E-Democracy and Online Communities:
Consultation and community involvement help to improve decision making and is essential to achieving a fuller understanding of the needs and aspirations of local communities. At the same time online communities are becoming increasingly important knowledge sharing resources within and between communities.
Ensuring the ability of the democratic processes of consultation moves with the digital age is high on the government agenda – in 2005 BERR announced its dedication to encouraging e-democracy and e-inclusion through fully interactive online consultation systems.
Our Approach:
Embracing the best techniques from online consultation and online communities; with the strengths of market research, interactive social software and social networking. Civic Consult provides a fully integrated online consultation solution.
More than just an online survey, the system is fully flexible, interactive and accessible. This latest example of e-democracy allows clients to personalise and brand the online consultation, enabling a new form of participation in the consultation process.
Online Consultation:
Through Civic Consult the steps to running a successful consultation are simple. In partnership with clients, Civic Consult will establish and run the consultation process in 4 steps:
1. Define – collaborate with clients to decide the remit of the consultation and the form it should take.
2. Deliver – establish the online consultation.
3. Manage – mange the process, monitor usage, and feed back interim results to clients.
4. Report – document findings in a post-consultation report, raising the salient findings of the consultation.
Five Benefits of the System:
1. Flexible – meeting the parameters of the discussion topic, to ensure it meets the requirements of clients and system users.
2. Interactive – clients can interact with consultants, and upload documents so others can discuss them.
3. Accessible – the ‘Knowledge Bank’ is always on hand to ensure that the entire process understood.
4. Reach – access a wide range of participants, and engage people who would not usually respond to standard consultation techniques.
5. Thorough – findings are reported and new topics can be discussed as they arise, ensuring that a full consultation process is undertaken.
