Effective public engagement is essential to capture the community’s views and ideas for the Plan. Process improvements to facilitate greater participation in developing this Plan involved significantly more outreach to gather ideas. In 2019-21, officials travelled to several locations around the country to conduct public meetings and workshops. This engagement was supplemented by an online, public platform, launched in early 2021. The platform used deliberative questions, developed to generate ideas and suggestions from the public about ‘challenges for a public conversation on how we advance active citizenship, partnership, responsiveness and transparency of government’.
The greater public outreach resulted in approximately 1500 ideas being gathered for the Plan. After being assessed to determine whether ideas were already being actioned by government, the remaining ideas were collated under the following key themes selected by the Minister as Plan priorities:
i) public participation
ii) information to support financial accountability
iii) access to, and usability of, public information
iv) government use of data and personal information.
Running public workshops when New Zealand was experiencing high numbers of COVID-19 cases meant workshops to develop commitments had to be held online for the first time. The Commission employed an independent facilitator with expertise in online tools to assist. Preparation included: developing detailed assessment criteria for potential commitments; designing a new workshop process; and creating collateral for workshop participants. The EAP worked with officials on adapting the design of the workshop process mid-way, to improve the quality of participation and participants’ experience.
During and outside of the workshops, the MSF, officials, and members of the public and civil society representatives worked collaboratively, over several months, to develop potential fledgling commitments and identify priorities. Participants worked in large and small groups, during and after four online workshops in April-May 2022. A further two public meetings in July 2022 were held to discuss the draft commitments. Participants continued to provide feedback on potential commitments after these workshops, and officials continued to discuss the commitments with key stakeholders to investigate potential sponsorship for some of the commitments.