We consult for a range of reasons, from designing better solutions to engaging the target audience in the design of the solution. Stakeholders are diverse and you need to be across that diversity and get to understand the concerns of each group.
What are you hoping to find out through consultation?
Designing your consultation process is important. Every consultation process needs to be tailored to the needs and context of the policy process: some can be shallow and brief; some need to be broad and open.
First, identify what you want to know.
Surface views and perspectives
You need to know what your stakeholders think. Are they broadly supportive of action or opposed to it? Are they already doing something that would support what you want to do? Or something that limits the effectiveness of your action?
Test ideas
You might have an idea that you want to test to see if it works. Or you need to test how the issues around your policy are affected. For example, changes to child protection requirements might lead to changes in intake processes in health or education. You may be looking for ways to improve those requirements to streamline the process for all the participants.
Build legitimacy for action
You may have identified a genuine need for action…but there is a lack of political or community awareness or knowledge that is getting in the way of meaningful change. For example, we have seen this over and over with responses to climate change. A consultation process could be used to:
- Raise the profile of an issue
- Raise awareness of the need for or potential benefit of action
- Gather community support to take the next step
Or alternatively to gain community agreement to not take action on an issue.
Engage the people affected by the policy in the change
Ultimately, a policy decision is about changing people’s behaviour. For example:
- Providing an incentive to do something differently, like through a tax break to encourage spending in a particular area
- Creating a sanction to stop people doing things, like making new regulation.
People are often more willing to change if they have been involved in the design of the change itself. They may not personally need to be involved if somebody they regard as genuinely representative of their interests has been consulted—like a community group or peak industry group.
Generate new ideas
Governments now broadly accept that they no longer have a monopoly on knowledge in policy domains (if they ever did).
- There are multiple sources of policy advice and ideas, both formal (such as independent or partisan think tanks) or informal.
- People are recognising the value of the ‘wisdom of crowds’: that a community collectively can have smart and workable ideas for difficult problems. Some of this has been learnt through crowdsourcing ideas via the Internet through communities of people linked by common interests (and often disconnected physically).
Avoidable traps in consultation
It’s important to be clear exactly how much impact consultation can have, and plan for that.
We’ve seen too much consultation that is designed independent of the context of the issue. Using the wrong approach can backfire. For example, you may raise expectations that:
- Those consulted will have a say in the final outcome, when they will not
- Every issue raised will be responded to
- There will be money available to new initiatives (particularly if you ask for spending priorities).
Let’s get concrete. One process we saw consulted statewide and asked the community for ideas for new initiatives. The process generated over 500 suggestions. This is an amazing approach if there was the capacity to act on these suggestions. But…the list was never activated and never published. In fact, there was never scope in that case to invest in new ideas. Asking for advice that you don’t (or can’t) listen to doesn’t serve you or those you consult with.
And a final hint. Stakeholders often say that they have been saying the same things to Government for 10 or more years. We have sometimes started consultation processes with a summary of what stakeholders have previously said. This can serve as a ‘statement of agreed facts’ to test with the stakeholders. Reflecting back what stakeholders have already said values their previous work. It also makes it easier to have a conversation starting now about live issues and concerns.
