Our latest Citizen Space release is here and as always it includes a handful of new features as well as some smaller, business-as-usual improvements to enhance security or fix minor bugs.
What’s new:
“Consultation completion” checkbox
There’s a new optional feature called “Consultation completion” which allows a consultation owner to indicate once they’ve finished working with the data and all work on that consultation is complete. When switched on, this tool appears on the consultation dashboard.
This feature was requested by the Scottish Government and is designed to help administrators from all organisations manage data retention periods. By logging the date that all work was completed on the consultation, it means your organisation will now have a record of how long it’s holding data for, making it easier to keep in line with data protection guidelines.
Automatic logout for internal admins after one month
To strengthen the security of Citizen Space, we’ve added an automatic logout period. Your internal admins’ log-in sessions will now expire one month after they last used Citizen Space. This time period is configurable so we can reduce it for your site if need be — if you’d like to make it a shorter time period, please get in touch with your account manager.
Changes to suspended users
Suspended users will now see an on-screen message telling them that their account has been suspended if they try to log in.
This message is editable by site admins, so your organisation can provide guidance about who users should contact if they want to get their profile reinstated. They will also no longer appear in the drop-down list of potential owners on the Manage Consultations page.
Improved reliability for response exports
A couple of customers with a high number of responses to their consultations recently experienced a problem exporting the spreadsheet of all responses. They found that the export would time out without letting them know that the request had failed. We’ve made some changes to the process so that the export is much more reliable, especially for consultations with a high number of responses, and the user will now be shown an update in real time of how many responses Citizen Space has added to the export so far.
Google Analytics removed from admin pages
A customer got in contact asking how they could filter out Citizen Space admin pages when viewing their Google Analytics data. We’ve changed Citizen Space so that only its public-facing pages will appear in Google Analytics data from now on, enabling you to concentrate on the more useful data about what your respondents have been up to on the site.
In other news…
Some helpful hints on GDPR
As you’re probably aware, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will come into effect in May this year. We’ve been busy doing prep work and have put together a list of useful resources that might come in handy when getting to grips with the new legislation.
Welcome to some new Citizen Space customers
In the last couple of months we’ve welcomed Scottish Water, the UK General Optical Council and the UK Gambling Commission to the ranks of our 90+ Citizen Space customers around the world.
Featured consultation
Talking of the Scottish capital, Edinburgh City Council recently opened a public consultation on a proposed new tram line in the north of the city. Running until 29 April, the consultation is well-presented with images embedded throughout and a nice example of the Events tool in action on the overview page.
You can keep up to date with other public consultations running in Citizen Space by visiting the Citizen Space Aggregator.
