Overview

Posted by Barry Griffiths on January 25th 2007

The Digital Dialogues initiative began with four broad questions:

  1. How can central government strengthen consultation and interaction with citizens using ICT?
  2. How can government improve intra- and inter-departmental communications using digital information and communication technology?
  3. Which ICT-led techniques and tools are suitable for use by central government?
  4. What demand exists amongst the public for interaction with the government via ICT?

To answer these questions the Ministry of Justice (former DCA) wanted first to assess what capacity and activity was already present across central government, and second to observe the use of ICT for public consultation by policy teams (with the aim of embedding democratic engagement and leadership principles).

To support the first objective the Ministry of Justice (former DCA) undertook interviews and meetings with communications and policy teams across central government. To support the second objective, an action-research programme was designed to evaluate the application of ICT from the beginning to the end of consultation activity.

Some ICT applications – such as email and online surveys – are now in mainstream use in government consultation. The Ministry of Justice (former DCA) wanted to build on these foundations and explore the potential of more deliberative and innovative online platforms. Three platforms were selected based on their popularity in the consumer market and their occasional use in eParticipation exercises – blogs, forums and webchats.

Government agencies, departments and ministerial offices were contacted and invited to participate in the Digital Dialogues research. The initiative sought two types of government participant:

  • Those already running online engagement exercises interested in taking advantage of independent, external evaluation;
  • Those interested but new to participation online. This group was offered the opportunity to make use of one or more of the online applications as part of their communication, public engagement or consultation processes, in isolation from, or in parallel to, conventional, offline techniques.

As part of the pilot dynamic, emphasis was placed on the case study team being self-sufficient at each stage of the exercise with guidance being provided by the Hansard Society (based on current good practice at a parliamentary and local government level) only where it could not be resourced from within a team or department.

Examples of the guidance provided by the Hansard Society include:

  • Providing initial training/briefing to participants on general eParticipation principles and specific tools;
  • Assisting in liaison with existing support networks within departments, for example, communications and IT teams;
  • Oversight of set-up and implementation of pilot case studies;
  • Co-production of site content;
  • Assessment of software requirements in relation to consultation objectives;
  • Providing guidance to departments on recruiting consultation participants;
  • Providing support in moderation of online interaction between government and citizens. All the case study owners were encouraged to carry out their own moderation where possible. Where support was required this was only applied to administrative moderation and not facilitation, which was solely a responsibility of the case study owners.

The Hansard Society worked with long-term technology partners, Vohm (www.vohm.com), to develop and build the applications used in Phase One of Digital Dialogues. All the applications were built using open source software.

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