Collecting evidence for Scrutiny Committees with Dialogue
The challenge
In the wake of the UK's decision to leave the European Union, the National Assembly for Wales began considering options around the future support for agriculture, land management and rural communities in Wales. The Assembly set out to gather robust evidence to present to the Scrutiny Committee.
To assist with this process, The National Assembly for Wales chose to open up the conversation to the public, online – using Dialogue to set a challenge and invite people to submit their ideas.
The approach
Dialogue allowed the Assembly to offer a collaborative platform to gather ideas and bring citizens into the discussion regarding the future of agriculture across Wales.
The Assembly Dialogue makes use of bilingual content, well-structured discussion points and clear direction regarding the scope for input ensuring that it was accessible across the board.
By using an online platform, the Assembly could collect input from a geographically-diverse range of people from across the country. This approach also helped ensure that participation was open to time-poor citizens, and those living in rural communities.
The results
By using an effective and engaging online platform, the Welsh Assembly were able to add to their body of evidence to present to the Scrutiny Committee, with dozens of ideas and comments from people with a stake in the decisions under consideration.
The ideas collected online were aggregated with evidence collected in other ways, and all put forward for consideration by Members of the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee. This process in turn helps the Committee write its report on how principles can be developed to underpin a new agriculture and rural development policy for Wales.
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.