A useful sounding board: unique insights from citizens with Dialogue
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The challenge
The City of Edinburgh Council wanted to expand and improve their methods of getting public input. Building on some traditional engagement efforts, they were especially keen to encourage participation beyond 'the usual suspects'.
In 2014, the Council had consulted the public on its budget plans. They presented people with a comprehensive overview of Council finances and asked how they might adjust spending levels across services. This sort of detailed survey did garner some useful input – but the feedback was limited in scope. The Council wanted to hear more about how people would like services to change.
The approach
Dialogue is a structured, open platform for people to submit, refine and rate ideas.
Since adopting Dialogue, Edinburgh have run multiple challenges on the platform. The first was around budget and spending – where they asked citizens specifically for suggestions on increasing Council revenues. They received hundreds of ideas and comments, from a range of perspectives – on issues from transport to schools to littering.
Invariably, the Council use Dialogue alongside other methods of consultation and engagement, allowing for diverse kinds of input and from diverse groups of people.
The results
Dialogue is, in Edinburgh's experience, 'often a useful sounding board, to get a response to ideas that are already out there and see how people respond'. They've also found that the feedback received via Dialogue 'can be 'rounder' than just blanket support or opposition'.
Each Dialogue is set up and run by staff within the Council, giving the organisation a direct feel for the conversations as they unfold. Insights from the challenges are also fed back into the decision-making process, along with other instructive information like survey results and focus group findings.
I can see how Dialogue could work for any kind of organisation. And the philosophy of it fits into what we're wanting to do: when we're running a consultation, our aim is that any citizen is able to engage with it.
Delib is a govtech leader specialising in consultation and engagement, trusted by over 600 government organisations worldwide, including major planning projects. Since 2004, we've been building secure, accessible digital platforms to make participation simpler, fairer, and more inclusive. Our flagship product, Citizen Space, was built in collaboration with the UK government and has supported more than 11 million responses across over 110,000 democratic activities.