Department of Canadian Heritage: Digital Commons Project

The Client
Canadian Heritage (PCH) is a Government of Canada department responsible for national policies and programs that promote Canadian content, foster cultural participation, active citizenship and participation in Canada's civic life, and strengthen connections among Canadians.

The Challenge
Canadian Heritage wished to develop and test the concept of a Digital Commons: a place where Canadians can openly discuss, debate and share issues and experiences electronically in an open forum. The Department had already invested in a software platfor suitable for hosting such a discussion, but needed assitance in designing, developing and executing an initial pilot project.

How KTA Helped
Pilot Design
KTA engaged thirty-five French and English speaking university students from across Canada participated in the pilot as well as six senior public servants from PCH and three Members of Parliament. The Meeting Place platform, which is part of the Department of Canadian Heritages’ CanadaPlace site provided the basis on which the Digital Commons Community was built. The site was bilingual and all user materials and site content were made available in both French and English wherever possible. Pilot participants were encouraged to make contributions to the site in their language of choice.

The Digital Commons used a complaints-based style of moderation. The moderator also played a light facilitation role on the site by building a sense of community amongst participants, encouraging participants to contribute to the discussion and keeping the discussion threads focused and organized.

Discussion on the web site was broken down into two phases. For the first part of the pilot, participants engaged in a policy-oriented discussion on “The Role of Government as a Participant in an Online Discussion.” In the second part of the pilot, participants moved into a more topical discussion that explored the question “What is the Canadian Way?”

Implementation Process

Participants received several communication packages and an orientation session that offered background about the pilot and an introduction to the features and functionality of the site. They were registered onto the Digital Commons through their e-mail addresses and were given a password providing them access to the site. Instructions about how to

access and navigate around the site were outlined in a user welcome package that KTA developed and distributed.

KTA provided general site administration and first-line technical support. Any technical issues that could not be addressed by KTA were forwarded to technical staff at Canadian Heritage.

The pilot website was live for a period of three weeks. Participants were encouraged to introduce themselves in a Welcome Area before joining a discussion. The site moderator sent out a discussion summary midway through each part of the discussion in order to keep all participants updated on key developments in each of the online discussions.

A final evaluation form was sent out electronically to all participants. In addition, a face-to-face evaluation session was held, which included a video-conference link to participants in Victoria. This allowed for further exploration of the issues that were raised by participants in their evaluation forms.

Results

Best Practices and Lessons Learned

The Digital Commons pilot created a tremendous learning experience for all involved and provided a significant amount of useful information and feedback. Some of the key best practices and lessons learned included:
Clear expectations: It is important that all participants have clear expectations. A balance must be found between the interests and needs of all participants, not just citizens.
Time commitments: It is very important to be clear about the level of commitment that participants are willing and able to make and to build these limitations into planning and design.

Discussion structure: Future projects should be designed in a way that allows for intermittent use by some participants.
Encouraging accountability: Having participants’ names associated with their contributions helped to make them accountable for their comments. This not only kept the discussion civil and respectful, it increased the thoughtfulness of people’s remarks.
Style of moderation: A “hands-off” approach to the moderation of the site worked well. Participants effectively self regulated their behaviour.
Platform: It is important to find and maintain a stable and well-supported platform.

The Digital Commons E-democracy Pilot proved that it is possible to engage a group of students, parliamentarians and public servants in an interesting and thoughtful online discussion where all participants were treated as equals. In this environment, dynamic and multidirectional exchanges occurred between all participants. Despite the hands-off approach taken by Canadian Heritage, participants moved forward in the discussion and were able to make gains in their understanding of areas such as the role of an MP in our democratic system and on issues such as western alienation.

Relationships developed between students and elected officials on the site. The dialogue that took place between these two groups provided an opportunity to put a human face on government and to address the cynicism about government and its role in Canadian democratic society. From the standpoint of both government and elected officials, this was a very important outcome and underlines the power of a forum like this to re-engage Canadians in rebuilding their democratic capital.