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Families on The Couch:

hearing from New Zealand families

Stephen Blyth

Manager, Community Relations

Presented at: GOVIS 2007 Innovation in ICT

Conference, Wellington, 9-11 May 2007

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Christmas is a great time to spend with whanau. The delight on the children's faces tell us that it is an important time for them. Every thing we do on this day focuses on what the

children want to do whether it be a meal together or a barbeque at the beach.

North ShoreChristmas is a stressful time (emotionally, physically and

financially) despite trying to streamline it each year. It is something to be

endured rather than enjoyed!! Christchurch

As a sole parent family struggling with invalidity or poverty this is the seventh year of struggle

with circumstances imposed so our efforts have been focussed on healing grief and pain by

finding manageable creative positive wishes and actions for better tomorrows

Porirua

The comments listed here represent a very small fraction of the rich feedback provided by Couch members.

These comments were received in response to our summer holiday poll: we simply asked if people had other comments. What impresses me is how honest people are about their circumstances. This is powerful information to influence policy and decision-makes.

As a general observation, Couch members are sharing incredibly openly and freely. Not only that, people are at times writing at length, with people regularly writing entries of over 500 words.

This brings with it a weighty responsibility to both respect the different viewpoints, and to make good use of what we’re told. This is in fact common to any public consultation or community engagement exercise, online or off.

On the Couch we’ve been successful in creating an environment where people are willing to share their experiences, views and ideas. We have a substantial membership, just over 3,000 people at the time of this presentation, who are active.

What I want to talk about today is what are the critical successful factors for running an online community engagement website. Based on how things are working, the critical success factors relate to:

- how we’ve established a relationship with members?

- what do we do with the information we collect?

- how we promote the website?I’ll also talk about the design, customer service, and development capability.

But first, I want to set out why The Couch was set-up, how it works and how are we doing.

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• Why the Couch was set-up• How the Couch works• How are we going?• Critical success factors

o Building trusto Using what we gathero Effective promotiono The rest

• Where to from here• Q&A

What I’ll cover today

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The Couch set up a year ago, almost exactly, as a means of hearing directly from members of families.

The role of the Families Commission is to advocate for the interests of New Zealand families. The Commission promotes the interests of all families and promotes a better understanding of family issues and needs amongst government agencies and the wider community.

We need to know what issues are facing families. This is done in a variety of ways: consultation on specific policy areas; eyes and ears on the ground through a team of community advisors; Commissioner links with organisations and community leaders.

In undertaking these activities, the Commission is meeting its legislative obligation to maintain mechanisms (for example, by appointing advisory committees or forming consultation forums) to ensure that there are at all times readily accessible to it the viewsa of Maori as tangata whenuab of the Pacific Islands peoples of New Zealandc of other ethnic and cultural groups in New Zealandd of groups that represent families, or 1 or more kinds of family members, and of groups that have a particular interest in families.

The core idea behind The Couch is directly hearing from family members - unmediated by the caring professions or spokespeople. What we want is diversity of views. The results of polls and longer questionnaires were seen as being very useful to help the Commission:- develop position papers, research documents, identify areas for new work- plan public education activities - use to influence public opinion, government and other agencies.

At the same time The Couch is a fresh approach to public participation which ideally will stimulate active citizenship. As a by-product of involvement we can envisage our members being more willing to participate in democracy. We also want to share what we’ve learnt and learn from others, so online participation in New Zealand is effective.

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New languages of politics will have to be admitted into the representative arena, including those based on experience and storytelling as well as analysis and ideological polemicising. There can be no room for the downgrading of vernacular or emotive expression if we are really to take seriously the authentic testimonies of diverse experience as part of the policy process.

Stephen Coleman & John Gøtze,Bowling Together: Online Public Engagement in

Policy Deliberation (2001)

For those not online, it was stressed that The Couch would supplement face-to-face consultation. Efforts to reach so-called hard to reach groups would be made, including targeted recruitment.

The Couch was not set up for research surveys. The Commission knew it would be very difficult getting a fully representative sample of New Zealanders to join up. This is inevitable when membership is self-selecting. So we cannot extrapolate the results to the total NZ population.

Instead of conducting research surveys the core purpose of the Couch is to run polls to capture member opinions and experiences. The poll results are from a knowledgeable and diverse cross section of New Zealand families. The results we’re getting show there is a very wide cross section of family members: extended family, couples, solo mums, people in same sex relationships.

