The Online Engagement guidance is now live and ready for you to use. Read it. Use it. Critique it. While we have tried to make the guidance useful, it is a work in progress and we’d really like your feedback so we can improve it, so tell us what you think.
The launch
The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) and the Chair of e-Government at Victoria University of Wellington launched the guidance at an event on 3 September. It was great to see so many of you there.
Guest speakers
To mark the launch, our guest speakers were:
- Peter Murray, Acting Chief Executive for DIA, who provided the strategic context and announced the publication of the Online Engagement guidance.
- Professor Miriam Lips, Chair in e-Government at Victoria University of Wellington, discussed the trend towards engaging online. She also talked about partnering with DIA and establishing the NZ Online Engagement Community of Practice.
- Keynote speaker Lesley Hoskin, Associate Deputy Secretary at the Ministry of Education talked about her experience using social media to engage directly with key stakeholders: students, parents and whānau.
- Laura Sommer, Acting General Manager of Government Information Services (GIS) at DIA, was the master of ceremonies.
- Nadia Webster, Principal Advisor in GIS, who leads this work on behalf of the Government Chief Information Officer to improve government services provided online to the public. She shared lessons learned from developing the guidance.
When and why you should use the guidance
You should use the guidance whenever you are asked to consult or engage with people to inform policy or regulatory development or review, or service design. The guidance will help you deliver well planned online engagement, encouraging openness and transparency. This, in addition to being responsive to your audience, will help build trusted relationships and can identify the potential impact of changes before they are implemented.
Let us know what you think
Please let us know what you think about the guidance. How easy is it to follow and use? How are you using it? How would you change it to make it more useful?
We'll collect all your feedback over the next few months. From there we'll work out how to update the guidance based on what's working (or not working) for you, additional information or tools you need. Keep in mind that we work iteratively so changes will happen over time.
