Community participation in road safety policy development and strategy planning

Public participation in Western Australian (WA) government policy development and strategy setting is not governed by a particular best practice model. The WA Service Priority Review Working Together One Public Sector Delivering for WA, released 2017, identified the need to build a public sector focussed on community needs and to develop a whole of government citizen engagement strategy for WA, including co-designing. The Road Safety Commission (Commission) employs a diverse range of public participation and engagement initiatives. An initial step in preparing for development and introduction of a whole of government strategy review of the nature of public participation initiatives of the Commission. The review method was an analysis of five initiatives that provide reasonable representation of the Commission’s public participation and engagement activities. For the purposes of this review, the International Association for Public Participation spectrum of public participation has been used to classify the activities. This paper presents a summation of the review to date, communicating the current status and potential future direction of the Commission. Further work is required by the Commission.