This Commission is accessing very rich qualitative data that powerfully portrays the real experiences of families. We are arguing, along the lines that Professor Stephen Coleman and John Gozte do, that it is critical for genuine voices of families to be heard in the policy process.

The responses are valid even if they are not run according to social scientific methodology. We are not ignoring the question of representativeness. Indeed we are looking into selecting a cross-section of members that is demographically representative of the New Zealand population for specific subjects.

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A tender process was run to select a developer for the website.

Core requirements were:-ease of administration, including automated poll and report generation, bulk email capability-membership anonymity-usable designThe Commission wanted to minimise ongoing maintenance costs, and reduce bottlenecks so quick turn around for publishing polls and reports.

Boost New Media were selected. They are experienced in user centred design, and have a portfolio of multi-media work for ACC, Learning Media, education clients.

Agreement reached giving Boost the right to re-sell the core code so they invested a lot of time and effort in the development phase. They continue to be involved doing maintenance and periodic upgrades.

The database and website is a custom built application. For those that are technically minded, the application runs on Ruby on Rails, is database agnostic (eg works with MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server), and is open source.

It is important to acknowledge the critical role the Commission’s Communications team played in ensuring the look ‘n feel meets the needs of the audience. Communications staff were involved from the very beginning. A purely technical team would have been unlikely to come up with such a usable design.

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Lets go, lets follow in the foot steps of a new member.

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Who here has visited the website? Is a member? Has completed a poll?

The Couch open to any New Zealand resident.

A requirement of membership is completion of a form collecting demographic information.

Members are required to accept Terms of Use.

Privacy is very important - we commit to not using email addresses for any purpose but communicating about the Couch. And all poll responses are anonymous - the name and email address are stripped from responses.

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Every 6-8 weeks we notify run polls asking members about some aspect of family life.

Polls are a combination of closed-ended and open-ended questions.

The length of polls varies. The longest was about 18 questions. Shortest one is coming up: just one question. We want people to be able to complete them in one sitting - aiming for no longer than ten minutes.

An email alert is sent to members, and reminders to those that have not completed a poll also.

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After completion of a poll, or longer research focused questionnaires, we publish a results report.

The report is a very important part of the feedback process. It is available to members, and to any visitor. We provide members with their responses to questions.

Reports are a combination of graphs and freeform text.

Currently reports are laid out on a single page. Length varies - we’re getting much deeper information than originally intended so format needs to be tweaked to reflect how we are actually using the website.

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How we run it

Internal team with survey design, analysis and communications expertise

Project Officer

Project Manager

Marketing, promotions support

Operations

Steering Committee - policy, poll and report approval, monitor progress

Governance

Before I walk through the website, I want to talk about how the website is run.

There are two levels to this:-Governance-Day-to-day operations

The Family Knowledge Base steering committee comprises both senior management and Commissioners. They set budget, determine policies, approve polls and reports, and monitor progress. Email round robins are used in-between meetings.

On the operational side:-Internal team: membership from policy and research, communications and Couch administration. Role is to design and test questions for polls, analysing results, prepare reports and disseminate findings. -Project Officer, full-time - Rebecca Whiting in this role. Help desk for members, uploading polls and reports, technical management, coordinating and cajoling other staff; promotional activities; and other related administration.-Project Manager, currently part of broader Community relations manager role. Reporting, planning, budgeting, strategy, and support for Project Officer. I see role as being a advocate for member interests. -Marketing and promotions activity shared by Communications team members. Press releases, materials, presence at events, booking advertising.

In total this amounts to about 1.5 FTEs.

The Couch sits within the Communications and Community Relations team (not an IT department) which means the emphasis is on our the relationship with the people who use the website. We are committed to meeting principles within the Commission’s community engagement charter, just as we are with any face-to-face consultation.

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Members, so far

Total at 20 April 2007: 3,000

Gender:Female 79% Male 21%

Ethnicity:NZ European 75% Maori 10%Samoan 2% Cook Is Maori 1%Chinese 1% Indian 1%Other 16%

Age:Under 24 years 2% 25-34 years 23%35-44 years 41% 45-54 years 23%55-64 years 8% Over 65 years 2%

I’m going to run through the statistics, but in doing so don’t want to de-emphasise the importance of the data we receive because it is not really a numbers game. We are collecting we useful information that is supporting the Commission’s work.

