Adopting Citizen Science as a Tool to Enhance Monitoring for an Environment Agency

Abstract

The New South Wales’ (NSW) Government of Australia through the Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) has recognised the potential of citizen science for improving environmental outcomes for NSW. Citizen science can achieve two primary objectives for government: (1) expanding the potential for information collection, analysis, and curation; and (2) engaging and motivating the community who become involved. It also has the potential to increase inter-agency collaboration to achieve state and national large-scale policy objectives. In 2016 OEH made a firm commitment to citizen science by creating a position focused on citizen science and releasing a three-year citizen science strategy. The vision of this strategy is to “drive a new era of public participation in science by developing collaborative projects that support decision-making and are engaging for the public.” The emphasis on a real contribution by citizen scientists to decision-making is a critical and distinguishing part of this vision. To support this, OEH has a position statement defining the standards adhered to by OEH citizen science projects. Here we detail how the staff involved achieved agency support and endorsement for its citizen science program. We describe pilot studies implemented to demonstrate how citizen science can augment environmental monitoring and enhance the way OEH interacts with its citizen science community. We outline organisational challenges (e.g., data management, agility, and branding) that we encountered when establishing a citizen science program as well as the steps undertaken to address these challenges. We close by discussing some of the ways government can use citizen science as part of Australian policy delivery, and articulate ways in which the government can provide ongoing support to citizen science.

Keywords

• government
• citizen science
• strategy
• decision-making
• barriers