I think we've done something quite interesting.
Yesterday the Department of Health published the care and support white paper, and a draft care and support bill. It's a big deal for the Department, and the country. And it presented an interesting challenge and opportunity for the digital team in DH.
The first challenge was how to explain the ideas in the white paper to a range of different audiences online. We've used a dedicated engagement site to help do this, using graphics, videos and summaries for different audience groups to help explain complex ideas. Creating something like this takes a bit of doing, but it follows an approach we use elsewhere, so we know how to do it. The site sits at the centre of our policy engagement effort, and it provides the department with material to help market ideas elsewhere.
The draft bill provided an opportunity to do something we hadn't done before. We’ve published it in a commentable format, enabling users to post public comments on each clause, as well as more general comments. The aim is to encourage the kind of micro-comment that will be useful in the drafting and scrutiny process. And to do it publicly so that the bill benefits from the kind of open collaboration that can work so well online.
I think this is pretty exciting. It's digital engagement, but it's some way removed from a Twitter Q and A or a webchat. With a public commitment to feed the comments that we receive directly into the process of parliamentary scrutiny via the team working on the bill, we're effectively enabling people to publicly contribute to the drafting of law.
There's not much precedent for inviting public comments like this at this stage of a bill. There was the pilot of the Public Reading Stage for the Freedoms Bill a little while back, which we've tried to learn from. But most draft bills are published as PDF, with an email address for comments.
So what have we done, and what have we learned so far?
- We published 83 clauses as individual pages on a dedicated sub-site. There's no technical innovation. The site uses our existing HealthPress theme - it's pages and comments, and not much else.
- We wanted the site to feel a bit different from our engagement or campaign sites, and more like the source document we were working from. So we’ve washed out all the colour, and we’ve avoided the temptation to cross-promote content from elsewhere.
- Turning a draft bill into navigable content that works in a way that a user might expect it to is tricky. The text is full of headings, parts, chapters, and clauses. I think we’ve ended up with something that just about works, and remains true to the format and structure of the bill text.
- The language in the text of a draft bill can be pretty impenetrable - we know that there’s a pretty niche audience for some of this. And it doesn’t always lend itself to a web treatment (there’s a section of the bill called “Chapter 3 – Miscellaneous and General”)
- We've spent no money on this. But we've needed a factory operation within the team just to get all the text into the site in time. We've benefited from a big collaborative effort over a very short period, making decisions as we've worked. We didn't underestimate the work involved, but it took a big effort from Claire, Anna, Francis, Liz, Raj and Alice in the last day or so to get the thing ready. By Tuesday we were on 3 team huddles a day to check we were on track to push the button on time.
- We’ve found a nice way to present explanatory notes alongside the clauses they refer to by using a lightbox approach to include the notes within the pages that contain the clauses (eg view notes on this clause). This made the task of presenting related content together a bit easier. And we've find a nicer way to show the full contents of the site than we've used before. Necessity leads to creativity.
- If we were doing this again, we'd certainly follow up on our initial conversations with people at legislation.gov.uk and elsewhere, to learn from and properly integrate this with their approach. We compromised on some of the cleverer things we could have done with this in order to make sure that we could meet our main objective - public comments by clause - in the time we had.
I don't know how this will go, but it feels like it's worth the effort. If we're able to reach a few people that wouldn't otherwise have felt they had an opportunity to contribute to this, and their comments feed directly into the scrutiny of the draft bill, and we get better law as a result, then we'll have done our job.
I'd really welcome comments.
9 comments
Comment by Rod Whiteley posted on
I looked at the Carers page. It links to a Supporting carers page, which links back to the Carers page. Both pages seem to say much the same things, and there's no obvious way to comment on any of the things they say.
The separate comments area is organized in a different way, so if I'm a carer and I want to comment on something I've just read it's incredibly complicated.
I think the basic idea of presenting a white paper and draft bill in this way is probably a good one, but lack of time to implement it well on this occasion shows.
Comment by Stephen Hale posted on
Thanks for your comment Rod. We're actively inviting comments on the clauses of the draft Bill (with a commitment to do something with those comments). But we don't invite comments on everything we publish. But I see your point.
Comment by Aaron Gow posted on
As a way of making a document that previously would've just been a pdf I think it's a great first go.
People seem to have the hang of replying in the right place, most pages are clear and not too text heavy.
I'm not sure I like the black, grey and white look - for me it reminds me of old 'inky' newspapers. Just personal opinion though.
Re the 'view notes on this clause' - maybe this could be a hover over box?
Also, you say you've 'spent no money on this' - is there any analysis as to what the previous cost of producing draft bills for comment is? Do you show a cost saving - obviously there is people's time to consider.
Comment by Stephen Hale posted on
Thanks Aaron. You might be interested to see: http://publicreadingstage.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/ which was published yesterday and is an attempt to do the same thing, done a bit differently - I think it's very good. I don't know what the cost of other attempts to do this have been. Ideally, we would have a consistent way of doing this for all Bills, led by parliament or the Government Digital Service, and that's probably where we'll end up. In our case, we've just adapted things we already have, and we've done it in house, so there's no additional cost. But you're certainly right about people's time.
Comment by Emily Davies posted on
Is this the first time the Department of Health has tried this online commenting system for consulation on a Draft Bill, or the first time any government department has tried it?
Comment by Stephen Hale posted on
As far as I know, it's the first time a govt department has invited comments in this way at this stage of a bill. But you may also have see the public reading stage pilot, which is an attempt to do something quite similar - more about that here: http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2012/07/18/public-reading-stages-a-second-iteration/
Comment by S Godfrey posted on
A solution to problem of having to sell parental home to pay for care home fees:
The property is'leased'out to local council for period of 3-10years dependant upon parents age in return for council paying care home fees.
Council benefits by getting houses to rent out for set period
Parent may not live as long as the 'lease' but property will still revert to the family
Care home fees swallow up proceeds from property sale within a few years resulting in council having to pay for subsequent years
Sorry this isn't specifically about the bill - but finding it hard to know where to post this and want the idea aired.
Comment by Amy Smith posted on
I think this looks great - it's clean, easy to navigate and keeps everything neatly on platform. A nerdy question - why are the schedules on the sitemap capitalised? http://careandsupportbill.dh.gov.uk/sitemap/ (makes it look a little unbalanced)
Comment by Stephen Hale posted on
Thanks Amy. On capitalisation - we were very conscious that the way the bill text was formatted carried meaning, and we didn't want to unintentionally change the meaning by altering the presentation. But looking at it now, I think we could probably have done without the shouty headings without changing the meaning. I agree that they looks a bit odd.