Steady growth over the year. Reached 3,000 members in April.

Substantially more women online than men, which reflects the predominance of females as primary caregivers and nurturers of family life. Ethnicity broadly same proportion as New Zealand population. Under represented in under 24 age group and over 65 years.

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Members, so farGeographic location:Northland 3%Auckland 32%Waikato 7%Bay of Plenty 7%Gisborne 1%Hawke’s Bay 2%Taranaki 2%Manawatu-Wanganui 4%

Wellington 22%West Coast 1%Canterbury 13%Otago 4%Southland 2%Tasman 0%Nelson 1%Marlborough 0%

Good spread of members, broadly proportionate to NZ population. We do have members in all areas, even though summary statistics show 0% in some cases. Wellington membership is higher than its share of the New Zealand population.

Anyone here from Tasman or Marlborough, I can give you a stack of promotional material, and might organise a promotional visit soon.

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Polls and questionnaires

Poll 1: Parenting EducationPoll 2: Home and away pollQuestionnaire 1: Childcare needs for school childrenPoll 3; Managing the family budgetPoll 4: Families and alcoholQuestionnaire 2: Disability and family lifePoll 5: Attitudes to family violencePoll 6: Summer holidaysPoll 7: Ageing and families - how does it affect you?Poll 8: Support for couplesPoll 9: How are we going? One year on The Couch

Up to mid-April 2007 we’ve run nine polls and two questionnaires. At the time of our birthday celebration we counted up: 7,865 responses from members to date. The membership is very active.

So far:81% of members have completed a pollAbout 37% have completed one poll in the last two months

I just checked the latest poll and after just one week 385 responses were received on “How are we going?”

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Some member feedback

Great - keep up the good work

Keep going in your present manner.

Feedback about how the polls/questionnaires either directly or indirectly affect support, services and policy for families in NZ

To be notified of policy changes (Govt) that have occurred as a result of the information provided by Couchers.

Debates about controversial issues, e.g. the propsed repeal of Section 59 of the Crimes Act

Please continue to ensure questions are not worded to get a prior agenda. If I felt this was so the site would immediately loose credibility.

Members have made comments through polls and by email. The lastest poll which will feed into enhancements to the way we operate the website will be a source of valuable feedback.

Very personal touch - lots of Christmas wishes. There are both positive comments, brickbats, and critiques of some of question design.

As you can see, members want to keep us honest. They are demanding that we make good use of the information, and stay neutral.

We are very happy to receive this feedback as our members are holding us accountable. As with any engagement process, they want to see some benefit come out of their involvement. This information is particularly important to helping us with how we communicate effectively.

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Critical success factors

1. Building trust2. Making use of what we gather3. Effective promotion4. The rest:

o Usabiltyo Customer serviceo Sound platform and responsive web developers

Having set out how the website works and progress to date, I want to give my point of view on why we’re in this situation. I’ll refer to three main critical success factors, and a few subsidiary ones.

1. Critical success factors: building trust

What I think is going on is that we have established a relationship with members with a high levels of trust. It’s only because of this that I can understand the openness and honesty with which members are giving feedback.

I think there are many contributing factors to trust, not all of which are related to the website. These include:-Relative newness of Commission – because the Commission was only established on 1 July 2004 people don’t have unpleasant past experiences with our organisation-Role of Commission as advocate for families – we seen as being neutral or independent-Committment to reporting back and privacy: we report back on all polls, and typically within about a month; we have not and will not use member email addresses other than for the purpose they were collectedt-Making use of results – more later-Respect for diversity… we reflect different ethnicities, values, backgrounds on the website. -Language – friendly, casual tone… really reaching out to our target audience -Look ‘n feel – inviting and ‘fun’-Responsiveness to help-desk inquiries, questions, comments, criticism.

The relationship with our members is very precious – our job is to protect. Without it, there is no Couch, it’s just a shell.

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2. Critical success factors: Making use of what we gather

As I pointed out earlier, we report back to members. Generally within four weeks.

