We’ve recently released the ability to clone existing online consultations in Citizen Space and already we’re seeing an increased number of uses for the feature, as well as positive feedback from current Citizen Space customers:
“The ability to clone an entire survey is something many of our users here in Sutton have been wanting to see, so the fact that this is now a simple to use feature within Citizen Space is great news. This will save us significant time when running repeated surveys, as well as making sure everything is as consistent as it needs to be. Another very, very welcome development from Delib.”
Glen Ocskó, Community Involvement and Innovation Manager, London Borough of Sutton
In order to celebrate the release of this awesome time-saving feature, we’d like to highlight 5 initial example uses:
1) Set up templates for online consultation which can be used to help standardise consultation processes.
In the past, customers such as Environment Protection Agency in WA have used their Citizen Space instance to enable information gathering through the online survey feature (as opposed to more formal consultation). Now with the ability to clone consultations, such exercises can be easily repeated. What is more, creating a survey based on a pre-existing template is quicker and simpler than creating one from scratch, meaning that subsequent consultations could be run by more junior staff members, saving EPA both time and money.
As well as cloning existing consultations, skeleton consultation templates could be created by Citizen Space users or consultation leads to ensure best practice. If template consultations are marked clearly, for example with the word [template] at the beginning of the title, other users can quickly identify and copy them as the basis of their own consultations.
2) Run quarterly surveys or annual consultations with the same question and answer structure, enabling longitudinal analysis.
Citizen Space customers such as London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham often run customer satisfaction survey. Consultation cloning enables customers such as LBHF to run the same online survey at regular time intervals, ensuring results exports use always exactly the same column headings. Exported responses can then be merged, allowing direct comparison of service standards over time. Such longitudinal studies help to ensure that improvements are met within an organisation over a specified period of time.
3) Run multiple geographically specific consultations.
Customers often ask how they can ensure questions and consultations are relevant to respondents at a level which is meaningful to them. Citizen Space customers such as East Sussex County Council, for example, have used their instance to allow residents to have their say on street-lighting in different geographical areas. Such online consultations can now easily be created just once and then copied – simply re-naming for each geographical area of interest. Local level trends can be identified and published for each consultation, and higher borough-wide trends can still be identified through amalgamating the results data.
4) Run a private and public consultation with the same survey questions included.
Consultations often need to be open to the public but also target specific stakeholder organisations or individuals. By setting up a public-facing online consultation initially before cloning the consultation and choosing to add further questions applicable to respondents who may be responding in a private manner, consultations can easily be tailored to the needs and interests of both a broad and targeted stakeholder group.
5) Run two consultations in parallel with slightly different stakeholders in mind
Previously customers such as Leicester City Council often ran slightly different targeted consultations with stakeholders on service use. The ability to clone consultations now enables one consultation to be created for one target audience before a second is made and tweaked for a slightly different target group.
Are you a current Citizen Space customer and have a use for Survey Cloning which we haven’t thought of? If so, we’re always interested in hearing about innovative uses of our apps – please get in touch by emailing Rowena, one of our Account Managers, at rowena@delib.net.
