A national conversation: crowdsourcing a way through COVID
The challenge
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Scottish Government needed to seek public opinion on appropriate frameworks for easing lockdown measures across Scotland. The exercise needed to be run very well as an example of best practice in crowdsourcing.
People are unlikely to respond to topics they don't feel relate to them. Rather than asking something like 'what are your thoughts on COVID-19?', the Scottish Government asked people about how lockdown affected them, and what their priorities would be if the lockdown was eased.
Our approach
The Scottish Government chose Dialogue to run a national conversation, an ambitious crowdsourcing exercise with the Scottish people. The challenge was specific and relevant – for example, the reopening of businesses, when kids should be allowed back to school, and visiting relatives. This way the challenge remained relevant to pretty much everyone in Scotland.
This issue affected the whole of Scotland so for this exercise to be effective they needed a good number of participants. The Dialogue was promoted widely and got picked up by national news outlets.
The results
The exercise was extremely popular – over 4,000 ideas and over 16,000 comments were posted in a week. Popular ideas and topics included: quality of life; what could help people to comply with lockdown; visiting other households; and allowing pupils to return to school.
The ideas and comments were thoughtful, emotive and well considered. Pre-moderation meant that the team could ensure the conversations didn't go off-course, but the quality of the discussion was driven by those taking part. The Dialogue was a testament to the consideration people took when getting involved, and the Scottish Government's commitment to working openly through the COVID-19 pandemic.
We didn't want it to become a platform for people to share conspiracy theories, but people were very sensible…they moderated themselves. The Dialogue feature that asks 'why is this idea important' is great because it makes the respondent think twice about what they're saying and then argue the case for their idea.
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.