URL www.sd-commission.org.uk/pages/sd_panel.html
CASE STUDY OWNER Sustainable Development Commission (SDC)
Overview
The Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) is the government’s independent adviser on sustainable development, reporting to the prime minister and the first ministers of Scotland and Wales. Its aim is to put sustainable development at the heart of policy through advocacy, advice and appraisal.
The work of SDC is divided into 10 policy areas: climate change, consumption, economics, education, energy, engagement, health, housing, regional and local government and transport. Each policy area is led by a steering group of Commissioners and SDC staff.
To inform its work, the SDC established a stakeholder panel in September 2006. It has so far recruited over 600 members – the majority of whom have been involved in two stakeholder panels since March 2006. The panel is UK-based; participants are selected for their interests and expertise, rather than to provide a representative sample of public attitudes. Panel activity takes place online.
Policy purpose
The SDC uses its panel to:
- Understand depth and breadth of opinion on SDC projects; and
- Provide a transparent and systematic means of consultation.
This case study evaluates the second SDC panel – the first was held in 2006-07 and was evaluated in Phase 2 of Digital Dialogues. The second fed into an SDC consultation on aviation: the panel advised on the content of the SDC publication on aviation, which would then form part of the SDC’s broader consultation with the public and with core stakeholders about aviation.
Model
There were three structured panel sessions (running for three weeks each). Panel members could also participate in the SDC forum where issues around climate change and travel were being discussed. The first session was held in July 2007: panel members were required to look over a draft of the SDC’s draft aviation publication and to answer a number of open-ended questions about how it could be improved as well as about innovative aviation policy ideas. Panel members were entitled to give one answer to each question but they were not obliged to do so.
The second session took place in August, 2007. Participants were shown a summary of responses to the first session and asked to discuss the strategic role of government on aviation as well as how the SDC should engage further around the issue. In the third session, a final report was shown to the panel reflecting their priorities for government focus and giving the SDC clear direction for its ongoing engagement on aviation. This session, which took place in September 2007, invited panel members to provide feedback on the consultation process itself and to review their experience of the panel and make suggestions for its improvement.
SDC staff facilitated the consultation, but website design and panel recruitment were undertaken by a third party, Dialogue by Design, who also collected feedback on panel members’ experience of the consultation, focusing on its clarity and the design of the website.
The Digital Dialogues team added some further evaluation questions: given that people had been approached for feedback on their experience of the SDC panel previously, the focus was on form and function of the stakeholder group rather than on political engagement, generally.
Publicity
Panel members were recruited to form a dedicated stakeholder group with whom the SDC could consult on different issues over its lifetime. On joining, panel members were given an indicative brief, highlighting the number of times per year they could expect to be consulted. The work of the panel is described on the SDC website (URL given at top of the case study).
Other methods of engagement
The primary means of engaging with the panel is via the online platform, whether it be through structured consultations, polling, forums, or sharing information on the SDC extranet
User profiles
Members of the panel were recruited because of their expertise on the consultation teams; despite this, there is an attempt on the part of the SDC to build a demographically representative panel. As it stands, the gender balance is 65 per cent male to 35 per cent female. The majority of panel members are aged between 24-54 (78 per cent); 18 per cent are aged between 55 and 64; 2 per cent are over 65 and 3 per cent are under 24. Meanwhile, 96 per cent of panel members consider themselves to be white; 2 per cent Asian; 1 per cent Chinese; 1 per cent Black (according to the definitions provided by the site). Most panel members (74 per cent) are English; there are also Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and international members. Meanwhile, the professional breakdown of panel members was as follows:
By consulting people with a number of different orientations to aviation, the SDC was trying to get an overview of the range of opinions and perspectives rather than develop a consensus. As the chart above reflects, the approaches to aviation were balanced between different stakeholder groups.
Usage trends
The 600 panel members were invited to take part in three sessions. The chart below indicates the rates of participation:
As in other case studies, the rate of participation drops considerably during the life-cycle of a project (as is evident above). While the approach taken to online engagement might have an effect – appealing to some more than others – a pattern emerges that the more involved the engagement, the fewer people take part.
User feedback
Participants were asked to respond to questions on a 5-point scale (1 being high – 5 being low). The table below highlights the fact that the engagement exercise appealed to panel members because of the topic alone; 57 per cent expressed strong opinion in this regard, with an additional 20 per cent believing that aviation was a relevant theme for discussion. Nonetheless, participants were divided on the question of whether the objectives were clear and the background information, useful. Despite this, the majority of respondents appreciated the outputs (i.e., the summary reports).
When asked about the time-commitment required from participants and on the volume of background information given to panel members, responses were clustered around the centre of the scale provided. To interpret these patterns, it is important to turn to some of the more detailed responses panel members gave (see below).
Detailed feedback
In general, participants were positive about their involvement with the SDC panel. In the words of one participant:
The first stage consultation question – ‘what should the SDC put in a leaflet on climate change and aviation?’ was in my view trivial, a mis-framing of the problem, and a question for which a group of sustainable development experts / advocates were not a very useful consultation panel. However the responses, and the way the facilitators interpreted them and framed the second stage, wrenched this round into a much more rich, interesting and useful debate about how the public policy community, including but not only the SDC, should respond to the huge problem of the unsustainability of aviation growth. So congratulations to all involved for rescuing what seemed to start as a monumental waste of time. But it would have been better to start with a more important and suitable question.
The format of the consultation was a concern for other participants – partly this was because of the volume of reading required, the need to switch between different forms of information (some moved between a number of computer windows – others between hard copies and the online panel). Some suggestions were made about how the consultation could be simplified, including breaking questions down and requiring less detailed reading.
Although these make sense from a user-perspective, a balance needs to be struck between their concerns and the SDC’s desire to obtain knowledgeable responses. The role of the SDC facilitators was generally viewed positively although for some, there was a concern that the consultation was over-structured to the extent that it limited the expression of different perspectives.
The above graph represents participants’ opinions about the role of the panel; certain roles are identified as being more important at present than they will be in the future – informing the SDC (as individuals and as a collective body), for example, and reflecting the perspectives of those working in sustainable development. Participants were interested in expanding the panel’s remit in the future – in particular the desire to build a sense of community was emphasised. Participants also hoped that in the future, they could act as ambassadors for the SDC, representing its agendas to the public.
For some participants, the role of the panel was less defined: some thought its role was to influence policy-makers; for others, its role was broader, providing a repository for a range of opinion and creating a knowledge-base, while developing a range of approaches (from lay to specialist) for feeding in to the SDC’s deliberations through a variety of means (on- and offline).
Follow up
The results of the consultation can be found on the SDC panel website (address provided at top of case study).
Since the end of the consultation on aviation, the SDC has continued discussing the issues raised on its forum. The panel has continued to grow and a subsequent panel email consultation on carbon emissions in schools has been launched. Other agencies and departments are considering setting up their own engagement panel (or borrowing that of the SDC where relevant).
The SDC is now thinking about engaging people earlier in the policy cycle via its online forums, involving the stakeholder panel at times when a range of expert opinions is required.
