Originally published 20 December 2004. This article is retained from the tCI archive. Law, policy or practice may have changed since publication.
Public consultation is not traditional accountant-territory. Few consultation projects are formally budgeted, and many of the costs involved are normally funded from larger departmental or functional budget allocations.
If you run a sizeable corporate communications department with a substantial budget earmarked for publicity, it may appear dogmatic hair-splitting to account separately for distributing leaflets inviting local residents to a public meeting. After all, aren't consultation exercises but a sub-set of the wider task of public engagement?
Well yes ...... and no! It is true that it is sometimes inconvenient to untangle cost allocations, but it is also high time a degree of financial discipline was exercised over consultations. The Institute estimates that the public sector alone spends over 100 million Pounds on public and stakeholder consultation, and there is natural concern that taxpayers receive value for money.
Here are three good reasons why consultations should be properly costed:-
o Consultations are almost always complex, multi-disciplinary projects, and best practice consultors use project management tools to control and co-ordinate the work involved. Part of this task is to allocate resources, which might be scarce. These could be people, facilities, time …or, of course, money. Effective project management means taking decisions about priorities, so cost control is vital.
o Modern consultations are multi-channel communications exercises. There may be expensive literature to distribute, exhibitions to mount, surveys to undertake, focus groups to hold or halls to hire. There may also be growing use of e-consultation methods. No-one has enough money and time to do everything, so we need to know how much it costs to use each channel - and what quantity and quality of participation each one yields.
o We are beginning to learn the lessons of consultation. Experienced consultors can identify those situations where consultation works best - where it has a real impact upon policy decisions. But it is not always obvious which consultations have been effective; hence the growing interest in Verification and Review. This includes looking at the way in which effort has been expended - and making a cost-benefit as well as a qualitative assessment.
A complication for many organisations is that consultations are not always predictable. An unforeseen massive response can add to costs; a poor response can reduce them. By managing the budget for a consultation programme as a whole, it should be possible to balance the underspends and overspends without losing effective control.
Trigger points
- Estimate costs for all proposed consultations - even if processes are not yet in place to measure and account for expenditure.
- Include an estimate of costs in all reports and submissions to decision-makers.
- Start identifying channel-specific costs to help determine their viability.
- Select significant consultations for end-to-end verification or review - so that lessons are learnt.
This is the 6th Tuesday Topic; a full list of subjects covered is available for Institute members and is a valuable resource covering so many aspects of consultation and engagement