North South Exchange Consortium

Context

The political changes in Northern Ireland have led to increased cooperation between the north and south of the island, particularly between education bodies.

The complexity of cooperation has required greater management, a task given to the North South Exchange Consortium (NSEC) by the the Department of Education (Northern Ireland) and the Department of Education and Science (Ireland).

A key element of the NSEC work plan is to develop and maintain lines of communication. NSEC, therefore, turned to e-technology. NSEC believed the technology would:

1. increase their capacity to run consultation initiatives, and,
2. facilitate consultations with large stakeholder groups (i.e. school children).

Process and Planning

In collaboration with research team, NSEC set out to develop an e-consultation framework that could mirror the complexity of the consultation objectives set out by NSEC. The framework had to be capable of underpinning different levels of engagement with a diverse number of stakeholders.

Stakeholders would most likely be:

• programme coordinators
• educational managers
• schoolteachers
• school children

The stakeholder sampke was split between participants and non-participants of the North South exchange programmes.

Two key issues arose for NSEC:

1. Need for a clear understanding of the consultation aims
2. Need for a clear understanding of the potential of available technologies

A process planning began, whihc addresses these needs. From the planning process five objectives were agreed:

1. To obtain stakeholders’ views on themes and criteria of the Single Programme Framework (SPF).
2. To evaluate exchange programmes and devise ways of optimising the benefits gained.
3. To gather input for policy development.
4. To capture the attitudes and expectations of stakeholders.
5. To identify best practice.

E-consultation Design

NSEC held sveeral meetings and decided to run a consutlationin that incorporated both conventional consultation techniques and e-consultation elements should be applied to the process. This allowed all channels of communication to be exploited.

E-consultation for the NSEC launch event

NSEC planned a meeting to launch their consultation. At the launch they would launch (to an audience of educationalists, from a range of stakeholders across Ireland) their web site, with all the research reports at the same time.

Post-launch e-consultation design

The first stages of the e-consultation were launched at the same time:

1. A short e-voting session during the presentations (The research team helped to designed a set of questions for the launch meeting)
2. The possibility to sign up to an e-newsletter,
3. A short on-line questionnaire.

The research team designed the consultation web site, online questionnaires and recommended suitable technologies.

Participant Experiences

Appreciating the complexity of e-consultation (especially in a constantly changing political environment) NSEC adopted a multi-stranded plan. Such a plan meant that, for each target group involved, there was a corresponding level of research required to understand the participants experience with the technology and the optimal way in which to access these groups.

Hwoever, access became a problem, especially for schools and their students. A chnage in the Internet Service Provider allowed the consultation web sites to be accessed by all.

11 types of participant were identified for the purposes of running the e-consultation trial. These groups ranged from Funding Agencies, individuals such as teachers, to Youth Groups.

The consultation, however, experienced a slow start. Very few people signed up to the newsletter or took part in the initial survey. Only when NSEC sent out surveys to more people, that responses began to increase. The launch event saw the most inmterest in the consultation.

NSEC claimed to be particularly satisfied with the research team’s work, and planned to use the web site and software, the research team designed for them. NSEC liked the e-consultation tools, but only now have the resources to actually use them in their ongoing consultation. The software may be free, but time and attention of the NSEC staff are not.

Consultation data generated

Although the research team cannot present too many findings (due to the consultation's slow start), there is still interesting data and presents anpother illustration of running an e-consultation.

A key outcome of the survey indicated that there was widespread awareness of North-South Educational exchanges amongst the respondents.

Although the generated on-line survey data was low, analysis of web traffic indicated that there was increased activity on the NSEC web page. People were using the site to download reports and files, but not completing the survey.

Learning Outcomes

1. Resource issues are always primarily present.
2. Political considerations must be taken into account
3. There are very real calendar considerations.
4. The complexity of the consultation environment must be fully understood
5. Each group of consultees needs to be clearly identified and separate assessments made
6. E-consultation can play a role in developing an integrated communications strategy

Conclusion

The initial trial with the NSEC clearly identified some issues:

1. Key issues were technological, personnel and financial resources. You cannot fully automate a consultation, people still need to manage and run it.
2. As has been identified in other trials, the technology proved easier than anticipated but the process more complex than expected. The extensive promotion of the consultation process is essential to ensure participation. Thousands of schoolchildren don’t spontaneously visit the NSEC offices in Dundalk. So why expect them to visit nsec.info or nsec.e-consultation.org?
3. Given the complexity of the consultation domain, which in NSEC case involved a significant number of stakeholders who are both interrelated and interdependent, there is a clear need for extensive pre-consultation research. This would ensure that the precise context of that the e-consultation was understood.
4. There are lessons to be learned on technical issues. Due to the increasing levels of nuisance e-mails and spam that people are receiving there is an increasing unwillingness to download attachments or go to websites with which they are unfamiliar.