apologies for taking so very long to respond. I have been guilty of the cardinal sin of not monitoring comments on my blog posts. (My excuse being that I didn’t think anyone was paying attention!)

I agree with everything you have said and use your two key points regularly when talking to prospective clients. What is GREAT from my point of view is that Matt and I aren’t the only people who believe this. It is fantastic to know that we are not alone in what we are trying to achieve.

Good post as always, however I think you’ve missed two key points that I always raise about internet accessibility.

Firstly using a ‘traditional’ consultation technique such as a town hall meeting, focus groups, phone or mail surveys also all have accessibility issues and do not permit all citizens to participate equally.

Shift workers, those in remote areas, physically disabled or low income earners are often unable to attend town hall meetings or focus groups due to time and transport issues.

Surveys largely capture people who are at home and are willing to spend time completing a survey. Many citizens are suspicious of these tools, hence the huge sign-up to the ‘do not call’ list.

Secondly, online consultation can be used in conjunction with other forms of consultation. Therefore accessibility issues with ALL consultation techniques are minimised through the overlaps across different consultation approaches.

Frankly having conducted all kinds of consultations over the last twenty years I see the most consistently useful mechanism now being online as people have time to think about their responses and phrase them carefully.

At the same time the rapid response rate, low cost and high response rate are all positives (except if you’re worried about getting too many comments – in which case maybe you need to reassess whether your goal is to consult or not).

Given the low cost of online consultation in my view it should be a ‘why not’ added to all consultation processes to broaden and deepen citizen reach rather than a ‘why’ based on the assumption that other approaches will cover all bases.