Political Party – Ethelo

Surrey White-Rock – Gordon Hogg

case-study — Thu, 26 Dec 2024 22:09:14 +0000

Empowering Surrey-White Rock: Community Priorities Through Collaborative Engagement

Sponsored by MLA Gordon Hogg and facilitated by Ethelo, this initiative brought together over 40 community leaders and residents to identify high-impact priorities that would make their community more caring, resilient, and connected. Using a combination of in-person focus groups and Ethelo’s innovative online platform, participants collaboratively identified 21 initiatives across eight key focus areas. The process was designed to be transparent and inclusive, allowing citizens to weigh in, share over 100 comments, and even propose six new ideas. The result? A clear, community-backed shortlist of the top five initiatives, reflecting the collective voice of Surrey-White Rock residents.

This project not only demonstrated the power of technology in fostering civic engagement but also highlighted the importance of collaboration between community members, leaders, and government representatives. The overwhelmingly positive response—89% support for the top initiatives—underscored the success of the process, which was celebrated in local media like the Peace Arch News and Local Web News.

89% for
for final shortlist

50 community
leaders

Gordie Hogg

MLA, Surrey White Rock

WHO

The Constituency Association of Surrey/White Rock, in collaboration with MLA Gordon Hogg, used Ethelo’s innovative platform to engage citizens in identifying and prioritizing community initiatives.

GOALS

The project aimed to foster a sense of ownership and transparency while identifying high-impact initiatives to make the Surrey-White Rock community more “caring, resilient, and connected.” The use of technology was central to empowering residents and ensuring broad participation.

HOW

Ethelo facilitated a seamless process for collecting votes and comments, enabling citizens to dynamically engage in selecting community priorities. The project combined in-person consultations with an online platform to maximize accessibility and participation.

OUTCOME

The process resulted in a transparent shortlist of five local initiatives with the highest level of public support. Over 40 community members participated, contributing 112 comments and suggesting six new initiatives. The platform achieved a 42% participation rate, with an average of 2.6 comments per user, allowing the local MLA to identify priorities that resonated with the community.

CONTEXT
Sponsored by MLA Gordon Hogg, this project sought to harness technology to empower the Surrey-White Rock community. As highlighted in the Peace Arch News, the initiative was part of a broader effort to use digital tools to engage citizens in decision-making. Ethelo was chosen for its ability to identify broadly supported strategies and facilitate meaningful collaboration, making it an ideal partner for this community-driven process.

APPROACH
On June 25, 2014, Ethelo’s team facilitated a focus group of nearly 50 community leaders and members, including service recipients and recognized “movers and shakers,” to identify key issues affecting the community. Using a world café-style approach, participants discussed and prioritized actions for collaboration. Following the in-person meeting, Ethelo consolidated the results and worked with the MLA’s office to draft background information, organizing 21 proposed initiatives into eight focus areas.

The initiatives were then uploaded to the Ethelo platform, where participants could weigh in and score proposals. The platform was opened to the public for two months, with extensive promotion to encourage participation. This digital democracy process was designed to make the process accessible and inclusive, allowing residents to engage at their convenience.

RESULTS

The online process saw over 40 participants voting and contributing more than 100 comments, along with six new initiative suggestions. Ethelo’s platform analyzed the data and identified the top five proposals with the strongest and broadest support (Fig. 3). These results informed the Constituency Association’s priority-setting for their government efforts on behalf of the community.

The initiative received positive coverage in the Peace Arch News, which highlighted the innovative use of technology to empower residents. The article emphasized how the process allowed citizens to “have their say” in shaping the community’s future. Additionally, Local Web News profiled the consultation through an interview with MLA Gordon Hogg and Ethelo’s CEO, John Richardson, further underscoring the project’s success.

SUMMARY OF RESULTS

Strength of Support: 89%
Top Initiatives:
- Childhood & Schools: Address Overcrowding
- Housing & Poverty: Poverty Reduction Plan
- Environment: Early Formal Education, Sustainable Product Environment Cost
- Inter-City Cooperation: Convene Working Group

This case study demonstrates how technology, combined with thoughtful community engagement, can empower residents to shape their future. By leveraging Ethelo’s platform, Surrey-White Rock set a powerful example of how digital tools can enhance civic participation and drive meaningful change.

“When Metro Vancouver conducted a study of issues that residents felt were most important, it was anticipated that the frontrunners would be poverty and homelessness. Instead, the biggest issues were people feeling isolated and alone – how do you get people engaged?”

Surrey- White Rock

case-study — Thu, 26 Dec 2024 21:37:23 +0000

Empowering Communities: South Surrey’s Digital Democracy in Action

In an era where trust in government institutions is often questioned, the South Surrey – White Rock online citizen engagement process stands as a shining example of how technology and collaboration can revitalize democracy. Led by Member of Parliament Gordie Hogg and powered by Ethelo’s innovative platform, this project was designed to bridge the gap between elected officials and the communities they serve. By inviting residents to actively participate in shaping policy solutions for critical local issues—such as affordable housing, railway safety, and the opioid crisis—the initiative demonstrated that meaningful public engagement is not only possible but essential for building a more inclusive and responsive democracy. This process wasn’t just about gathering opinions; it was about empowering citizens to take ownership of the decisions that directly impact their lives.

The benefits of this project extended far beyond the identification of policy priorities. By engaging over 300 residents in thoughtful discussions and decision-making, the initiative fostered a sense of democratic empowerment that is often missing in traditional top-down approaches. Participants weren’t just passive observers—they were active contributors, voting on policies, sharing insights, and seeing their voices reflected in real-time results. This level of transparency and participation not only strengthened the community’s trust in the political process but also provided Gordie Hogg with a clear mandate to advocate for these priorities in the Parliament of Canada. Armed with the collective wisdom of his constituents, Hogg was able to bring a truly grassroots perspective to federal policymaking, ensuring that the voices of South Surrey – White Rock were heard at the highest levels of government.

