Elaine Specht, Andrew Walker, Gene Gardner
Waste Policy Institute

Diana Krop
U.S. Department of Energy

The Waste Policy Institute (WPI), through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is researching how best to integrate communication and involvement activities related to technology development and deployment. While this project examines the full range of OST's audiences, from technology producers to technology users, this paper focuses on the data we've collected about the information needs and involvement preferences of stakeholders living in communities near DOE sites where innovative technologies will be put into use. This data was collected through focus groups, questionnaires, and one-on-one interviews.

Our research to date indicates that DOE needs to first identify the segment of the population that wishes to be involved in technology decision making. While that group is small, it does exist, and other people in the community count on these people to be involved. Those who are interested in and choose to be involved in technology decision making want to view technology demonstrations and participate in meetings where funding deliberations take place. To be effective, communication products such as printed publications and web sites should be developed as supplements to the face-to-face, interactive communication that takes place during meetings and demonstrations. Stakeholders suggest that technology development and deployment information in publications, web pages, reports, exhibits, or other products be explained within the context of DOE's larger environmental management mission.

Our society relies on new technologies to meet some of our most challenging problems. The mission of U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science and Technology (OST) is to develop and deploy new technologies that can address the complexity and magnitude of cleanup from the legacy of nuclear weapons production. But the adoption of new technologies depends in large part upon OST's ability to successfully communicate with a variety of audiences.

At every step in decision-making and stakeholder involvement, there is a need for information and a synthesis of information. Like many government agencies, OST dedicates large amounts of resources to the production of publications and other products designed to communicate information to stakeholders about new technologies. But it was not known to what degree these materials were useful and effective in communicating with the intended audiences or to what degree the design and production of these materials was integrated with and impacted stakeholder involvement.

Through a cooperative agreement with DOE, the Waste Policy Institute (WPI) and OST have worked together to advance the state of knowledge and practice in communication and involvement with stakeholders in technology development and deployment. We are in the second year of the five-year agreement. Our activities have primarily included communication research, evaluation, planning, and product development.

Defined in the broadest sense, OST has a wide range of stakeholders that can be divided into three main categories. There are researchers and developers in universities, industry, and other federal agencies whose interests are in collaborating with OST to develop technologies (technology developers). There are also decision makers at DOE or other environmental clean up sites who are interested in using innovative technologies that OST has ready for deployment (technology users). Finally, there are people who neither develop or use environmental technologies, but have great interest in participating in the decisions related to their development and deployment. These technology "participants" include regulators, Congressional officials and staff, and community members who live near the sites where technologies will be used. This paper will focus on those aspects of our research that address the information needs and involvement preferences of community stakeholders.

During the first two years of this research project, we have followed the methodology illustrated in Fig. 1 to answer questions such as: what audiences are important to OST, what information do those audiences want, and what are the most effective ways to get that information to those audiences so they can be involved in technology decision making.

Since communication is a two-way process involving both receivers and producers of information, WPI is using three different methods to collect data from both receivers and producers of OST information. Our goal is to offer recommendations to OST in the form of a research-based approach for integrating communication products in stakeholder involvement activities. In Fig. 1, the triangle depicting information "receivers" is shown to be bigger. We have placed greater significance on collecting data from information receivers because, prior to our research, audience needs had not received much attention or investigation from OST. At the beginning of this project, OST's communication and involvement practices were primarily one-way (from OST to its audiences).

The first research and evaluation activity WPI completed was a national telephone survey. What we learned from the survey shaped the research that followed. Our research and evaluation activities completed or in progress are shown in Fig. 2. The reason for conducting the activity and what was learned from the activity is briefly summarized. More detail about the activities follows.

Together with the Virginia Tech Center for Survey Research, WPI completed the national telephone survey in February 1997 to gather baseline data to assess the effectiveness of OST's existing information products. People on OST's mailing lists for three existing publications were randomly selected to answer questions about the publication(s) they received, OST exhibits, and homepages. They were asked when they would like to be involved in technology development decisions and how they would like to receive information. The survey results showed how several key OST's audiences rated and used OST communication products. However, few community stakeholders were on the mailing lists for OST, so the survey did not provide statistically significant data on the viewpoints of that audience.

