversation around shared values. The PGI also has an accompanying user guide to help you better understand its criteria and usage.
The four areas measured by the PGI are:
Engagement structures: patterned or organized opportunities for engagement that support cross-sector and government-community collaborations
Commitment to engagement: investment in engagement as a core value that guides efforts to promote participation
Opportunities for engagement: participation that is normalized and embedded into decision-making and that guides citizen-centered governance strategies
Community building: engagement processes that foster meaningful connections between and within communities
