TheorydeMoor

Evaluating a consultation case: tax credits

In the afternoon of 17 May, Aldo de Moor presented some of his work on GRASS, and his current research approach to this area: developing techniques to create ontologies that model the actors, workflows and events in discussions.

After his talk was over, we tried applying his approach to a tax credit consultation that AdviceNI recently completed. They had asked advice workers in independent advice centres across Northern Ireland to take part in a discussion on the problems families were having when they had received an overpayment of family tax credit from the Inland Revenue, and suddenly had to pay it back. The advice workers then brought in people from families affected by the problem to describe their experiences in the online discussion forum.

de Moor and Klerks' model has 4 levels, collaboration (including the goals), authoring (what objects are produced), support (for discussion) and discussion.

Collaboration

• Actor
  • Families
  • Citizens
  • Agencies
  • Advice Workers
    • Advice workers - employed by - agencies
  • Advice NI
    • Advice NI is an association of agencies
  • Policy Makers
• Goal
  • Tax problem definition
  • Raising awareness
• Object
  • Individual tax problem
  • Cumulative tax problem
  • Tax problem statistics
• Process
  • Advice NI raises awareness of overall tax problem to policy makers
  • Cumulative tax problem presented to policy makers
  • Families define tax problem {p1}
  • Advice workers + Advice NI collect examples of individual tax problems {p2}
    • p1 is part of p2
• Hypothesis
  • Individual problems are examples of cumulative problem

Authoring

• Object
  • Family case
    • Family case is a story
  • Summaries of types of experience
  • Problem Overview
    • Problem overview uses summaries of types of experience and tax problem statistics and quotations from family cases
  • Themes
• Process
  • (Advice workers + Advice NI collect examples of individual tax problems)
  • (Families define tax problem)
  • (Advice NI raises awareness of overall tax problem to policy makers)
  • (Cumulative tax problem presented to policy makers)
  • Advice NI authors problem overview
    • Authoring problem overview uses selection of family cases plus tax problem statistics
    • Adive workers and families author family cases
    • Families author family cases
  • Families validate family case
  • Advice NI categorizes each family case
  • Advice NI excerpts some family cases

Support

n/a

Discussion

• Process
  • (Problem overview)
    • (Authoring problem overview uses selection of family cases plus tax problem statistics)
    • (Advice NI authors problem overview)
    • (Problem overview uses summaries of types of experience and tax problem statistics and quotations from family cases)
  • (Advice NI categorizes each family case)
    • An advice worker proposes category for family case
    • Either the other advice worker agrees with proposal or suggest alternative proposal
    • A categorization team consists of 2 advice workers