Type Your Project S Name Here

Consultation Strategy Template 1. [TYPE YOUR PROJECT’S NAME HERE]

WHAT’S THIS ALL ABOUT?

You want to conduct an Online Consultation on Engage Victoria? This Strategy Document asks you to address all the elements that make up a successful Online Consultation. This document works for small teams and large. Please complete all required fields before submitting to us. Remember, you’re not doing this for us. By completing this document you give your consultation the

Who can help me with this document? Your first port of call with questions about completing your Consultation Strategy is your Departmental Engagement Manager. Engagement Managers work within the Communications area of every Department. They know how Online Consultation works and they work closely with us to ensure that all consultations on Engage Victoria are of a high quality.

What happens after I’ve finished my strategy? Once we receive your strategy we will review it to understand if your project is suitable for inclusion on Engage Victoria. We will be in touch with you for further information if required. Once the Strategy is finalised and if suitability for Engage Victoria is confirmed, your site will be provisioned.

So, let’s get started… 1. Tell us about your Consultation. Why are you consulting, what do you want to find out, who are you trying to reach, what will change as a result of your findings and who is responsible for this project? 500 chars ______

2. Now, tell us about your audience. 2a. Who are you trying to engage with? Where your audience is diverse, provide us with some detail about the different audience segments you will be targeting. For example, my consultation is about train line upgrades throughout Victoria. My audiences might be transport users, local business owners who will be impacted by proposed changes, Local residents who may be impacted by proposed changes as well as industry groups. 500 chars ______2b. What do your audience need to know in order to give you the responses you need?

| February 2017 | DPC | V1.0 | WoVG Digital Standards Framework How will you help them to understand the issues? Do they need to understand how this consultation came about and what it will lead to? 250 chars ______

2c. How will your audience be affected by this consultation? What is going to change as a result of this consultation and how will you respond to their input? 500 chars ______

2d. Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Audiences. If your audience is Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD), you will need to carefully consider the content of your online consultation and how you will communicate updates. As such, you may need to engage a translation or interpretation service to ensure all members of your community are able to access your consultation and participate in the conversation. Is your audience Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD)?

o Yes o No If you answered yes, have you arranged a translation service for your consultation? ______

3. How do you intend to evaluate the feedback you collect? For instance, are you collating data from multiple channels like social media, town hall meetings and online surveys? Do you have a method for evaluating comments and other written feedback? 500 chars ______4. How do you intend to report the results of your engagement back to your community? Communicating your results with your audience is an essential part of the online consultation process. In addition to publishing the results on your consultation page, all other communications channels should be considered to ensure none of your respondents are left out of the loop. 500 chars ______

5. Who is on your Consultation Team? Consultation Strategy Template Running an Online Consultation is a skilled team effort. You need to all be on course to ensure that you deliver a coordinated and effective consultation – actually and actively getting meaningful results. Engage Victoria recognises these roles as essential to the running of a successful campaign. Don’t be disturbed if you are running your consultation as a one-person team. Sometimes the scale of a project means one person can manage it. If that is you, look at these roles and recognise that each role represents some work that needs to be done.

5a. Consultation Owner This is not a Business name – it’s a person. Which senior VPS is responsible for the consultation? ______5b. Consultation Manager Who will be designing and managing your consultation? ______5c. Communications Officer Who will be designing and managing your communications? ______5d.Content Editor/s Who will be drafting and uploading your content? ______5e. Data analyst Who will be evaluating your data? ______5f. Engagement manager The Engagement Manager works out of your Department’s Communications Branch. They are expert in running Online Consultations and are positioned to guide you along your journey to consulting online on Engage Victoria. They are also positioned to keep a Departmental view over the Consultations on Engage Victoria. In the planning stage, the Engagement Manager reviews and approves your Consultation Strategy. ______

5g. Moderation Submissions to Engage Victoria are moderated by Harvest Digital 24/7. Is there anything about your consultation you think the moderators should know whilst moderating your Consultation? For example, are you expecting any tensions to arise around particular subject matter areas or are there subject specific words they should watch out for? Moderation contacts: If the moderators think a submission does go against the community guidelines, they will refer it to you for review and final moderation. Nominate one or two people who may be the contact point for these queries.

| February 2017 | DPC | V1.0 | WoVG Digital Standards Framework 6. Privacy Engage.vic.gov.au is classified for Official Use Only. In accordance with the Information and Privacy Act, you must complete a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) before consulting on Engage Victoria. This will identify whether or not the scope, purpose or content of your online consultation will create any specific privacy issues. These may impact the way you consult. Contact your Departmental Privacy Officer for a copy of a PIA or for more information. Have you completed a Privacy Impact Assessment? Yes No 7. Is your consultation open to the public or visible only to a closed group? Consultations on Engage Victoria can be locked to down and visible only to a small group or open to the public to view and participate. Which kind of consultation are you proposing? Open Closed Consultation Strategy Template

8. Expectation and measuring success 8a. What kind of reach do you think your consultation will have? Understanding the audience you are targeting, provide an estimate of the level of participation you are expecting. Include weekly estimates for page views, participation level and any other information such as documents for which you expect high download traffic. E.g. 10,000 views per week and 50 contributions per week 250 chars 8b. What will success look like to you? How will you measure success with this consultation? E.g. X number of surveys completed PLUS X number of page views PLUS X number of documents downloaded 500 chars STAGE PLANNING

Most consultations will benefit from staged releases of information and tools. Remember that a new stage is also a new opportunity for some new communications. For instance:  Stage one - Harvest ideas using the Visioner tool.  Stage two - Take the most popular of those ideas and open them out to a discussion forum.  Stage three - Test the outcomes of Stage Two with some quick polls or surveys.  Stage Four - Evaluate and report the results and your plans for action.

