Citizen engagement in well-being statistics, an example of good practice

This post by David Skutenko provides an example of good practice in citizen engagement in well-being and progress statistics in Australia and explain the role technology can play. This post is the Australian Bureau of Statistics contributions to the current  Wikiprogress' online discussion on "Engaging citizens in well-being and progress statistics.

Do you have any examples of good practice in citizen engagement in well-being and progress statistics?

A decade on from its first publication of Measures of Australia’s Progress (MAP) and in response to the burgeoning domestic and international interest in measuring progress and wellbeing, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) considered it was timely to review whether MAP was still measuring those aspects of life that matter most to Australians. In 2011-2012, we undertook a broad-ranging consultation that asked Australians ‘What is important to you for national progress?’ The feedback the ABS received was in the form of aspirational statements. 

The ABS’s method for bringing the consultation feedback together has been iterative. That is, following each phase of the consultation process, the ABS has undertaken a careful and methodical thematic analysis of the feedback received; drawing out and grouping common themes, articulating the important elements of those ideas and refining the aspirations and views expressed by participants. The outcome has been a set of aspirations for national progress that has evolved throughout the consultation process that the ABS hopes resonate with Australians.

In consultation with our Expert Reference Group, we decided upon a multi-faceted consultation model with people drawn from the areas of society shown below. The government, community, business and academic sectors were all represented, as were particular groups through representatives of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. A balance of representation across the various sectors was sought as was a gender and age balance. The following diagram shows the MAP consultation groups and channels.

We consulted directly with around 1000 people and indirectly with many more through social media, utilizing participant networks. We also gathered information through one point of contact who then gathered input from a range of constituents. We used a multi-stream consultation, targeting a variety of audiences. This provided us with a wide representation of views within a limited budget.

The consultation was launched through a national statistical conference by the Australian Statistician where Australians were invited to participate through submissions, workshops and a variety of social media tools. This launch was accompanied by a feature article and media releases.

The whole of the consultation process, including the results, has been reported back to Australians in Measures of Australia’s Progress – Aspirations for our nation: a conversation with Australians about progress 2013 ABS cat.no 1370.0.00.002.

Another key contributor to the success of the MAP consultation was having a clear consultation model. This tool allowed us to visually represent key concepts to participants , such as Progress as an unambiguous movement of society in a positive direction toward an identified aspiration or goal. We also used it to clarify the stages of the consultation that the ABS and participants would contribute to (i.e. Participants provided the aspirations for progress whilst ABS will provide the measures). We used this model to convey and explain the purpose of the consultation - to establish what was important for progress - and that looking at available measures was a subsequent activity. In this way we ensured that the feedback would provide all of the important areas of progress, without reference to whether or not they are currently measurable.

Lessons learned from the MAP consultation were that it's important to engage and include the media in any campaign, both traditional and social. As ABS was launching into the 'new' social media space we learned to be guided by our staff who had skills in this area and listened to their advice about using more informal language and tone and allowing for humour. With such a quick response tool as social media we needed to be prepared and had 3 months worth of conversations starters, prominent Australian contributions, articles of interest etc. With this, we also found that we needed to be flexible enough to respond to conversation threads, rather than ploughing on with our pre-arranged blog schedule. The MAP 2.0 blog needed a dedicated staff member to ensure that the ABS and participants received the benefits that we wanted.

Championship of the consultation within the media, from our prominent Australians and by our ABS leaders also ensured that interest in the project was high and obstacles were removed early. Rather than talking to our traditional data users, we chose to engage in a much broader based consultation. This approach delivered us the broad ranging views that we needed in order to refresh MAP and gather new ideas about progress.


What role can technology play in improving citizen engagement with well-being and progress statistics?

We used multiple modes to contact our audiences, for example social media (which captured a younger cohort), online, paper, face to face, interactive, media. Many of these processes were able to be undertaken simultaneously which helped make the process efficient, in terms of time and cost.

The MAP consultation aimed to promote a conversation about progress. Even though blogs are one of the oldest social media tools, they have many advantages as an engagement tool, and the MAP 2.0 blog proved a successful way of inspiring interest in the topic of national progress, and enabling us to quickly gain insights into people's views on progress. The blog allowed a range of responses from short replies to more lengthy and complex replies. One aspect of promoting interest in the blog and the consultation was to post contributions from prominent Australians, from entrepreneurs through to sports people. Media outlets picked up on these contributions and a series of interviews and radio talk back sessions followed, further promoting and broadening 'the conversation' about progress. ABS Facebook and twitter were used to channel people to the MAP 2.0 blog. We felt our social media campaign was successful with many 1000's of website hits and page visits and hundreds of quality comments that we could use.

