Canterbury City Council

The concern:

Engagement with local democracy, particularly local decision making by elected Councillors, relies on residents having a good understanding of the local decision-making structure, routines and timetabling to effectively engage.  

The question:

Is our digital infrastructure for local decision-making meeting resident expectations?

The as-is:

Currently decision-making is communicated through a specialist document management system.  This is widely used by local government and effectively communicates agendas and agenda items, including a search, bookmarks and annotation (via app). These pages receive only 3% of website traffic.

Discovery needed:

We would like to run a discovery on the effectiveness of the as-is, and whether personalisation – both geographical and topical – for residents via the main website and account would engage a wider audience in the local decision-making processes.

The discovery phase would include engaging with current users – both website-only and council attendee users – to understand how they use the current functions and systems, and how broad or narrow their local democracy interests are.  We would also speak with non-users to understand what, if anything, deters them from engaging; if they are aware of the council’s publications and webpages, and whether highlighting potential agenda items (rather than meetings) would encourage greater engagement.