Tools

Do you want to engage a large group of people spread out across the country in a conversation that educates participants, identifies areas of common ground, and produces a clear set of priorities?

There are many ways to gather input from the public, stakeholders, or employees, and many different tools available. Each can be used to engage the participants you want to hear from to help you make a better decision or solve a tough problem. AmericaSpeaks and Ascentum have the experience implementing online participation projects that allows us to identify the right tools for your circumstances and to manage the process effectively to meet your needs.

Here are the platforms and processes we often consider:

It’s important to recognize that on its own, online tools – even the right tools – cannot give your citizens and real participation. The services we offer are aimed at making the broader input and policymaking process that these tools are part of as meaningful as possible.

Virtual Summits

A Virtual Summit combines small-group phone discussions, online voting, and a live presentation by webcast for citizens sitting in front of their computers at home. It provides the most engaging, scalable, authentic, deliberative experience to a distributed group of online participants that is possible with today’s technology, creating an environment where people can learn, change their minds, and find common ground. It mirrors AmericaSpeaks’ proven 21st Century Town Hall model without requiring participants to be physically present in the same room.

Through a webcast, participants learn about the issues and are assigned discussion tasks. Then they dial in to a conference line to join their facilitator and small group in a 15-30 minute discussion at a “virtual table.”  Consensus ideas that emerge through conversation are submitted online to a “theme team” that identifies nation-wide themes from across all of the virtual tables. At the end of the discussion period, participants watch a report back of the nation-wide themes on the webcast and use online voting tools to express their preferences among the discussion themes. This process may be repeated several times across a set of related issues.

Networked House Parties

At Networked House Parties, participants watch a live presentation via webcast, vote on priorities via text message, and engage in face-to-face dialogue at volunteer-hosted gatherings in homes across the country.  Compared to purely web-based dialogue, Networked House Parties offer the most compelling, deliberative experience possible because participants can deeply engage with others in person in order to learn and find common ground. But in contrast to face-to-face deliberation alone, Networked House Parties can be part of a national discussion that produces a single set of collective priorities across all groups.

At small local gatherings throughout the country hosted by volunteers who are trained in facilitation methods, citizens learn about the issues by watching a webcast. They are assigned 15-30 minute discussion tasks, during which they discuss issues with others at their location. As the group comes to agreement, it submits ideas online to a “theme team” that identifies nation-wide themes from across all of the meetings. At the end of the discussion period, participants watch a report back on the national themes on the webcast and use voting tools to express their preferences among the discussion themes.

Blogs

Blogs allow policymakers to discuss issues in their posts and to explicitly request public comments. Visitors respond to the original post and react to and learn from their fellow participants’ views, engaging in educational and insightful dialogue. They can exchange perspectives with each other and with the blog author, and add new information by linking to external web resources. A blog’s interface and reverse-chronological display encourages the exchange of information at regular intervals. When decision-makers engage directly with participants within the comment areas, the experience becomes more compelling for those on both sides of the discussion.  Over time, a self-perpetuating community of regular readers and commenters can evolve, reducing the need for ongoing outreach. Adding voting functionality to the comments can enable the conversation to scale more efficiently.

Crowdsource Ideas

Idea crowdsourcing enables citizens, stakeholders, or employees to share ideas on a particular policy area and vote to identify the most popular ideas.  The end result is a list of suggestions and ideas on how to solve a problem or improve a service with the community’s highest priorities at the top, offering insight into the priorities of key constituents, consumers, or stakeholders. The process is highly scalable; public officials can focus on analyzing the most popular proposals while avoiding the time-consuming process of reviewing every single submission. This makes it easier to invite public input more often.

The exact policy question used to frame the forum can significantly influence the outcome. Many tools can be used to manage the process, and selecting the most appropriate can be difficult. Platforms differ significantly in their administrative and community moderation features, login systems and social media integration, general usability, customizability, commenting functionality, and voting systems. Each platform has advantages and disadvantages, and the ideal tool varies depending on the circumstances.

