About Capacity Consutling
At CrownShy, we believe that high-quality public participation doesn’t happen by accident. It requires governments and public institutions to build the skills, structures, and confidence to do engagement well consistently, inclusively, and with a clear link to decision-making.
That’s why we offer Participation Capacity Consulting: tailored training and advisory support to help organisations move beyond one-way consultation and embed a culture of meaningful dialogue with their communities. Our approach combines three elements:
Training
giving staff the hosting, facilitation, participation design, and outreach skills they need.
Digital tools
using our Comhairle platform to host resources, support live engagement, and sustain learning.
Networks
helping institutions develop the internal peer support and coordination mechanisms that keep participation alive across departments.
Why capacity matters
Many councils, public bodies and local authorities want to engage better with their citizens, but often lack the internal infrastructure to do so. Engagement can end up fragmented: individual departments run one-off consultations, data sits in silos, and citizen voices fail to translate into coherent policy.
Without internal skills and systems, even the best-designed public participation risks becoming tokenistic. What’s needed is not just more engagement, but a way to embed participation into the organisation’s everyday practice.
Learning from Taiwan: the Participation Officer Network
A powerful example comes from Taiwan. In 2016, the government launched the Participation Officer (PO) Network, coordinated by the Public Digital Innovation Space (PDIS). Civil servants from 32 ministries were brought together to act as participation champions, meeting regularly to identify issues, design engagement processes, and share learning.
The PO Network has been described as “the missing half of open government.” While many open government initiatives focus on external openness (citizens’ access to information, online consultations, open data), Taiwan realised the other half was missing: internal openness. Without structures for civil servants to collaborate across departments, citizen input risks being fragmented or ignored.
By building this internal network, Taiwan created the conditions for cross-ministerial collaboration, more joined-up policymaking, and a stronger culture of participation within government.
Our team at CrownShy brings first-hand experience of supporting the establishment and institutionalisation of Taiwan’s PO Network, and we now draw on that learning to support governments in other contexts.
Building capacity through training
Of course, not every government can or should simply replicate Taiwan's network. What matters is building capacity in a way that fits the local context. That’s where training comes in.
CrownShy’s consultants and trainers bring deep experience in participatory practice.
For example:
- Andy Paice has designed or facilitated more than 15 Citizens’ Assemblies and Juries in the UK, and delivered participation training in councils such as Newham, Derbyshire, and Lancaster.
- Shu Yang Lin, co-founder of Taiwan’s government innovation lab PDIS, played a pivotal role in setting up the Participation Officer Network, helping embed participation across ministries.
- Dr. Stuart Lynn, CrownShy’s co-founder and CTO, brings expertise in civic technology and data science, designing digital systems to support engagement at scale.