Local government
Improve your decision-making with a centralised platform for effective and inclusive engagement.
Councils across the UK successfully streamline their engagement efforts, from early involvement to statutory consultations, with Go Vocal. With 15+ engagement methods, you have a complete toolbox to engage more community members in projects, such as:
Explore our case studies to discover tips and best practices from successful initiatives leveraging our digital platform.
Newham recently evaluated their Community Assemblies initiative, now known as People Powered Places. This article outlines a summary of the report’s key insights and ideas for future improvement. Read on to kindle fresh ideas for invigorating engagement within your own community!
Havant Borough, like many local authorities across the UK, prioritises fostering inclusive and equitable engagement with its residents. However, data dispersion across systems hindered comprehensive analysis, making it difficult to assess the true representativeness of participating residents. By co-developing a Power BI integration with Go Vocal, Havant Borough can now capitalise on the full potential of its data, paving the way for more inclusive and well-informed decision-making processes.
Cambridge experienced first-hand the power of Go Vocal's AI assistant in the analysis of open-ended text responses during their Design Code consultation for northern Cambridge neighbourhoods. Discover how it helped the team save 10 precious hours and opened the door for including more free-text questions in future consultations, enriching the depth and quality of community engagement.
"By using our online engagement platform for this consultation, we knew we would be able to reach more residents in a more cost-effective way than by doing anything else.”
"The Go Vocal platform has extensive information-sharing capabilities. In addition, the ability for residents to comment on the ideas and start a discussion sparks lively conversations.”
“In addition to increasing the quantity of participants, we were able to improve the quality of our community conversations by answering direct questions and responding to concerns promptly, before misinformation and rumor mills could overtake the dialogue.”
“When you drill down into the functionality you see that CitizenLab is more flexible, visually appealing, and user-friendly... I feel the way CitizenLab’s platform is set up fosters a positive participation environment [and] the fact that the back office is so easy to use has been a massive bonus because it doesn’t scare anyone away, no matter their comfort level with technology.”
This guide will walk you through the basics of digital community engagement and is meant to serve as a resource for beginners and seasoned practitioners alike. After all, setting a solid foundation for your community engagement initiative is key to its success.
Ensuring that your community engagement is successful and worthwhile requires full buy-in and continuous support from all levels of the community, starting with your organisation and eventually also your residents. It comes down to creating a culture of engagement. This doesn’t have to be daunting, and in the long run it will save you time, money, and headaches.
As a council, it is important to be more ambitious about participation and explore engagement methods beyond traditional survey consultations. But how do you start a real dialogue? When is the best time to use a particular participation method, and what should you pay attention to?
