Budget Simulator is one of the products we offer here at PublicVoice that is able to help your organisation do a lot of great stuff including letting your community work out where they want to spend their money over the long term.
Budget Simulator allows you to go out to the public and consult them on the complex nature that is budgets and engage with them to work out what the impact is of there spending decisions on the community around them.
Recently our partners at Delib have released a great document about the 7 common mistakes people make with Budget Consultation which is very useful and here at PublicVoice we want to share with you those points as we believe in them and think your organisation can learn a lot about how our Budget Simulator can work best for your needs.
7 Common Mistakes People Make with Budget Consultation
1) Not actually doing any consulting at all
One of the major mistakes people make is not actually doing any consulting at all with the public on things like budgets. Budget Simulator can be tailored to your needs and be made to suit your current requirements.
Lots of organisations have a number of ways they currently consult people and Budget Simulator is designed to work alongside these to be able to bring benefits to your organisation.
2) Not doing any consultation online
Online is where it is currently at and not having your consultation and organisation can seriously limit the feedback you get from the public on the things that you want to do. According to the OCED over 50% of the public use the internet to be able to communicate and conduct business with the government.
Using programs such as Budget Simulator for your budget consultations can in fact save you a lot of money compared to traditional surveying means and is a great interactive tool that is very easy to use.
3) Not having your consultation accessible on a mobile device
A lot of people are now using there mobiles and tablets to be able to conduct business and interact with organisations on. Scary fact is that a lot of organisations are not building their consultations to be accessible on mobile devices. This could exclude a lot of people that you want to hear from and in this world mobile is the new king.
Here at PublicVoice, all of our services are 100% mobile compatible including Budget Simulator which is great to use on a tablet and is simple to use with great graphics.
4) Is your consultation accessible by all members of the community?
One of the most important things about consulting the public on an issue is being able to include all sectors of society in that sample. Legally government departments have to make their consultations as accessible as possible with products like Budget Simulator able to be tailored to the public’s needs.
5) Lack of promotion of your consultation
Getting people to take part in your consultation process is vital to getting successful results and creating meaningful outcomes but a lot of organisations will invest in developing consultations that is poorly marketed and as a result receive low response rates.
One of the best ways you can promote your budget consultation and all other forms of consultation is to spread the word to your contacts and via other avenues such as local media and newsletters. At PublicVoice we can help spread your consultation out to the public via the use of our Citizens Panel to be able to spread your budget consultation publicly.
6) Not measuring participation
Not knowing what is happening with your budget consultation can be in fact worse than not doing one at all. With Budget Simulator and other products you can track your responses as well as measure things like drop out rates, demographics and number of responses.
Having this information at hand is important so you can work out who has taken part in your budget consultation and identify’s key areas you can target to be able to increase your participation.
7) Organisations not using social media to promote and consult the public
Using social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Linked In is a great way to be able to spread the message about your budget consultation. Alongside using Budget Simulator to make it easier to collect responses, a great push on social media to get people to take part is a good way to increase your participation from people who normally wouldn’t take part in such things.
For a copy of the report produced by our partners at Delib, Please click here. For more information on Budget Simulator and how our team at PublicVoice can help design a budget consultation to suit your needs feel free to give our free online demonstration a try or contact us anytime.