Heralded as the most significant change in sex equality legislation
for 30 years, the New Equality Bill will place the onus on organisations
to demonstrate fair treatment of women and men. The Equal Opportunities
Commission wants to raise awareness of the new Duty and seek comments
on their draft Code of Practice. We are at the beginning of a
12 week online consultation.
Environment Agency TE2100
One of the Environment Agency’s most important areas of
work at the moment is around flooding and flood risk. A major
Environment Agency project, TE2100 is reviewing options for managing
flood risk on the River Thames. An online consultation aimed at
key stakeholders is seeking early input into this work and will
be going live very soon.
One of the projects we have been most excited over the last year
has been a national project for the Committee on Radioactive Waste
Management (CoRWM). Here, the aim has been to engage with large
numbers of lay people about their priorities and concerns around
the management of nuclear waste, in essence to understand public
acceptability. We produced a discussion guide with information,
instructions and a reply form to enable community groups to understand
the issues and communicate their views to CoRWM.
568 reply forms were received from groups across the UK, and
at least 2826 individuals participated in a discussion using the
guide. The results have been inputted onto an online form and
from there transferred into our database for analysis. The results
will be available on the website later this spring. so watch this
space...
The overall objective of this consultation for Defra is to reduce
the impact of waste management on the environment and to develop
the economic benefit of using waste as a resource while meeting
European obligations. This is primarily an online process. Defra
wanted an online process for a number of reasons, not least to
encourage waste minimisation. We are a week into a twelve week
consultation and it is already attracting much attention with
over 400 people registered to participate.
Still at the coalface
Dialogue by Design's online projects are built on our experience
of running face-to-face workshops and conferences. This has led
some people to think we no longer hack away on the front line
and that we have withdrawn from the rough and tumble of meetings
with real people to sit in front of our computers.
Nothing could be further from the truth. For example, Pippa and
Andrew are involved in a project so potentially difficult that
they recently spent two days in Brussels actually rehearsing the
workshop. We will have three hours to hammer out an agreement
that could eventually transform the workings of an entire industry.
(We could not say more!)
Meanwhile almost all of our larger projects require us to get
out there with flip chart and pens at one stage or another. We
have no intention of withdrawing from this work as we feel it
is fundamental to being able to design the best consultations
and engagement processes, whatever methods we use to get people’s
responses.