How New Zealand’s Royal Commission into the handling of COVID-19 reached far-flung communities
The challenge
Like many other places in the world, COVID-19 sent Aotearoa New Zealand into lockdown, with pandemic restrictions and work from home restrictions put in place. Despite the measures, many felt the response to the pandemic could have been handled differently, triggering a Royal Commission into lessons learned to prepare Aotearoa New Zealand for the next pandemic.
They wanted to hear from different communities across the country in order to understand public perception on the handling of the pandemic and what they could have done differently. As well as this, the public shared opinions on what Phase 2 of the Inquiry’s scope should contain. This second phase would subsequently dig into specific government decisions in far more depth.
Both phases needed to reach people at real scale, and in a way that was genuinely easy and accessible to take part in.
The approach
Across both phases, the Royal Commission used Citizen Space to run its public consultation process.
Accessibility was built in from the outset. Survey material was available in English, te reo Māori and New Zealand Sign Language, with translated versions in Simplified Chinese, Hindi, Tongan and Samoan, and people who couldn't access or use the website could also submit responses by phone.
A public information campaign ran alongside targeted community engagement with groups who are traditionally harder to reach, including students, disabled people, rainbow and ethnic communities, refugees and prisoners.
Phase One, running from 8 February to 24 March 2024, asked two open-ended questions: looking back at people's experiences of the pandemic, and looking forward to the lessons that should shape the response to the next one. People could submit as individuals, on behalf of their whānau, or on behalf of an organisation, with the option to share demographic information and further thoughts alongside their feedback.
Phase Two, running from 3 February to 27 April 2025 queried specific decisions made by the Government in 2021 and 2022, including vaccine mandates and approvals, the extended lockdowns of that period, and testing and tracing technologies like RAT tests and the COVID-19 Tracer app.
Citizen Space again supported the online submission process, alongside emailed submissions, over a 12-week window.
The results
Phase One brought in over 11,000 submissions through Citizen Space. A specialist team of analysts read and categorised every one over a 12-week period, synthesising the feedback into themes for the Inquiry's summary experiences report.
That evidence gave the Department of Internal Affairs, and ultimately Cabinet, a genuine public mandate for expanding the Inquiry's own scope and shape by the people it was set up to serve.
During Phase Two there were over 21,822 public submissions, most of which were received via Citizen Space.
The response was significant, allowing the Inquiry to formulate detailed recommendations to present to Parliament in the case of pandemic preparedness and commitments across government sectors; grounded in the direct testimony of tens of thousands of New Zealanders.
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.