Choicebooks

Choicebooks are powerful online policy survey that integrates issue-related education avoid the stodgy, conventional questionnaire experience by informing and engaging the citizens, stakeholders or employees  who complete them. They present facts, scenarios, and perspectives in a balanced yet entertaining manner so that participants can consider policy issues carefully before offering informed, meaningful opinions.  Of those who begin the Choicebook process, more than two-thirds will end up completing it – far higher than the 15% completion rate for most web surveys. The platform thus generates valuable data that can inform policy development and decision-making processes.

Collaborative Writing

Collaborative writing tools can offer participants the power to pick up the proverbial pen directly to help draft or comment on the specific language of policy: laws, rules, directives, orders, and the like. Effective writing is difficult, particularly when it comes to formal, nuanced legal and policy documents, and collaborative writing can be messy, particularly with controversial subjects or large groups.  One solution is to identify basic principles using a crowdsourcing platform and then invite the leaders identified during this process go on to produce language together. Another option is to incorporate a voting mechanism into the editing process itself. Whatever combination of solutions are appropriate, it is clear that some citizens and stakeholders are well qualified to play such a direct role in shaping policy and will jump at the opportunity to do so.

Q&A Live Chat

Live Q&As give participants the opportunity to talk directly with a senior leader in a government agencies or companies, asking questions and receiving personal replies in a “live chat” environment. These are moderated and questions queued for answer by the keynote speaker, and typically last for 1-2 hours. Live chats are highly effective in developing relationships between leaders and organizations and their communities, with participants feeling as though they have been heard and had their issue directly considered by the host.

Stakeholder Submissions

Stakeholders at key organizations can offer formal comment on a specific issue by submitting briefs that explain their organization’s stance in detail. Given the professional source, the input gathered is likely to be substantive and well informed.  Submissions can be made available to the public through a searchable library of briefs, or they can be accepted and reviewed privately. The rich qualitative data that emerges can be analyzed using semantic analysis tools to identify clusters of themes and opinion.

Text Messaging (SMS)

Text messaging enables target participants to submit their input in immediate, convenient, and light-weight fashion: by using their mobile phones. SMS can be used to  gather complaints, implement surveys, tally votes, and manage issue-related quizzes, while focusing on generating participation from communities who might otherwise be left out of the process, including young people, mobile citizens, and demographic groups who lack regular Internet access. Text messages are limited to 160 characters, yet they enable broad engagement.  Theme teams or semantic analysis can be used to identify recurring messages. The process can be made social and collaborative by sharing ideas between participants to mimic the crowdsourcing process.  When the immediacy, familiarity, and open rates – which far exceed those of email – of SMS are factored in, it becomes a powerful input mechanism, whether used alone or in tandem with other options.

Social Networks

Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks are excellent channels to ask the public for its ideas because these are the venues where people already spend their time. New platforms allow monitoring of comments across multiple sites and accounts. Together with semantic tools that mine large numbers of messages for common themes, these platforms can enable policymakers to build communities that engage users in real policy dialogue.

Alternatively, it is possible to build a standalone community site around a particular geographic or policy niche outside of Facebook or Twitter. Growing such a network to the point where it is self-sustaining requires significant investment in outreach, but once established, it can provide ongoing infrastructure for dialogue on policy that decision-makers can tap into as needed.

Policy & Budget Simulations

Empower citizens and stakeholders to develop policy by simulating real-world tradeoffs and conditions and asking them to make the very same decisions that government officials face. Many local authorities use these processes to build cohesion around important issues within their community. For example, citizens might be asked to balance their city’s budget by identifying the specific areas, dollar amounts, and timing of spending cuts and tax increases that they believe necessary. By filling the shoes of policymakers who face difficult decisions, citizens come to better understand the difficulty of balancing competing priorities. Policy simulations teach citizens important insights into the decision-making processes of government, while allowing them to weigh in on the issues that affect them every day.