What is 'Public Involvement?'

There is some understandable confusion about the distinctions between public involvement, public information, public relations and public education services. 

Think of those services as pots of simmering soup. Each pot has some of the same basic ingredients, including for example, respect for the ability of the public to understand complex problems and contribute to better, more stable solutions. And each pot of soup has some unique ingredients that set it apart from the others.

Here are short, functional definitions of the four types of services:

• Public involvement is the process of seeking out, considering and addressing public opinions and a range of public perspectives in the decision-making process. It emphasizes citizen participation in the formation of public policy or in site-specific decisions. In contrast to public relations, which promotes and/or sells a product or idea, public involvement is the process by which interested parties have structured opportunities to actively influence the direction of technical or analytical work at the key decision points in the life of a project.
• Public information is one-way communication with the public. It conveys information about decisions and events to interested people. It relays news to the public using such tools as press releases, fact sheets, newsletters and the electronic and print media. Public information is founded on the basic principle that the public must have access to information to be responsible, informed citizens.
• Public relations involves promotional work to gain favorable responses to particular products or points of view.
• Public education is explicitly aimed at reaching public audiences with carefully crafted materials or performances that make people think. By pulling public audiences into active consideration of a problem, public education points the way for people to devise actions that will address a particular problem or set of problems.

--Excerpted from an article by Triangle Associates