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Following on from our last exercise, Reasons for not releasing data in government, we've been discussing the benefits and risks of increasing (online) collaboration and consultation with citizens.
Below is what the room came up with (and discussed). Please add your own in the comments.
Note this is a raw dump - I've not sorted or categorised them.
Benefits
- Good source of expertise
- More engaged audience
- Better market research
- Target tools and services better by understanding clients better
- Meets desire of Ministers and top executives to get ideas from outside traditional channels/sources
- Increasing interest, access and understanding of information
- Provide a public face for agencies
- More effective way to get real-time information and warnings to communities
- Able to centralise queries – mitigate email traffic and reduce resourcing
- Increase public understanding of what agency does
- Find out ways and means different to those we use to get information out there
- Increasing transparency and accountability
- Providing a fair and reasonable process
- Ongoing 'focus' group
- Low cost engagement
- Allows agencies to understand how community wants information presented / services designed
- Allows 'completing the circle' engagement through a process (policy development/service design/etc) as there's an ongoing relationship with participants
- Reach more audiences than by traditional communications
- Helps attract high-performing staff (as agency is seen as proactive, forward-looking, collaborative and open)
- Can use a pre-registration process to determine potential response rate and demographics of interested parties, thereby allowing provisioning of right level of resources for management and analysis of collaboration outcomes
- Can provide context and explain complex issues in depth
- Can moderate responses – before or after publication (not possible in a face-to-face consultation)
- Can identify critical flaws in legislation/policy before becomes a major issue
Risks
- Muddied by media involvement
- Uninformed people commenting
- Administrative issues
- Generate too much work (too much work)
- Too few responses – embarrassment
- Security and privacy of participants' details (if agency runs collaboration)
- Afraid that people will be rude or abusive
- Lobby groups will dominate
- We won't do what some people say they want
- Public don't understand the context
- Content is not easy to absorb
- It will be hijacked by a particular issue in the consultation and other issues don't get enough time
- It will be hijacked by an unrelated issue (one that doesn't align with our policy framework)
- Slow and highly involved approval processes (both speed of response and cost of senior time)
- What if staff contribute as individuals
- Our staff won't be able to see the consultation (due to our internal security framework)
- Staff don't have experience in managing an online consultation
- Equity issues
- Accessibility issues
- Media might get hold of it
- Belief that any content on the web can be changed
- Could be hacked
- Can identify critical flaws in legislation/policy which become major issues
- Agency responses could be construed as providing advice which has legal implications
- Timing issues (election cycle and alignment with other consultation activities)
- Too many people involved and they don't agree with what an agency believes
- Too short a time allowed to build audience and discussion
- People will criticise the Department
- People will criticise the Minister
- May expose the lack of consultation
- The risk of NOT doing it (won't reach enough/right people, creating issues in the future, government looks like it is not consulting
- Accidental release of confidential information by agency
- Technology failure (Hardware/software issues and loss of information)
- Lack of staff social media guidelines
- Incorrect data
- Data breaching copyright (not our data)
- Differences in view on which agency/area is responsible and should manage the consultation
Any more that should be added?
