Citizen Space is a cloud-based web application, which means when we introduce upgraded features they’re available to you automatically, with no need to install or upgrade anything yourself.
The latest upgrade to Citizen Space included the very simple (but very effective) new feature of being able to feature a consultation on the consultation hub. Although it might seem like a small-step in terms of the benefits, featured consultations are of more use than it may first appear:
1. Drive traffic to increase response
Its the obvious benefit, but worth stating. By giving a consultation a more prominent place on the hub you can influence the number of people who will come across it.
If you’re part-way through running a consultation and the response rate is less than you were hoping for, you can quickly get it up on the featured consultation section to increase its traffic. Alternatively, if one of your featured consultations has hit the number of responses you were hoping for, you can swap it with another without needing to take the consultation down.
2. Show what’s important to you
Different organisations have different interests in different things at different times. If your current focus is on making your area green, then featuring consultations to do with recycling makes complete sense.
The featured consultation area enables you to convey to your stakeholders what’s important to you and show how they can influence that issue.
London Borough of Barnet use Featured Consultations to show how they listen
3. Demonstrate how you listen
In the past, we’ve experienced that some people don’t get involved in consultation because they don’t think their submissions feed into decision-making.
Citizen Space is designed to demonstrate the whole process of not just people submitting their ideas, but displaying how those ideas influence high-level decisions once a consultation is closed. You can then feature a closed consultation to drive people’s attention to a record of what you consulted upon, what the public said and what happened as a result of it.
With the ability to embed an image and specific introduction for the featured consultation, Citizen Space gives you flexibility in making your consultation tool work best for your organisation.
If you have any other ideas on how to make best use of the featured consultation in Citizen Space, we’d love to hear your thoughts.
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