Since general community stakeholders were under represented in the national telephone survey, we decided to conduct focus groups near two DOE sites to get the general public's opinions on their information needs related to technology development and deployment. We also asked about how they would like to be involved in technology decision making. The focus groups were held in June 1997 in Idaho Falls (near the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory) and North Augusta, South Carolina (near the Savannah River Site). In an effort to gain various perspectives from the community, we collected membership lists of area town and city councils, county boards of supervisors, school boards, economic development agencies, chambers of commerce, unions, health and human service organizations, and area clergy. Two or three invitees were randomly selected from each list. In cases where the first choice declined, we contacted the second person, and so on. The focus group was held during the evening and lasted 90 minutes. Participants were not paid. During the session, we asked questions about the kind of information participants wanted to receive about technology development, how they wanted to be involved in technology development decision making, and their opinions of the OST communication products that were shown during the session.

While the participants did have concerns related to DOE's activities in their area, the development, selection, and use of innovative environmental technologies was not among them. As long as cleanup takes place, these community stakeholders had little, if any, interest in how it is done. They are more interested in the type, amount, and location of waste or contamination at a DOE site. They also tend to be interested in knowing when, how, and where waste will be transported if it is removed from or taken to the DOE site. However, even though they showed interest in those topics, their level of interest was not necessarily great enough for them to wish to be actively involved in discussing these matters with DOE officials. They said their active involvement in other organizations did not leave time for them to become active in following what DOE is doing at the nearby site.

Although members of the community stakeholder focus groups showed little interest in being involved in technology decision making, they did provide feedback on current and potential OST and DOE communication products. They said they would not be inclined to read any of the current OST publications they were shown because they were too long and too detailed. Most focus group participants said they did not have access to the World Wide Web and would not use that as a way to learn more about DOE or technology development. They suggested that to get information to the general public, OST or DOE should design special exhibits and programs for children. They believed people would be likely to take interest in what their children were learning either at school, on field trips, or at an interactive kiosk or exhibit in a mall, area science museum, or festival. They also suggested that weekly features in the local newspaper, television spotlights, or weekly radio shows would help gradually educate people about what is going on at the nearby DOE site. While these suggestions would benefit DOE or the Office of Environmental Management, which have broader education missions, developing special children or public education programs may be beyond OST's current role in developing and deploying technologies.

Even though the participants in the community stakeholder focus groups examined OST products and attempted to provide helpful input on how OST should communicate about technology develop and deployment, it was clear that these topics were of little interest and importance to them. They said they did not have the technical knowledge necessary to provide input on cleanup technologies and they were not motivated to become knowledgeable. However, they recognized that there are members of their communities who do follow DOE activities, are interested in being involved, and have the technical knowledge or interest necessary to provide meaningful input. The focus group participants still felt it was important for DOE to involve those people in their decision making. The community stakeholders who participated in the focus groups indicated they were willing to defer to interested stakeholders and technical experts from their communities to represent their interests.

Based on the results from the first round of focus groups, we decided to hold additional focus groups with people who choose to be involved in DOE and OST decision making. Since general community stakeholders were willing to defer to them, we wanted to find out from those people who belong to established DOE stakeholder groups what type of information they need from OST and how they would like to receive it.

We held a focus group with members of the Site Specific Advisory Boards (SSAB), Site Technology Coordination Group (STCG), and Community Leaders Network (CLN) near DOE's Hanford Site. We also planned to hold a focus group with members of the Oak Ridge SSAB and Local Oversight Committee (LOC), however, DOE officials in Oak Ridge requested that a questionnaire be sent to those individuals instead.

In the focus group and questionnaire, we asked questions similar to those asked during the focus groups with general community stakeholders. We wanted to learn about the interest level of these stakeholders in technology development and deployment issues, what kinds of information they wanted about technology development, how they wanted to be involved in technology development decision making, and what their opinions were of existing OST communication products.

The data we collected verified that these people are more interested than the general public in participating in technology development and deployment issues. People who participate in DOE stakeholder involvement groups are extremely knowledgeable about DOE, technology development issues, issues of concern to the site they live near, and how they want to be involved. Most believe that technology development is necessary in order to move DOE's cleanup program forward. Their concerns about technology development and deployment issues, however, fall behind some other concerns such as knowing the type, location, and amount of contamination at a site or where and how waste is stored and transported.

