Guide to Online Participation

The Guide to Online Participation will help State servants identify and develop exciting and innovative ways to engage with New Zealanders in policy and service design and delivery. This work contributes to achieving a world-class professional State Services. The current Guide to Online Participation is the first step in an evolving area of theory and practice - it will be tested and refined, and we require your help to improve its contents.

Read the guide

Read this document online

To print this document, download a PDF [600 KB]

Download the Guide in sections - PDFs

• Full document [1.2 MB]
• Introducing the Guide [71 KB]
• Purpose [265 KB]
• Principles [139 KB]
• Implementation - Design [229 KB]
• Implementation - Manage [210 KB]
• Implementation - Evaluate [211 KB]
• Resources [380 KB]

Each section includes a snapshot that includes voices and a relevant quote around the issue, as well as the full story behind each part of the guide.

Introducing the Guide to Online Participation

An introduction to online participation. This section provides a quick introductory tour of main issues addressed in the Guide to Online Participation.

Purpose

Why have a guide? This section defines the scope and purpose of the Guide to Online Participation.

• Snapshot of purpose: identifies the key messages and highlights
• Full story of purpose: examines the who, why, how and who for behind the guide being written.

Principles

Sound principles can stand the test of time. This section sets out the core principles for online participation.

• Snapshot of principles: identifies the key messages and the principles that guide online participation initiatives.
• Full story of principles: explains why it is important to have the principles in the first place, and further examines what the principles are.

Implementation

Implementation can be broken up into three parts: design, management and evaluation.

• Good design puts principles into practice. This section describes how to design successful online participation.
• Project management is where design hits reality. This section describes how to successfully manage online participation.
• Evaluating to learn, learning to evaluate. This section provides guidance for evaluating online participation.

Resources

Want more? Need help? Look here. This section provides a tool kit, case studies, a glossary and links to useful resources for online participation projects.

Why are we producing the guide?

We have gathered the input and advice from members of a wide-ranging Participation Community of Practice.  The Community has involved people from central and local government, academia, the private sector, civil society organisations and international participation specialists. We have produced the guide to promote State Services that are networked, co-ordinated, accessible and trusted. We want to help agencies reap the benefits and mitigate the risks of online participation, and to produce better designed and more responsive policies and services.

Comment on the guide

The guide is dependent on the involvement of the Participation Community of Practice,  who share their experiences and wisdom, and offer suggestions for improvement. We would like our Community of Practice to be as inclusive and diverse as possible, and we would welcome your interest.

The ParticipatioNZ wiki will be archived on this site at the end of July 2010.