Project details

Objective/purpose

Deploy two-way conversation tool to engage with staff on issues. Inspired by Australia 2, which uses Nation Builder platform.

• Support multiple discussions going on at once
• Direct 'meatspace' participation through
  • Instant publishing of new ideas proposed for each discussion
  • Live voting (support/oppose idea) and commenting on ideas
  • Visibility: Is the idea going ahead? How has its implimentation progressed? Who has taken ownership?
• Identify clear goals for each discussion and accepted ideas
• moderators/owners communicate progress on each through status updates
• Use statistics to prominenantly demonstrate the value participation is having on the discussion
• Alert moderators to new ideas being submitted, prod them to ensure two-way feedback and manage their discussion communities.

Social media channels used

• In-house developed application
  • Using ASP.NET 3.5
  • MVC Framework for rapid application development

Results

• Ongoing project, results yet to be published.

Lessons learnt

• To be updated soon.

Additional comments

• Considered using Nation Builder source and implimenting own service, but decided against due to:
  • Source code only maintained by single person
  • No significant improvments made to code in over 1 year
  • PHP framework used and level of work required to correctly impliment and maintain
  • Could not successfully run within existing Windows-centric infrastructure topology
  • Significant changes and coding necessary to
    • integrate seamlessly with existing directory and authentication platforms.
    • acheive additional requirments not in the base application (goals, progress reporting/status)
• ASP.NET and MVC framework chosen to enable quick application development turn-around (Beta to be delivered inside 5 days)
• Success and employee participation hinges on moderators participating in discussion and using tools to effictivly communicate and track progress.