Sydney Your Say – Community Consultation

Community consultations are a legislated and vital function for the City, our previous tools frustrated both staff and participants. Research with the community showed that 90% of participants found the City’s previous consultation tools and process inadequate and creating barriers. Staff were limited in effectively targeting and inviting individuals to new consultations and for high participation consultations with over 10,000 written submissions these required significant staff effort to manually process responses. Our challenge was to enable the community and the City to gain more value from every consultation while radically reducing effort for everyone and broadening the consultation methods.

From 2021 the City co-designed its new consultation platform with the community, businesses and advocacy groups. A modular Microsoft Dynamics365 core now integrates SurveyMonkey, Social Pinpoint, custom Quick Polls and Ideas Boards. Prototypes were validated in 2023 and the system went live in October 2024 with secure single sign-on and a unified customer view for staff. Power BI dashboards and Thematic’s AI sentiment engine replaced manual review of 10,000 plus free-text submissions, shrinking analysis times from weeks to days. Staff can now gain clear rich insights into what the community values most and what are the emerging themes and sentiment.

Within five months the platform has supported 33 consultations, with feedback provided by over 600 individuals and organisations. Staff have reported significantly faster turnaround times, reducing processes that previously took weeks to just a few days. Early feedback indicates that 58% of participants found it easier to engage with consultations via the new platform. Improved targeting, based on demographic and interest data, ensures participants are notified about consultations that matter to them. If they want to participate, community members now have the flexibility to engage through the consultation method that best suits their preferences.

Community Ideas Board: Interactive forum shows moderated comments in real-time, letting others agree, disagree or pass and surfacing community consensus for transparent decisions. Quick Polls: Single question real-time polls embedded within the website capture fast sentiment without login, broadening reach. Consultation Mapping: Social Pinpoint provides interactive mapping and spatial feedback, encouraging place-based participation. Surveys: SurveyMonkey seamless integration provides structured collecting of feedback through surveys, enabling deeper insights into important questions that could impact the City’s decision-making. Personal Dashboards: Registered users see every consultation joined and reuse saved demographic details, removing repetitive forms and building continuous engagement. Unified Data Model: All feedback flows to Microsoft Dynamics where contacts, consultation history and demographics form a trusted customer view for precise targeting and analysis. AI Powered Insights: Thematic sentiment analysis categorises and themes thousands of comments, reducing time taken for staff to do manual analysis. Secure Access: Single sign-on, two factor authentication protect privacy and ensure genuine contributions. Inclusive Design: WCAG conformant interface, plain language content and mobile optimised layouts welcome screen reader users and diverse community members to participate. By supporting digital tools and retaining offline options the solution encourages more voices to be heard and recognises the diverse ways people engage.