Of course, this is not enough. Members are expecting change to policies and the circumstances of families to improve

So what are we doing:1. Analysis for research reports – eg OSS, parenting education,

2. Submissions – eg Alcohol and young people

3. Dissemination to other government agencies, ngos, eg results of disability questionnaire –presentation to IHC manager, Disability Advisory Council associated with Office of disability issues4. Public education – one coming up on work life balance, attitudes for family violence5. Analysing for trends, narrative6. Summaries produced – published in regular Commission newsletter

Talking with people about how the Couch is run and its benefits, eg SSC online participation project

There is more we could do, including sharing raw data for analysis by others – a policy will be developed,

There is a real onus on making use of what we gather, and communicating with members what we’re doing with results.

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3. Critical success factors: communication

The Commission has committed budget and staff time to promoting the Couch to target audiences. The Communications and Community Relations take a very professional approach. This something that is not always on tap for websites I’ve worked on in the past.

Word of mouth most effective way of attracting new members…. I guess happy members tell others.

The ways the Commission pursues promotion includes:

1. Every opportunity Commissioners and staff are meeting with people, they tell them about the Couch.

2. Targeted print and online advertising, eg TuMai, Mana, Indian Tribune, Chinese Herald, and TradeMe. We have a modest budget, which in my eyes is large but I’m assured by the communications advisor that it is pretty small.

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Effective promotion contd

3. Presence at events, shows, conferences. Between the International Cultural and PasifikaFestivals in Auckland when we ran the Fun Family Photo promotion, 343 people downloaded their photo and 187 have signed up.

4. Articles in our regular newsletter.

5. Links strategy – getting links on websites. Much more to do on this.

4. Critical success factors: The rest

Usable design – user friendly, simple – single purpose. Lots of white space, colour and dare I say it, a sense of fun. This contrasts with some forums or epanels overseas which I have seen which have a very technical interface.

You might have noticed use of Ajax as part of commitment to ensuring a good user experience.

Effective customer service – Rebecca the Couch’s Project Officer responds quickly, efficiently to emails. We’ve put in place systems to ensure we get back to people quickly.

Sound platform and responsive web developers – development and maintenance undertaken by Boost. They are very committed making the website work, very professional and always thinking ahead.

Scheduled monthly maintenance is supplemented by periodic enhancements. Some are due by end of July following a first review of the website.

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Where to from here

2. Refined poll structure 3. Feedback loop: quarterly newsletter, policies on sharing data

1. Deliberation - investigating other features such as discussion

As the objective of online deliberation is to infor m elected representatives, then the selection of participants need be less preoccup ied with representativenessand more concerned to recruit a broad range of expe rience, expertise and interests. So, when survivors of domestic violence were enabled to give evidence online to the UK Parliament, individual co ntributions were not evaluated in terms of their capacity to reflect the experiences of all survivors of domestic violence, but their ability to reflect the ir own experience in ways that could inform the decisions of legislators.

Stephen Coleman & John Gøtze, Bowling Together: Online Public Engagement in

Policy Deliberation (2001)

4. R & D: subset of members consulted on specific t opics

We are not standing still and have plans to build on where we’ve got to. Most of what I’m talking about here are still in the ideas stage and under wraps at the moment, so please do not widely broadcast them.

1. DeliberationOne the areas where online consultation

shows the most promise is in fostering deliberation. This about more than individuals talking in isolation, but engaging in dialogue. Benefits of deliberation include people being made aware of new information in context and being influenced by peers, and potential for re-framing issues. Discussion forums with good facilitation are one area we are looking into. The way members are using The Couch suggest could work. It would meet one of the Commission’s statutory obligations to encourage debate.

2. Refined poll structureBased on experience of the first nine

months, being more careful about type of poll and objectives. Have agreed on three types of polls:

1. Quick polls: 3-7 questions, topical issues

2. Exploratory polls: we ask members about issues for them, and ideas for poll topics

3. Research polls: question design to feed into specific areas of work, expectation that results will be analysed and published.

3. Feedback loopMake sure members know what we are

doing with information collected. Create a well-designed quarterly newsletter. It would include lists of submissions and reports, and even conference presentations like this.

4. R & DNow that we have an established base,

how else can we do things to learn about experiences of families, and meet Commission statutory objectives.

One area being investigated is to create a

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Contact

www.thecouch.org.nz

Stephen Blythph available on requestemail available on request

Presentation available on SSC facilitated Online Pa rticipation wiki:

http://participation.e.govt.nz/index.php/Main_Page

We are very happy to share our experiences. Please get in touch.

I’d like to acknowledge input from my colleague Rebecca Whiting in the preparation of this presentation.

Thank you for coming to participate in this session today.