tCI Associate Caroline Latta gives her top tips to get started on digital

The global pandemic has created a new norm in terms of shifting involvement activity to digital methods and it’s important to recognise that a large majority of ‘traditional’ face to face consultation activity can be replicated online.

An unintended benefit of these past few difficult months is that there’s also been an improvement in the attitudes and abilities of citizens interacting online, so they are better equipped and more familiar with the process.

Organisations need to adopt a ‘digital first’ approach which encourages digital engagement without stifling the ability to participate offline, providing an inclusive and blended experience.

There are a number of benefits to digital-first. It can make better use of resources – people, time and funding – but the reality is also that it does require upfront investment in digital technologies and it can alter the dynamic of conversations and interactivity.

There’s never a better time than now to get going with digital techniques, using the Covid-19 recovery period to reflect on what to keep doing digitally and what must revert back to normal.

Just like we do for any involvement, having clear objectives, planning engagement activity with stakeholder identification, clear questions and collection of feedback and reporting output and insight remain just as important as ever.

But getting going can be the hardest part.

In my experience, these are the top three things to think about to make your digital engagement a success.

1.A Stakeholder Relationship Management (SRM) system.

An SRM is a single digital repository for all stakeholder communications.  It is a data store of activity (interactions), feedback (from all channels) and allows you to store, recall and analyse information quickly and easily.  It can also be used as a database (e.g. for statutory consultees) and some products have stakeholder mapping functionality, enhanced reporting functions, surveys and event management built-in.

Unlike CRM, SRM is concerned with what is being said as well as who is saying it.

2. An engagement portal

Making sure your website has the right functionality and is engaging enough to really harness the benefits of the channel.

With good website development, a traditional listening paper or consultation document could be created with multimedia excerpts (collateral) around challenges, explore evidence and provide views.

This could include ideas generation, the ability to submit new solutions, for others to comment and rate these and for people to see the conflict and consensus. It can also be a portal through to virtual engagement sessions such as deliberative events

 3. A useful handbook on technologies for participation

There’s a wide range of technologies available already and our tCI Associate and digital engagement expert Fraser Henderson recently produced a helpful guide, Technology for participation.

Fraser’s guide helps you to navigate the most popular solutions by exploring the possible application areas and benefits. So these are three very useful tools and resources.

But before you rush to invest your budget, make sure you think clearly about what will best help meet your needs for digital involvement for now and the future.

To help you do this, we’re dedicating a couple of future Wednesday Wisdoms to the digital engagement discussion. In the initial period of lockdown, our Wednesday Wisdom sessions have been open to all but as we move towards recovery, we will provide these sessions free to members only. The sessions will offer practical solutions and will aim to support you moving forward in this next phase.  You can find a full list of the benefits of membership with tCI here. The two dedicated to the digital engagement discussion are below:

A practical guide to digital engagement – 24th June – a session on how to go from zero to hero – getting up and running

Different technologies for digital engagement – 1st July – a session looking at popular technology pros and cons

 

We look forward to seeing you there!