This post is a summary of some of the things we learnt from a good practice session with the Welsh Assembly. We hope it will be of value to other scrutineers looking at how to improve public engagement.
About the session
All of us in the Scrutiny Team along with Councillors Mary Jones and Paxton Hood-Williams went to Cardiff for the day to hear about how the Assembly engages the public in its work. Dyfrig Williams from Good Practice Wales also took part and brought his video camera to capture some of the highlights.
The day was an informal conversation with different people coming in and out. Despite being from different tiers of government we found that we had much in common. In practical terms we were able to share tips on things like question and answer sessions with cabinet members and the way that in-depth inquiries are run.
Overall it was a fantastic learning opportunity for us and we are really grateful to Kevin Davies and his colleagues for organising the day and for giving up their time so generously. It was also great to see Peter Black AM and Mike Hedges AM who were both able to pop in and contribute to the session.
Here then are some of the learning points from the day – I hope you find them useful. We will certainly be reflecting on them to improve our practice.
1. Never stop looking for new ways of doing engagement
Sessions like this remind us that engagement is something that you never stop learning about. Simply in terms of new things to use we learnt about:
- Text only webchats using google hangouts
- Making Videos using ipads
- Facebook adverts to promote scrutiny inquiries
2. Scrutiny inquiries are conversations not formal research projects
As much as we would like to be academically rigorous in our scrutiny work we need to recognise that scrutiny inquiries are different to formal research. Scrutiny takes place in a political environment, evidence is translated by officers who are bound to have an element of bias in what they do and the politicians involved want to be present when evidence is being collected. If evidence is collected on behalf of the politicians and then reported back it can never be as real to them no matter how detailed the feedback.
Face to face is the most powerful evidence.
Inquiries are in fact a series of smaller conversations that get drawn together at the end. Again, balancing what has come out of these smaller conversations is a judgement made by the scrutineers who negotiate the end result as a group.
3. Scrutiny inquiries add value by going beyond the traditional sources
We saw how Assembly scrutiny inquiries allowed the committee members to talk to people they wouldn’t normally talk to. Indeed, this was the essence of what public engagement meant. Scrutineers were able to expand their knowledge and prepare better questions by having conversations outside of the normal Assembly bubble.
Having these conversations means working in different ways. We heard about committee members meeting people in enterprise zones, in community settings for poverty work and holding informal sessions that were reported back anonymously. Some sessions were ‘off the record’ and provided valuable insight that might not otherwise have been gained.
4. Public engagement has to be led by the committee members
We heard that public engagement is a new culture for the Assembly committees and how reaching out beyond the Assembly bubble had gone from being the exception to being the mainstream.
Committee members were learning by doing. By trying new things they had become more open to new approaches. Confidence in doing things differently also meant that inquiries were more flexible.
5. Think about the who before you think about the how
We liked that Assembly scrutiny inquiries always started with two questions along these lines:
Who do you need to talk to?
How are you going to talk to them?
Like us the Assembly is thinking about how they can place the ‘user’ at the centre of what they do and design public engagement activity around user needs. We swapped noted on things like user stories and user journey mapping.
We heard about how video was being used to share feedback from scrutiny work and we discussed the use of short shareable summaries of reports.
6. Public engagement requires corporate teamwork
We heard about how the Assembly sets up an integrated team for each inquiry. This team, which supports the planning and delivery of public engagement, includes someone from communications and legal as well as from the committee section.
This integrated working is certainly something we can learn from in order to provide more rounded and comprehensive support.
7. Prepare in advance so that scrutiny can hit the ground running
We were impressed with the preparation that was done before inquiries so that committee’s could hit the ground running. This included talking to ‘in the know’ organisations about who the committee might engage with and how they might be involved.
There was also offline groundwork done to inform the online work. Preparing people to be involved in webchats for example.
We also picked up a tip about publishing in advance those questions gathered from the public for cabinet member question sessions. This helped both the committee and the cabinet member to prepare.
8. Feedback is a continuous loop
This is one area of public engagement that we know is important but don’t always managed to get right. It was interesting, therefore, to hear about:
- The use of video and storify to provide feedback
- Breaking down lengthy final reports to feedback in manageable chunks
- Including people’s quotes in reports and showing them they are there
- ‘Story telling’ the inquiry from the perspective of the people affected
- Giving the media stories about events and people – not processes
So, a thoroughly productive day and a great example of how getting out and seeing how others work can support learning and development.
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