The e-consultation

Not ready for respondents

The researchers set up a site for the e-consultation on our own servers, at http://waterways.econsultation.org, as the Waterways Ireland E-Consultation Website was not set up at that time to run discussion forums. They publicised the URL (http://waterways.econsultation.org) in the e-mails they sent out inviting organisations to respond to the consultation, but did not highlight the e-consultation on their own home page.

Neglected how users browse online

The consultation document was put on-line, not as one long linear PDF to download and print, but in HTML, broken up into a number of pages, with the hope that readers might browse to particular issues that concern them, and then respond on those issues. It was, however, written in the same language as the paper consultation document. That ensured that everyone was responding to the same text. However, it took no account of the differences in the ways people read linear paper documents and browse on-line web pages.

Lack of online discussion

Readers were invited to read the consultation document, then submit their views in an on-line forum. 12 people went as far as to register on the discussion forum (6 internal, 6 from outside Waterways Ireland), but no-one from outside went on to submit a comment to the discussion forum. But Waterways Ireland had half a dozen responses to their consultation, all of which were paper submissions.

It seems that quite a few people viewed the discussion forum but hardly any were willing to write their views. The starting questions for each thread were hardly designed to generate emotional engagement.