The future ofonline consultations

Emma ParnellSenior Service Designer

emma@wearesnook.com@worddoodles_ep

Michelle BrookDirector of Policy and

Researchmichelle@demsoc.org

@MLBrook

Snook are an award-winning design agency based in Glasgow & London, helping organisations produce great services by putting people first

We’re on a mission to make services better everywhere From helping people bank more easily to looking after their health, from travelling on holiday to making sure their house always has power.We work with organisations to ensure the services they provide enable people to do get things done easily, so they always choose you first and receive the service they need.

The Democratic Society (Demsoc) is a not-for-profit membership organisation with offices in Edinburgh, Manchester, Brighton, and Brussels, that promotes participation, dialogue, networked democracy, and active citizenship.

DemSoc are...DemSoc promote and encourage open, participatory democratic processes that are trusted and effectiveWe support public organisations, from parish councils to the European Commission, and the communities that they serve through service delivery, consultancy, education, and advocacy.

1. The Process2. The Recommendations

1. So how did we doit and what did we learn?

GDS needed to understand how the process of online consultation, as run by central Government, could be improved.

Q&A is the current dominant modelin the UK

1. User groupsWe broke down who the initial user groups ‘might’ be, ensuring we had both sides represented equally

‘Users’ are not theonly people whouse services

2. ContextualWe visited people in their environments. The place they would be responding to/creating consultations to understand the reality

3. User Journeys We broke down the journey of a consultation, from motivation through response to analysis, and documented it for future design teams

Think about who will pick up your research and how they’ll use it

4. Use Cases We identified the user needs across each stage of the process, capturing these asuse cases

5. Desk researchWe undertook an audit of existing service platforms being used by Governments, and brought together global best practice in alternative consultation methods

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6. Tiered recommendations We provided a suite of recommendations to outline what GDS should (and shouldn’t) build to improve the ‘now’ of consultation with wider options to develop the model in the future

A few learnings

The big vision is hard to implement. Give people things they can do tomorrow.

Default should showonly open consultations

Discovery research canstill capture the granular level of detail

Draft policy is 4 sign offs,launch date is 3 sign offs including Number 10

Create partnershipsthat work

Sector experts paired with design research expertise created actionable insights with depth

2. What did we find outand what were our conclusions?

From aroundthe world...

The dominant model of consultation is a survey, with questions set by civil servants, with respondents being invited to answer these.

Worldwide: seeing different ideas of good practice emerge. 27

Department of Health (UK)

Good consideration for audiences they are interacting with.

Scotland

Publishing responses received, with names attached where organisations/individuals choose to allow this.

Ontario

Publishing and visualising respondent data.

Transport for London

Information relevant to respondents embeddedin webpage, not pdf.

Going beyond the survey model

Increasingly seeing different ideas emerging that enable consultation, but don’t usea survey

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Deliberative discussion

New Zealand government using Github and Loomio to enable horizontal conversation and deeper exploration of issues.

Line-by-line commenting

Whitehouse using Madison platform to invite comment and contributions on the Public Participation Playbook.

Idea generation

‘Your Priorities’ platform being used for idea generation in the city of Reykjavik.

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What did users tell us?

Tiered recommendations

We provided a tiered approach to ‘what next’. There were short-term actions (hacks to the current gov.uk offering) and longer term direction

Immediate interventions

“Hack the now.”

Build a dedicated purpose-built GOV.UK page for consultations●Default to only showing

open consultations, with separate tabs to shows those being analysed and those closed

●Use full titles of departments, not abbreviations (eg. Public Health England rather than ‘PHE’)”

Build a dedicated purpose-built GOV.UK page for consultations●Consultations ordered in a

respondent-friendly fashion●Show summaries of

consultation underneath title

●Consideration how to better integrate the possibilities for engagement across Government and Parliament

Dedicated user-focussed unique consultation pages●Contain key information

at top to help decision making ○Why consultation is

happening○What proposals are○What can/can’t change○Public opinion, expert

view, unique personal impact

Dedicated user-focussed unique consultation pages●Target audience and

closing data●Estimated length of time●Documentation added

should be clearly labelled

“It is not just a technical problem. It is alsoa cultural problem”

Better support and guidance for civil servantsBuild in guidance for civil servants in the back endof the platform to educate about different types of consultation and guide them through the process

Participation design manualGoing beyond existing consultation principles and guidance on how to publish consultations, to showing examples of good practice, tools, methods, and ideas that have been shown to work well

Plan for tomorrow

GDS should create open and extensible core infrastructure for consultation toolsThe most significant trend we see in the digital consultation landscape is the broad uptake of a variety of different tools that enable options of interactions beyond a simple series of Q&A

Open and extensible core infrastructure for consultation tools●Take on ‘hack the now’

points○Nudges for civil servants○More thorough redesign

of consultation pages

Ensure a GOV.UK Q&A platform is available●Most common need for

civil servants at present is a simple survey tool. There are several existing tools on the market, and we have heard both praise and criticism of them all

Stimulate the civic tech market●Release specifications for

modules providing different types of interaction

●Catalyse the uptake of new methodologies and tools emerging while not limiting or taking ownership of them all

And imagine the future

Digital enables policy makers●Digital enables/makes

easier different ways of capturing information to inform service & policy design○Passive polling/data

capture○Scraping tweets○Consultation○Deliberation spaces○Opinion polls

Digital enables citizens●Can publish thoughts in

places where people may be more likely to find them

●Can self-organise in non-geographic ways

●Easier to find information, and opportunities to have voice heard

But….?How can we design the democratic engagement mechanisms and norms of the future…

Lots of questions remain●Consultation isn’t enough

- possibly some of the tools suggested can help

●Deliberation/consultation is expensive

●What sort of information flows are needed for engagement

●Citizen expectations - even when outside processes

Thank you

Emma ParnellSenior Service Designer

emma@wearesnook.com@worddoodles_ep

Michelle BrookDirector of Policy and

Researchmichelle@demsoc.org

@MLBrook