Outcomes

A review of the Waterways Ireland project suggests several learning points worth considering before embarking upon an E-Consultation exercise. This section first reviews the key concerns, usability and others, before outlining learning outcomes.

Usability

Usability Tests

Because of the low participation in the discussion forum, the researchers ran some usability tests. Staff at Waterways Ireland who had not been involved in the consultation, but who obviously had some interest and understanding of the subject (like the target participants), were asked to think aloud while carrying out tasks of:

1. Finding information on the site
2. Finding the discussion forum, and
3. Posting a message to the discussion forum.

Design of the Site

The usability test identified the main concerns. These concerns were centred on the design of the site. They are listed as the following:

1. The instructions were not clear enough. People registered but then had difficulty locating the space to enter their comments.
2. The four options offered were seen as confusing to people.
3. The language used was too technical and assumed prior technical knowledge. Again, people felt this was off-putting.
4. The registration page asked too many questions. People were not sure of the relevance of these questions in the context of the overall consultation. The content itself was seen as difficult, ‘dry’ and hard to understand.

Overall, the potential for e-consultation was recognised by people. Improvement to the site would be to make it more concise and easier to use.

Other issues

Resource Scarcity

The issue of resources — particularly in relation to publicising consultations — became a major issue with the lack of success of this trial. While Waterways Ireland were keen to utilise e-technology in what was a rather complex consultation, it soon became clear that much more publicity would have been necessary in order to increase the number of respondents.

No Review of Advertisements

Approximately 150 members were e-mailed about the e-consultation. Adverts were placed in one evening newspaper — the Belfast Telegraph, and two local papers. These advertisements were run for one day. The information was also circulated to umbrella organisations such as NICVA. There were no follow up e-mails or phone calls.

Resource Allocation

In a subsequent interview, a representative from Waterways Ireland acknowledged that resource allocation was a problem in relation to the consultation. Because the e-consultation on equality impact was seen very much as a ‘trial run’ for the more substantial consultation on ‘by-laws’, fewer resources were allocated. The researchers outlined the amount of resources, particularly in relation to human resources, that would be necessary to deploy. This included using ‘waves’ of publicity through various media over a period of weeks, with follow-up phoning and mailing. Waterways Ireland simply did not have these resources available for the e-consultation.

Nature of the Consultation

The nature of the consultation itself, based on a technical and complex issue, was never going to inspire universal interest or appeal. The language used in the consultation document did not lend itself to different levels of ability, given its legalistic nature. In addition, writing for the web is different to writing long documents. Usability studies show people scan for key words, rather than reading from top to bottom. It may be necessary to use copywriters to rewrite documents for web sites, and even more so for discussion forums.

Conclusion

Main areas of Concern

In conclusion, the low uptake in this e-consultation resulted from loss of potential participants at 4 stages:

1. Lack of Publicity: Few people knew about the consultation or the e-consultation site due to a lack of publicity.
2. Langauge: Those who found their way to the site were put off by the language used. This is a common problem with consultation documents, but it is exacerbated by the way people read web sites.
3. Browsing issues: Those who managed to read some of the document then had difficulties finding the discussion forum and registering for it.
4. Nature of Questions asked: Those who registered for the discussion forum were then presented with the same dry questions asked in the consultation document. They were too bland to stimulate argument. Discussion forums, like focus groups, need questions to prompt a response, perhaps even projective ones. It also helps if the forums are seeded with comments from a few people who have promised to take part and get things going. People are scared of being the first person to say something.

Final Comments

It was perfectly rational to run the e-consultation along traditional lines. This suited the nature of the Section 75 equality consultation, and the experience of the consultation organisers. We concurred with this design. What we found out from this trial was that:

1. Consider the transition from paper to an online format carefully: Putting traditional processes on-line, without modification, does not work.
2. Online media is just another form of communication: Because something is on-line does not mean people will come. It is not a better mousetrap. You still need publicity.