Shifting from co-design towards co-decide
It’s time we shift from co-design to co-decide!
In recent times there has been a push to ensure that Indigenous peoples have a seat at the table when making decisions. This process is called co-design and draws its beginnings from the Scandinavian theory of Participatory Design. In theory, a project that needs to be completed is completed by firstly involving the community stakeholders that the project is designed for. The stakeholders drive the project design and are included throughout the whole process, therefore leading to a result that benefits the community. Sounds great. Yet it doesn’t work.
The issue with this approach is that it is severely restricted by the decisions makers of the project. They are the people who control the budgets and have the final say. Often, these decision makers are working for the person who gives the funding, and often their job security depends on staying on budget and meeting the KPIs outlined in the original project design. In the end, they will always do what’s best for them.
In the Indigenous space, there has been a real push towards co-design. At times the project manager KPI’s will include ‘must create a co-design framework and demonstrate engagement'. My concern with this approach is that simply creating a co-design model does not empower Indigenous projects and certainly does not empower Indigenous people. The projects often fail because they do not have any Indigenous decision-makers. Indigenous people with the power to approve and deny spending. Those strong Indigenous leaders will be in the room for the co-design, often for free, giving their Intellectual property away for the benefit of their communities. Yet they have no power and cannot impact the project. For some reason, we have not matured to a point in Australia where we can trust Indigenous people to make the decisions.
The reality is that just being heard is not enough. Being heard, consulted with, and believing that you have input on the decision, only to find out that you don’t, is soul destroying. For decades Indigenous leaders are gathered around the table and asked to provide their input. On one side of the table are the decision makers for the Indigenous community and on the other are decision makers for the project. The difference is that only the project managers have the power to make decisions, and this leads to a deep feeling of being powerless for Indigenous leaders. Not that long ago I heard an Aunty who entered the co-design room say ‘I have been having this conversation for 40 years, why are we here doing this again?’ Well, we are here because the people on the other side don’t want us to have the power to make the decisions, or possibly they don’t trust us.
The time is right to shift from co-design to co-decide. There is a referendum coming that will put Indigenous people at the forefront of decision-making. Now is the time to consider how we make opportunities for Indigenous peoples to have the power to make the decisions towards outcomes that affect them. We need to change, because when you deep dive into the closing the gap reports and see that the gaps are getting worse for our Indigenous people then it becomes clear that what we are doing now doesn’t work. We need a new way and the way is co-decide.
