Challenges of idea or ideas challenge or consultation challenges can be considered as a public consultations to give community members an opportunity to get involved in decisions that impact their community.

Publishing a challenge of ideas has several benefits:

1. Can bring in input from a wide range of sources and experiences in the community, which improves the quality of decision-making.
2. Can alert decision makers to concerns and issues that would otherwise be missed, or which would not be noticed when relying on other tools and methods of information gathering.
3. Can help you understand the impact and urgency of other topics, and understand what changes may be required to projects, proposals, policies, or actions other than what is being specifically consulted upon.

Make sure stakeholders in the challenge are aware of these benefits before publishing a challenge.

Challenges should be used when there is scope for community input to influence and inform a decision. Challenges that do not meet this criteria can lead to a loss of community trust, and are counterproductive.

Challenges can be used in the decision-making process along with polls. Polls and challenges are complementary. For instance, a poll used to decide how to use a brownfield site can be followed up with a challenge based on which option is voted for. Alternatively, a consultation challenge on park benches can be used to gather options for designs, which can be then filtered and put to the community to vote upon in a poll. Understand where each one should be used and discuss the options with the requester if necessary. Sometimes a poll is better formulated as a public consultation (challenge of ideas), and sometimes a public consultation is better formulated as a poll.

Best Practices

The following practices will help you create engaging and useful challenges of ideas as public consultations that will be useful in decision making processes.

• Realistic time-frames

The time-frame for any challenge should give enough time for participants to read the documentation provided, formulate their opinions and responses, and post them. Generally, a public consultation should not be live for less than two weeks. If necessary, do extend the period the public consultation is open for to allow for more users to engage, or for any conversations that may be ongoing to resolve.

• Clarity

Make sure it is clear what the purpose and output of the consultation challenge is, and who it is for. Be clear about the scope of the consultation and what the consultation is about. Using an opening sentence or title that helps respondents quickly identify the consultation is advisable.

When writing the consultation challenge document, use simple phrasing. Brevity is important, but should not degrade clarity.

• Distribution

With a challenge of ideas, you want to distribute the document as widely as possible and to reach the widest audience segment. The subject of a consultation may have stakeholders who have not been previously considered and who may have valid points to make, which should be heard. Make sure there is a way for people to participate outside of Freejna, such as via email.

It may be worthwhile to advertise or market the consultation challenge on social media accounts or using other methods available.

• Open-Mind

All responses should be analysed. The feedback provided should be considered and the responses and analysis after the consultation should be publicly available for all to see.

• Guidance

Users should be provided with guidance on how to respond, especially if consultation challenges s are new to the community. This guidance can be provided in a separate document but can also be placed within the consultation challenge document for ease of access and to ensure all respondents have access to the advice.

Guidance for respondents

Providing guidance will help your respondents understand how they can engage with a public participation, and can help increase the quality of participation as well as the quantity of participation. The following points can serve as guidance for respondents:

• Be brief

Use one short sentence to explain each point you want to make; this will help the Freejna team understand your opinion. You can always add more detail afterwards in a comment if necessary.

• Focus on what is important to you

Put the issues you care most about first, so respondents can see your biggest concerns. If you want to make more detailed comments, put them in an reply to your original suggestion.

• Provide evidence

Your arguments will be more convincing if they are supported by evidence or information. You can use comments to provide evidence for your arguments, and link sources outside of Freejna.

• Send your response as soon as possible

The earlier you send in your views, the more time the Freejna team has to consider them. This is particularly important if you are providing new information or evidence.

• Reply to the questions

If the consultation asks for your views on particular questions, clearly state which questions you’re answering before setting out your views.

Publishing a Challenge of Ideas

Idea challenges are an opportunity to open a dialogue among community members, decision makers and the general public on matters that they have interest in, are influenced by or have input on.

Before you publish a consultation challenge, there are a few things that need to be considered.

1. Does the organisation or individual requesting the consultation have the competency to publish the consultation they request? In other words, if a real estate contractor is asking for a consultation regarding a construction, is this construction project on of their own, or a competitor’s?
2. Does the sponsor of the consultation have a consultation document ready? This should provide enough information and context for respondents taking part in the consultation.
3. Does the sponsor have an official account which can be used to answer any questions within the Freejna app? This account should be active for at least the duration of the consultation and should answer questions or queries that arise.
4. Doe the sponsor have an email account that can be used to received suggestions and comments from respondents who are not on Freejna?

 

Once a consultation is published, monitor it for any issues that may arise, such as repeated questions or spam answers, and handle them appropriately.

 

It is advisable to publish a report after a consultation is closed. In this report, mention how suggestions will be taken into account, what trends were visible, and how responses were analysed.