I’ve been pondering on what kind of online feedback would best help improve our public services. Of course, government already has it in some places – on NHS Choices, through third parties such as Patient Opinion, and for many local government services (that’s where I live).
The citizen might give a description and rating of an experience (just like restaurant and hotel reviews), an observation note (low hanging trees over pathways, abandoned cars) or photographs with GPS reference. What we lack is any kind of consistency.
- How might the citizen expect to do it?
- Where would they find where they could give such feedback?
- What kinds of descriptions and information will be required?
- Are they hampered by yet another interface, or are there similarities to make the feedback process familiar?
There are a number of approaches:
- Set a common framework, so that when feedback mechanisms are implemented, people can learn what to expect
- Adopt some leading examples and copy across the different public sector websites
- Setup a few Web Services that deliver the feedback functionality to many different websites, so that users have the same experience wherever they go.
We not only hinder the citizen in their ease of reporting (thereby potentially adding to their distress or preventing them from complimenting the service), we also lose something much more valuable – the ability to analyse where small changes across public services could result in maximum effect.
Those are systemic aspects that are not visible because believed specific, until some grunt work is done on the feedback in a comprehensive way. For example people’s experience of hospitals may be coloured by the difficulty or ease of getting there, or delays in responding to enquiries may be a generic response within certain organisations, rather than team specific. We don’t get that kind of information unless we start to listen to citizens in a more comprehensive way about their experiences of public services.
So how can we best do that online?
Posted in: General
Here’s a link to my thoughts on some of the challenges such a scheme might face, from a LG (local gov) perspective.
http://paulgeraghty.posterous.com/feeding-back-citizen-experience-you-will-subm
PaulGeraghty says:
September 20, 2009 at 10:36 amI like Kampyle.com as a feedback system. It would need work but something similar that could be just as easily rolled out across all government web properties would be a first step.
I keep getting interrupted by Socitm surveys which although useful to the web site owner are actually intrusive and confusing to visitors, in my experience.
Philip John says:
September 22, 2009 at 6:33 pmHi David
Think it’s a good point re: consistency and quality of these feedback mechanisms. Some (slightly rambling) thoughts…
As you mention in your opening para, it’s worth noting that in some areas citizens are taking public services feedback into there own hands (like http://www.mypolice.org, created at this year’s http://www.sicamp.org). Where these citizen generated feedback mechanisms might struggle for resources to promote themselves enough to be workable, they do retain a certain authenticity and independence which might make people feel more comfortable about giving feedback and encourage broader participation.
So, if government wants to do more here, it might be worth doing some research into where such feedback channels might best sit; with the government service provider, with a gov-funded but semi-independent org/brand/site, or with a citizen-driven and wholley independent 3rd party.
Kim Willis says:
September 25, 2009 at 11:20 amInteresting post – and, as one of the Patient Opinion team, you’d expect me to have a view!
) is that NHS Choices is focused on… er, choices. The model here is of patient as consumer, choosing between all the yummy hospitals they could attend.
I think there’s a question that hasn’t yet been clearly addressed: what is the feedback for? What do we expect the benefits to be?
Getting clear about this might begin to help us understand where a feedback service is best provided by government, and where it isn’t.
For example, one way in which Patient Opinion and NHS Choices differ (though this is my view, and the NHSC team may disagree
At Patient Opinion our focus is on using feedback for service improvement, so our implementation of the service is different. We want to enable wider staff involvement, third sector involvement, incentives for responsiveness, and so on, in the feedback platform. Our model here is of patient as co-creator of local services.
If we continue to see citizens simply as “consumers” of public services, I don’t think we’ll get far beyond ratings and reviews, and I don’t think we’ll liberate the transformative potential of the web at all.
James Munro says:
October 22, 2009 at 2:11 pmGathering meaningful feedback seems to be the holy grail of public services at the moment – it will be intereting to see how they start to act on that feedback once it is gathered.
Speaking as someone who runs local parent forums which facilitate (with lots of support) the input of parents views into local services my experience is often that gathering the feedback is relatively straight forward. The much harder nut to crack is making sure that feedback can be translated by local professional’s into changes at a local service level.
However, perhaps that is getting ahead. I think ‘grunt’ work is vital to really embed feedback and engagement but for us, the key is to combine that work with the online environment. In other words let’s not make it an either or.
Vicki Shotbolt says:
October 28, 2009 at 2:54 pm