Originally published 21 August 2012. This article is retained from the tCI archive. Law, policy or practice may have changed since publication.
We all know the traditional model of consultation.
A document is launched, a period of time is set and consultees have until the published end-date to respond, answer whatever questions are asked or make their submissions so that the decision-makers can take these views into account. We have a ‘twelve-week rule’ – except it isn't a rule – just well-established custom and practice, and a recently published set of Government Consultation Principles that waters this down somewhat by saying that, in future, consultation timescales could be anything from 2 weeks to 12.
But maybe the real change is not due to fresh Government guidance but to something else that’s happening – the impact of new technology on the whole issue of influencing public policy. The evolution of online practice from being a supplementary form of publishing to being a continuing debating chamber marks a radical shift in the dynamics of the process.
Just think back three or four years. Websites would help consultors announce their consultations. “Here it is; click here and you can download our big fat consultation document, and all its technical appendices. Click further down and you can take part in an online survey ...” . What was happening was that we were using technology to provide an additional channel to distribute the same material as we would have done, more expensively, in hard-copy. And, of course, in the beginning the numbers accessing the exercise via the internet were a small technophile minority. We even analysed their questionnaires separately just in case the respondent profile was too different from the majority of their fellow-citizens.
All this has been changing, and an increasing proportion of respondents find it more convenient to read and respond online. Hence the Government wish to establish the communication principle of digital by default. Worrying for those that are not au fait with the internet, but hardly surprising!
Alongside this has been the steady growth of online conversations. We once called them e-discussion forums, but social media has now made the world one big e-discussion. And the key feature of such mechanisms is that they are totally out of the control of any organisation. The cloud is there for everyone with its attendant risks and opportunities. Not for nothing do some call this the ‘wild west’ where lawlessness is the order of the day. Lies can be virally disseminated; reputations can be ruined; people can be hurt; just think of recent Twitter scandals.
Now, if we are running consultations, we can of course try to ignore anything that isn’t said to us in the format we prefer. A recent high-profile consultation told people attending a public meeting that their views would only be considered if they submitted a hard-copy questionnaire response form – or went online to respond to the e-survey.
But doing that means missing out on what people are saying about us – or our issues. In terms of reputation management, it is acting like the ostrich. It also means we don’t hear very relevant views, often from key stakeholders. So leading edge Companies and public bodies alike find they have no choice but to start monitoring these discussions. It’s not eavesdropping, because these interchanges are fully intended to be public. So there is a rapidly growing industry of technology tools (such as ‘spiders’) which can analyse this ‘soft data’ and provide us with unprecedented insights into what our customers, or the public think.
But there is a snag. Listening more also means listening for longer. A convenience about consultation is that it is administratively tidy, having a start date and an end date. Social media knows of no such limits. Discussions on the web will start whenever anyone initiates the conversation; they die once people have spoken their minds and there’s nothing else to say. And they won’t stop just because we have arrived at a date when the consultor says the consultation will end!
On important issues, dialogue these days is continuous, and will extend well beyond the limits set by those who once upon a time could manage the process. Consultors, therefore, have the difficulty that, inevitably, they have to gather their thoughts and present their findings to decision-makers but, if they are relying (even partially) on social media - and Sir Bob Kerslake, as head of the civil service has already powerfully pointed officials in this direction, then they can’t just stop listening when that day arrives. It is even more complicated if one tries to adhere to strict closing date disciplines for the hard-copy/traditional stuff (e.g. in town planning) whilst operating more liberally for the less structured social media input.
The consultation timetable may not yet be dead, but is about to suffer a serious trauma!
This is the 218th 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