e-Government in Kensington and Chelsea
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The Royal Borough consulted staff and the public on what electronic government should mean for them. Comments from the evaluation exercise: "I am very impressed by the large number of detailed responses you have obtained." "I found it really useful to see my own comments and see how they compared with others." "I have enjoyed it, surprisingly, and appreciate the chance to make my opinions heard. I think K&C is doing a very good job in consulting the local constituency on this." "This has to be the way forward."
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Consulting with 'professional stakeholders' is one thing: but could we get the public to participate in an Internet-based consultation process? One of our major concerns about our systems has always been the danger of excluding people - the old, the poor and the non-technically minded. So we were both delighted and a bit apprehensive when the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea asked us along with our colleagues at WS Atkins to consult members of its residents' panel, staff, community groups, local businesses and other agencies on plans to implement electronic government. In the event, 246 people participated, submitting about 3,000 detailed responses to the Royal Borough's plans. We used our software to collate and group their responses and produce a report highlighting the main concerns and conclusions. We did this in two days. (Can you imagine collating 3,000 written comments at all, let alone in two days?) Participants were then able to see the response document and explore the collated comments as well as evaluate the whole exercise. As for our concerns about excluding people, a number of the participants actually logged on from public libraries, some telling us it was the first time they had ever used the Internet. |
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