Public Experience: end of award comments
PublicExperience.com is a site that asks the simple question; Wouldn't it Be Better If? The objective is to get users and employees of Public Services to express their ideas for improving these services in front of the Cabinet Office and the Innovators' Council.
The ethos of the project is that the public should be able to contribute ideas and feedback of their experiences without pre requist knowledge of which of the 1200 government organisation is responsible. The user's raw front line experience has value in of itself.
The MoJ Innovations Fund was a highly useful project, seeding the ability for this project to be created, and to go forwards from there, and should be repeated as it's a source of ideas and potential for other low-risk projects offering potentially significant reward.
Successes
- The idea works: a single link from the netmums newsletter generated 200 posts in 24 hours.
- The widget produced, and other related material, where they reached the right people, were picked up and promoted well
- The project will continue with funding and support from the Cabinet Office.
- Developing the site including redesigning to increase accessibility from the site users feedback and responses of a small focus group.
- Getting the people who posted on the site to identify with the site from their specific interests and connect the importance of their experiences with public services.
Lessons Learnt
- Blanket advertising particularly with Facebook was not useful despite increased traffic to the site these visitors were passive. Publicity strategies were varyingly effective. Netmums found out about the project from an email, and generated significant traffic and generalisable, teachable, experiences.
- Finding that one person who can have a disproportionate impact is incredibly difficult; we mostly failed. Successes can be rare, and require a significant amount of work generating nothing.
- Collaborating with the relevant government organisation can require significant effort and maintainance. Staff and/or strategy changes in dependant groups can be a significant risk
- The idea works, and the cabinet office want it to continue.
For more, see www.publicExperience.com
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