The e-consultation

Not ready for respondents

The research team set up a site for the e-consultation on their own servers, at http://waterways.econsultation.org, as the Waterways Ireland web site was not set up at that time to run discussion forums. Although Waterways Ireland publicised the URL http://waterways.econsultation.orgin their e-mails, inviting organisations to respond to the consultation, Waterways Ireland did not highlight the e-consultation on their own home page.

Neglected how users browse online

The consultation document was put on-line, not as one long linear PDF to download and print, but in HTML, broken up into a number of pages, with the hope that readers might browse to particular issues that concern them, and then respond on those issues. It was, however, written in the same language as the paper consultation document. Although this ensured that everyone was responding to the same text, it did not account for the differences by which people read linear paper documents and browse on-line web pages.

Lack of online discussion

Readers were invited to read the paper consultation document, then submit their views in an on-line forum. 12 people went as far as to register on the discussion forum (6 internal, 6 from outside Waterways Ireland), but no-one external to Waterways Ireland went on to submit a comment to the discussion forum. In fact, of the six responses Waterways Ireland did receive to their consultation, all of these were paper submissions.

It seems that quite a few people viewed the discussion forum but hardly any respondent was willing to write and submit their views. The starting questions for each thread were hardly designed to generate emotional engagement.