1. Consultation Duration: dd/mm/yyyy – dd/mm/yyyy If relevant, include any detail about external events that may influence your timing. ______2. Consultation Stages Stage One 2a. Dates dd/mm/yyyy – dd/mm/yyyy ______

2b.Objectives What are the objectives of this stage? Describe your specific aims ______Which tools will you be using? ADD MORE STAGES AS REQUIRED

| February 2017 | DPC | V1.0 | WoVG Digital Standards Framework CONTENT STRATEGY

Identify the type of content best suited to your consultation and how to make it engaging for your audience, whether that is with maps, images, videos, charts etc. Outline your content strategy for each of the stages you have planned. 1. Content owners and authors/s Who will be involved in the content creation? ______2. Content approval Who needs to sign off on the content before it goes live? ______

3. Please provide the following detail for EACH question you’re planning to ask. 3a. The question: ______3b. The target audience: ______3c. The tool being used: ______

3d. The detailed content. Where a survey or form tool is planned, please provide the detailed content here. Include for example, all options in drop down or check box lists. 3e. Any introductory or explanatory content. This may include text, images or other media. 3f. If your consultation is being run in stages tell us which stage this question is designed for. ______4. What kinds of documents are you planning to share? Accessibility standards affect the display of documents in two distinct ways. ______4a. File size. Consider breaking large documents into smaller file sizes so that users operating on mobile networks will be able to access them. 4b. PDF preparation. PDF documents require specific preparation in order to be accessible to your users. If you are unable to provide accessible PDF documents you will need to provide alternate versions. These are usually in Word format. List the file types and approximate sizes of your documents, e.g. PDF and MS Word docs, the largest is 1500MB and the smaller ones are approx. 250 MB ______

5. Will you be using any other media? Consultation Strategy Template Outline your plans for use of image, video and audio. E.g. The banner image for consultation will change three times throughout the consultation, we have two videos and hope to add a gallery of images from a public meeting halfway through the consultation. 500 chars ______

COMMUNICATIONS PLAN

Tell us about the channels you will use to communicate with your audience, such as electronic direct mail campaigns, news items on your website, print advertisements, face to face or social media. Your Communications Officer will develop this plan 1. Channel/s, e.g. Social, email newsletter, mail drop, community events etc. ______

2. Message/s: List each key message. ______

3. Target audience/s Which audience are you targeting? ______

4. Responsibility of Who will be implementing your Communications plan? ______

ADD MORE STAGES AS REQUIRED

| February 2017 | DPC | V1.0 | WoVG Digital Standards Framework IMPLEMENTATION SCHEDULE

Define the key dates of your consultation and see the key tasks and personnel for each stage of your consultation.

1. Plan Allow at least one week for this stage. Dates: dd/mm/yyyy – dd/mm/yyyy Personnel:  Engagement Manager: Reviews and approves your Consultation Plan, creates user accounts  Consultation Manager: This is probably you! The Consultation Manager completes this Consultation Strategy  Communications Officer: Creates the Communications Plan, as part of your Consultation Strategy.

2. Design and build Allow at least two weeks for this stage. Dates: dd/mm/yyyy – dd/mm/yyyy Personnel:  Consultation Manager: Creates and tests your online consultation page  Engagement Manager: Publishes approved online consultation  Communications Officer: Reviews and promotes your online consultation.

3. Run Dates: dd/mm/yyyy – dd/mm/yyyy Personnel:  Engagement Manager: Provides approval to suspend, resume or close the consultation.  Consultation Manager: Suspends, resumes, publishes or closes the consultation page, while monitoring feedback.  Communications Officer: Promotes your online consultation page through appropriate channels  Content Moderation Referrals : Moderates inappropriate responses- these will be sent to you from the Harvest Moderation service

4. Analyse and communicate results Allow at least one week for this stage. Dates: dd/mm/yyyy – dd/mm/yyyy Personnel:  Consultation Owner: Review and approve outcomes and results  Consultation Manager: Pulls data from your online consultation, reviews data reports, publishes outcomes online Consultation Strategy Template  Engagement Manager: Reviews and measures your consultation against your Online Consultation Strategy. Insights Analyst: Analyses requested data.

5. Consultation end Allow at least one week for this stage. Dates: dd/mm/yyyy – dd/mm/yyyy Personnel:  Consultation Manager: Closes the online consultation and reviews its effectiveness  Communications Officer: Updates your online consultation page with a summary of outcomes  Engagement Manager: Develops a case study on your online consultation

| February 2017 | DPC | V1.0 | WoVG Digital Standards Framework