Technology matching for E-consultation
From E-Consultation Guide
Technology Matching for E-Consultation
There are hundreds of potential electronic communication technologies that could be used to support different parts of a consultation. So how can people organizing a consultation choose appropriate technologies? One way, is to consider the stages of a policy-making cycle: agenda setting, analysis, formulation, implementation and monitoring (Macintosh, A. in OECD, 2003). However, this takes only the perspective of the consultation organiser, not the consultees. It defines the problem as one of information management in public administration. Another approach is to conceive of consultation as a process analogous to mediation and negotiation, through which different groups come to an accommodation of what should be done (Morison and Newman, 2001)[1] as shown in the following table.
Table: Stages in consensus-forming consultations (from Morison and Newman, 2001)
The point is that the technologies and processes you use at the beginning are not those best suited to later stages.
- So at the start you just want to find out what issues concern people, and what their needs are. Like a mediation facilitator, you want to avoid discussing possible solutions until everyone understands each other's perspectives on the problem. But you want to get early warnings of issues that arise, before they have escalated to demonstrations reported in the news media.
- Then a group of interested stakeholders can start exploring the problem and possible solutions. Here the point is stimulating and supporting creativity, but not making too many judgements between options (that comes later). You need to get a diverse group of people involved. They needn't be completely representative, but they need to be people willing to think new ideas, and not all from the same background.
- Once you have some possible solutions, you then need to choose between them and/or combine them, until you have a report and policy recommendations. Here is where we need representative samples.
Now at each stage, the participants are doing different things. For each task there are appropriate technologies. The section on Technology classification shows you how to choose them.
References
- ↑ Morison, J. & Newman, D. R. (2001) ‘On-line Citizenship: Consultation and Participation in New Labour’s Britain and Beyond’, International Review of Law Computers & Technology, 15(2), 171-194
