City of Houston\'s Bureau of Air Quality

¶ … City of Houston's Bureau of Air Quality Control was implementing a series of new policies, technologies and strategies and needed to communicate these challenges to its constituents. The case study focuses on the challenges of communicating these issues to the minority communities of Houston. There are areas in that city that are minority-majority with both Hispanic-Americans and African-Americans, and this has significant implications for technical communications between the citizens of these areas and the Bureau. How the Bureau approached these challenges is the subject matter of this paper.

Theoretical Background

Technical communication is an emerging discipline undergoing a process of professionalization (Coppola, 2012). This means that there are not many proven theories upon which to draw an understanding of the issues faced by the Bureau. Williams and James (2009) note that the body of knowledge for dealing with American-born minority communities is especially thin. As a consequence, the Bureau was forced to draw upon other research and adapt those ideas in order to improve its own communication with Houston's minority communities.

One such theory was that of Lukensmeyer and Torres, describing a condition of citizen engagement where the citizens were engaged by the Bureau in order to determine what their needs are and how those needs can be met. This is part of stakeholder theory, where the different stakeholders are provided the opportunity to provide their input on an issue.

Nam (2012) notes that Internet technologies are often used as a means of improving citizen engagement. Citizen-sourcing initiatives can be informed through a variety of digital communication media. Nam provides a framework for evaluating the effectiveness of these different initiatives. With appropriate platform design, citizen-sourcing can be an effective method, but Nam does not directly address the issue of low Internet penetration among the underprivileged classes in segregated cities like Houston. His recommendations might be powerful in a wealthier setting, but they do highlight the gap between the existing research and the reality of dealing in Houston's inner city neighborhoods.

A third theory that can inform this process is Coppola's academic-practitioner partnership. This is actually where the Williams and James study comes from. In this venture, the academics are studying the different approaches of the practitioners to get a better sense of what the best practices might be. This is important because of how little this issue is actually studied.

The practitioners in this case used three major strategies -- the information level, the consultation level and the community engagement level, as well as the collaboration level. This means that they initially focused on finding the best ways to information the public about the issues. This meant at times adjusting the language to make it easier to understand, something that is always good practice when seeking to information non-insider stakeholder groups

With consultation, community engagement and collaboration, the objectives are to get input from the community about not only the issues that matter but potential solutions as well. The community in this instance is viewed almost as a strategic partner in the issue, and their advice is taken into consideration when the search of solutions is undertaken.

Accountability

The public sector communications strategies mentioned above help to create conditions of greater accountability. This is because there is direct interaction with constituencies. Information, for example, is the lowest order to communication but it provides transparency. The community becomes aware of the key issues, which is important for the community to form its own opinions on the subject matter.