On Tuesday David Evans (MD of The Campaign Company) and myself presented to the Consultation Institute conference 'Technologies for Participation'
The event was being run in conjuncture with ICELE (The international centre for excellence in local democracy) and featured a host of speakers from local authoriities, local strategic partnerships, software vendors and other across the consultation and engagement spectrum.
A one of the presentations which were of particular interest included Steve Jarman, head of research at Cardiff City Council whose doing some interesting work around setting up a 'Data Observatory' for Wales, creating a consultation portal, 'E-Consult' and webcasting. Steve was giving clear direction that no single technological approach but instead a mixed methodology forms the basis of a successful use of technology in consultation.
The Campaign Company session focused on the use of wiki's for consultation, the presentation is available here.
Key points included:
- Wikis are most suitable where the audience is already engaged in the subject
- Wikis work as a part of a wider engagement strategy which includes appropriate methods to access and support every section of the audience
- Wikis are by definition a 'bottom up' platform, the struture and direction will be defined by the users. In light of this the organisation running the project has to be prepared to cede much of it's control to the audience
- Whilst hopefully the wiki will be driven by the audience, it will require continual moderation, support and training to ensure it is focused and accessible
In many ways Wikis offer very different opportunities to traditional e-consultation tools. The have the ability to creat community, bring policy makers and service deliverers together with service users and communities in a way a e-petition or voting handset can't. However to achieve this it has to be directed at the right audience, around the right issue and with the right support
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