NSEC E-consultation Design
Contents
E-Consultation Strategies
During the series of meetings that constituted the planning phase of the NSEC trial, several possible e-consultation strategies were proposed that could be used to suit NSEC consultation needs, such as on-line surveys and the incorporation of forums into a website.
Traditional + Technological Elements Used
The considered opinion of the both NSEC and the e-consultation research team was that both conventional consultation techniques and e-consultation elements should be applied to the process.
Benefit from comparison
From NSEC's point of view it allowed all channels of communication to be exploited and from the research team’s perspective it afforded an opportunity to:
- compare various methods
- to see how well technology fitted in with, and helped on, a public consultation.
Click here to see an overview of the econsultation design process.
E-consultation for the NSEC Launch Event
NSEC planned a meeting to launch their consultation in November 2005. At the launch they would present the research reports they had commissioned on N-S educational exchange to an audience of educationalists from a range of stakeholders across Ireland (often at senior policy levels). Their web site, with all the research reports, would be revealed at the same time.
Launch Stages
The first stages of the e-consultation were to be launched at the same time. The first stages of the e-consultation were:
- A short e-voting session during the presentations, to get instant responses from the audience.
- The possibility to sign up to an e-newsletter, so that NSEC could e-mail people with news about educational exchange and also opportunities to participate in the consultation.
- A short on-line questionnaire. The research team designed a consultation web site for NSEC, including mailing list subscription software (PHP list), and questionnaire run on PHP Surveyor, and pages introducing the consultation and all the conventional and electronic ways in which people might participate (See thumbnail, right).
The research team also designed a set of questions for the launch meeting.
NSEC Launch Event
The NSEC launch went ahead in November 2005. Some pictures are available (right side border) of the event being set up and the presentations of the research findings.
The launch was held in the Newry Arts Centre.
Post-launch e-consultation design
Engaging the Stakeholders
The activities at the launch only engaged the 60 to 70 people who attended.
However, these were important stakeholders, often senior people in organizations involved in funding or managing educational exchanges. They were not the only group that NSEC wanted to involve in their consultations. So, in several meetings following the launch, the research team discussed and demonstrated technologies that might be used to facilitate consultations with different groups of participants.
Need for Publicity and Promotion
One crucial element of the process, which was emphasised constantly throughout the early stages given the problems experienced with the Waterways Ireland trial, was the need for publicity and promotion.
It is essential in any consultation, regardless whether conventional or electronic, that there is a clear strategy to ensure that potential consultees are aware of the proposed consultation. NSEC needed to engage more than the senior staff who had attended the launch.
Consulting those who are affected most: Organisations in Educational Exchanges
One important group to consult were the organizations that currently managed and/or funded existing educational exchanges.
Any new policy would impact on them. If NSEC were to eventually administer funding for cross-border exchanges, it is these key stakeholders NSEC would have to work with. So, NSEC planned to run long meetings with them to discuss the issues in some depth.
The Technology
The research team suggested using group support systems, such as WebIQ or Zing in half of these meetings. In principle such idea mapping tools should speed up brainstorming and ranking activities, as participants could type at the same time.
The consultations should achieve the same benefits from GSS tools as do management teams in private companies. We arranged for the Centre for Competitiveness to demonstrate Zing to NSEC staff in a meeting in Belfast. However, although they agreed in principle to do this, NSEC were not able to organise any GSS meetings before our research project ended, as their staff were fully stretched organising and running non-electronic meetings. So no Zing agenda was designed.
Consulting those who are affected most: Young People
A second key group to consult are young people, including (but not limited to) those who had participated in cross-border exchanges. Michele Smyth showed NSEC staff the work she had been doing for her Ph.D. research with groups of young people at the NI Youth Forum (NIYF). SEC staff explored with the NIYF the possibility of subcontracting part of the consultation with young people to them. The ideas discussed centred on an initial face-to-face workshop in which a small group of young people could discuss the issues and determine the questions they would want to ask about cross-border exchanges, followed by an on-line discussion forum in which many more young people could participate. After some discussion NSEC decided not to fund this work (at least in the short term), apparently because of resource limitations in NSEC .
The Technology
What they did manage to start, just before our research project finished, was design on-line questionnaires targeted at particular groups of participants, including young people and teachers. We helped them design the questionnaires, and loaded into the system some of the lists of e-mail addresses they had finally obtained.
Finally, the research team's technical assistants (i.e. Yan Chen) also customised the SugarCRM Customer Relationship Management software for NSEC, so that they could keep track of their potential huge number of contacts with pupils, staff, youth workers and others in 9000 organisations. Because Yan Chen used free (open source) software, he could customise it so that it was no longer a tool for selling into companies, but one to record contacts with many individuals in each organisation: something that many commercial CRM packages lack.