We developed a list of MAP Community contacts during the consultation and used these to tap into further online networks. We linked to relevant progress and wellbeing sites, particularly by developing innovative infographics that captured interest and imagination, for example our Progress MAP below. 

Click map to enlarge. 

We developed and produced an promotional video, using contributions from our prominent Australians, to capture the aspirational spirit of the consultation. This was shown at forums and online.

David Skutenko

Director, Social and Progress Reporting, ABS

Wikiprogress and partners invite you to participate in an online discussion from 22 – 30 April 

Engaging citizens in well-being and progress statistics

• How can citizen engagement improve the development and use of well-being and progress statistics?

• Do you have any examples of good practice in citizen engagement in well-being and progress statistics?

• What role can technology - such as mobile apps or interactive web platforms - play in improving citizen engagement with well-being and progress statistics?

To leave a comment, click here and scroll to the section entitled “Contribute!”

Here is the short link to the page: http://bit.ly/1itMg6L 
Follow the Twitter hashtag #CitizenEngagement and #StatsForAll

You may contact us or send comments via:

Email (info@wikiprogress.org)

The ProgBlog

Wikiprogress on Facebook

Wikiprogress on Twitter

Is life in Australia getting better?

These are the sorts of questions we are asking the Australian public this year - to find out and help articulate the public's aspirations for Australia's national progress.

I work on a publication called Measures of Australia Progress (MAP) by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Our aim is to help people answer the question "Is life in Australia getting better?" While this may be of no interest to someone living in Denmark for example, the principles of what we do, can be applied to any country or community. And we hope that people use what we do for their community's progress and wellbeing.

This year we're hoping to create a public conversation on Australia's progress. We are asking Australians from all walks of life about their goals and aspirations for Australia's progress. What kind of country do we want to live in? We're calling this consultation MAP 2.0, as we want to update our publication with the feedback we receive.

Why are we doing this?
The reason we're asking for the goals and aspirations of Australians is if we want to know if Australia is progressing, we have to know what it is we are progressing towards. Once we know our progress goals, we can better measure how we're tracking towards them. It's our role, as statisticians to measure our progress, but it is the role of the community to determine what progress means. What is appealing about this process is that it applies to any level and any community. There can be national aspirations which a publication like MAP can measure, and there can be local community aspirations which local projects can measure. As the goals and aspirations of each community might be different, this approach allows to take in that diversity.

Progress so far... ?
We're hoping to generate a national conversation about Australia's progress, similar to the global dialogue that the Stiglitz, Sen, Fitoussi Commission called for. The ABS has been a leader in this field for some time. We first released MAP in 2002 and it was seen as a groundbreaking and somewhat controversial publication back then - raising the profile of environmental statistics. Now that has become the norm. The ABS would like to continue to be a leader in this field so we're having a fresh look at MAP. Plus there are many other projects that are looking at the progress and wellbeing of societies, so we'd like to learn from their experiences. We've created some maps, calling them "Indicator Land" maps to demonstrate the number of projects. They're not a comprehensive list of projects, more of a visual aid to demonstrate the explosion of interest in this field.

Blog to be released soon...
As part of our consultation, we're launching our blog on 29th August, with help from several prominent Australians to start a national dialogue. I won't tell you who they are as we're in the process of finalising the list. Our aim is that people will provide comments and share their goals and aspirations for Australia's progress on our blog. This post is a bit of shameless self-promotion by us :)

As part of the consultation we've already visited each ABS office in the state capitals in Australia and held workshops to collect people's goals for Australia. Also, we've gathered groups of experts to help refine progress aspirations for Australia. The aspirations we collect, along with the comments and feedback we hope to receive on our blog, will feed into a report and eventually a new version of MAP. We hope to release our report in time for the next World Forum in India.

If you can't wait for the launch of our blog and would like more information, you can read our submission booklet or the feature article in MAP 2010 to get a better idea of what we're doing.

Stay in touch! measuringprogress@abs.gov.au


Serhat Turut