Of late, our team has been very busy working on a few very interesting, challenging and exciting community engagement projects. These have not been your run of the mill projects and have been focused on delivering critical infrastructure for the long-term well being of citizens in a number of states in Australia and indeed over the ditch in New Zealand.
What has stood out across all of these community engagement projects is the critical aspect of planning for managing data collation. That is to ask yourself the key question throughout both planning and implementation as to what actual information are you seeking as part of your process.
Here are four simple questions to consider for capturing data as part of your community engagement process:
- What data do you need? What information are you actually seeking? Will anecdotal evidence be enough? Do you need empirical data and why?
- In what format? How will your project team view the data? What format do they need to link in to any other pieces of technology?
- How will you obtain it? Have you allowed sufficient time to capture data? Have you staged your processes to allow for information capture for community engagement?
- Do you have sufficient mechanisms in place to capture it? Do you need to consider budgeting for and/or adding data entry staff?
All of this information is vital in capturing important data to inform your community engagement process. This information can be obtained through a variety of platforms, with digital platforms becoming increasingly popular. Online surveys are an easy to prepare platform that gives you data that is understandable and valuable.
Now that you have this information, take it and use it to create high quality community engagement projects.
For future assistance with any community engagement projects reach out to Articulous at info@articulous.com.au