In response to how they want to be involved in decision making related to technology development and deployment, members of DOE stakeholder involvement groups suggest they would most like to view technology demonstrations and to participate in funding deliberations. They also said it is best to receive information in person by having technology program representatives make presentations at their meetings.

In addition, they say written information such as publications, fact sheets, reports, and exhibits, can be useful, but only as supplements to face-to-face communication. Because they are actively involved in many aspects of what is going on at a DOE site, they get a great deal of written information. Since they are volunteers, however, they do not have time to read everything they receive. They would prefer to have the information as backup to what they learn about at a meeting or technology demonstration. Although community stakeholders also see value in putting information on the World Wide Web, most say they do not have web access at home. If they do have web access, they do not use it to look up information on DOE.

When addressing community stakeholders in person or through communication products, they say it is best to put the information into the context of what problems are addressed by implementing an innovative technology. Stakeholders observe that presentations or publications often describe in great detail how a technology works, but not when or where it would be useful for addressing an existing cleanup problem.

Additional research and evaluation activities are being conducted through this cooperative agreement. We have completed an annotated bibliography citing articles, books, and resources covering topics related to communication and public involvement aspects of deploying innovative cleanup technologies. The focus of the annotated bibliography was to develop a useful reference for researchers and practitioners in communication and public involvement. Since our literature search turned up few articles directly related to our research, we knew our project would be breaking new ground.

In order to benefit from the experiences of and lessons learned by other organizations, we are in the process of conducting a best practices review. The review includes examining case studies of public involvement practices used by federal and state agencies as well as industry in an effort to put an innovative technology into use. We also will be interviewing the producers of information in federal agencies with technology research, development, and deployment missions.

We have also created a web site located at http://www.wpi.org/rcpi to facilitate sharing our research process and findings with communication and public involvement researchers and practitioners. We explain our methodology and provide executive summaries of reports on each completed data gathering activity. There is also a searchable version of the annotated bibliography.

The data collection we have completed to date as well as what is still in progress will be summarized into recommendations for a research-based approach to integrating communication and public involvement into technology development and deployment activities. The goal of the research-based approach is to provide practical advice for people in federal agencies who are responsible for communicating with and involving a variety of stakeholders in their research, development, and deployment activities.

To date, our significant research and evaluation findings related to the information needs and involvement preferences of community stakeholders can be grouped into four areas as discussed below.

1. Most members of the general public do not wish to be directly involved in technology development and deployment issues.

2. Interested stakeholders want to be involved by viewing technology demonstrations and by participating in meetings where funding deliberations take place.

3. To be most effective, communication with interested stakeholders must be face-to-face and interactive.

4. When communicating about technology development and deployment, it is important to put that information into the context of DOE's larger environmental management mission.

The research and evaluation summarized in this paper was completed with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science and Technology under Cooperative Agreement No. DE-FC02-96CH10849.

The Virginia Tech Center for Survey Research was subcontracted to conduct the National Telephone Survey. The Survey Center also provided invaluable advice on many of the other research and evaluation activities summarized in this paper.

Kerry Dodson of Waste Policy Institute assisted with arranging, conducting, and analyzing the focus groups, interviews, and questionnaires discussed in this paper.

1. Development and Testing of Methodology for Communicating with and Involving the Public in the Deployment of Innovative Environmental Technologies: National Telephone Survey. Waste Policy Institute, Virginia Tech Center for Survey Research, and U.S. Department of Energy. February 1997.
2. Development and Testing of Methodology for Communicating with and Involving the Public in the Deployment of Innovative Environmental Technologies: Focus Group Report, Part I. Waste Policy Institute and U.S. Department of Energy. July 1997.
3. Development and Testing of Methodology for Communicating with and Involving the Public in the Deployment of Innovative Environmental Technologies: Annotated Bibliography. Waste Policy Institute and U.S. Department of Energy. August 1997.
4. Development and Testing of Methodology for Communicating with and Involving the Public in the Deployment of Innovative Environmental Technologies: Interviews with Information Receivers. Waste Policy Institute and U.S. Department of Energy. November 1997.
5. Development and Testing of Methodology for Communicating with and Involving the Public in the Deployment of Innovative Environmental Technologies: Focus Group Report, Part II. Waste Policy Institute and U.S. Department of Energy. December 1997.

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