Ultimately, this project showcased the transformative power of citizen engagement in modern democracy. It proved that when people are given the tools and opportunity to participate, they can drive meaningful change in their communities. By combining expert knowledge with public input, the process delivered actionable solutions that reflected both technical feasibility and community values. More importantly, it reminded us that democracy thrives when citizens are not just consulted but actively involved in the decision-making process. Gordie Hogg’s use of the results to guide his parliamentary activities is a testament to the success of this approach—a success that serves as an inspiring model for other leaders seeking to deepen democratic participation and build stronger, more connected communities.

96% support
for final shortlist

300
participants

Gordie Hogg

MP, South Surrey White Rock

In early 2019, Gordie Hogg, Member of Parliament for South Surrey – White Rock (SSWR), partnered with Ethelo, an online engagement platform, to facilitate a citizen-driven policy consultation process. The goal was to engage residents in identifying and prioritizing policy solutions for five key local issues: Affordable Housing, Boundary Bay, Gun Safety and Gang Violence, Opioid Crisis, and Railway Safety. This case study outlines the process, outcomes, and lessons learned from this innovative approach to citizen engagement.

The Process

1. Expert Panel Recruitment and Policy Development

The process began in December 2018 with the recruitment of five expert panels, each focusing on one of the five policy areas. These panels, composed of local experts, stakeholders, and community leaders, were tasked with identifying specific policy options for each issue. The panels worked closely with Ethelo to draft policy recommendations that were both actionable and relevant to the community. By January 2019, the panels had identified a total of 30 policy options across the five topics.

2. Online Engagement

In April 2019, Ethelo launched a custom online platform where residents of South Surrey – White Rock could review, discuss, and vote on the proposed policy options. The platform was designed to be user-friendly, allowing participants to:

Learn about each policy option through concise summaries and detailed explanations.
Discuss the options with other community members.
Vote on their preferred policies and see how their choices contributed to the overall group results.

3. Community Participation

Over a two-month period (April to May 2019), more than 300 residents actively participated in the online engagement process. They provided over 800 detailed comments and shortlisted their top 10 policy options from the 30 proposed. The platform allowed participants to see real-time results, fostering a sense of transparency and collective decision-making.

4. Promotion and Outreach

To ensure broad participation, the project was promoted through multiple channels:

Householder Brochure: A brochure was distributed to every home in the riding, introducing the exercise and providing a brief overview of the policy issues.
Social Media: Regular updates and policy briefs were shared on Facebook, encouraging residents to participate.
Email Campaigns: Email blasts were sent to individuals who had previously interacted with the MP’s office.
Local Media: Ads and interviews were conducted on Pulse FM radio, and coverage was secured in the Peace Arch News.
Community Office: Visitors to the constituency office were encouraged to participate using an iPad set up for the survey.

Outcomes

1. Policy Prioritization

Based on the feedback from residents, Ethelo identified a shortlist of 10 policy options that received positive support from over 96% of respondents. These options were spread across the five policy areas and reflected the community’s priorities. For example:

Affordable Housing: Residents strongly supported policies such as allowing charitable housing providers to build mixed-income housing and increasing the first-time home-buyers tax credit.
Railway Safety: There was significant support for reducing train speeds near Crescent Beach and relocating the BNSF rail line away from the shoreline.
Opioid Crisis: Residents favored decriminalizing small amounts of drugs and implementing a national accreditation program for addiction treatment providers.

2. Community Engagement

The process successfully engaged a diverse cross-section of the community, with over 300 residents participating in the online platform. The high level of engagement was attributed to the ease of use of the platform, the relevance of the policy issues, and the extensive outreach efforts.

3. Expert and Resident Collaboration

The collaboration between expert panels and residents ensured that the policy options were both technically sound and aligned with community values. The expert panels provided the necessary depth and expertise, while the residents brought local knowledge and priorities to the table.

Lessons Learned

Importance of Early Engagement
The early involvement of expert panels in the policy development phase was crucial. It ensured that the policy options presented to residents were well-researched and actionable. This also helped build trust in the process, as residents could see that their input was being informed by expert knowledge.
Transparency and Real-Time Feedback
The use of an online platform that provided real-time feedback on voting results and discussions helped maintain transparency throughout the process. Participants could see how their individual votes contributed to the collective decision-making, which increased their sense of ownership over the outcomes.
Multi-Channel Promotion
The success of the engagement process was largely due to the multi-channel promotion strategy. By leveraging both traditional (e.g., householder brochures, local media) and digital (e.g., social media, email) channels, the project was able to reach a broad and diverse audience.
Balancing Expert Input with Community Priorities
The process demonstrated the importance of balancing expert input with community priorities. While the expert panels provided the necessary technical expertise, the final prioritization of policies was driven by the residents, ensuring that the outcomes reflected the community’s values and needs.

Conclusion

The South Surrey – White Rock online citizen engagement process, led by Gordie Hogg and supported by Ethelo, successfully demonstrated how technology can be used to facilitate meaningful public participation in policy development. By combining expert knowledge with community input, the process not only identified actionable policy solutions but also strengthened the relationship between residents and their elected representatives. This case study serves as a model for other communities looking to engage citizens in decision-making processes in a transparent, inclusive, and effective manner.

I wanted to make it as apolitical as we could. How do we take care of each other? How do we look after each other? How do we look at people not for the defects we have, but the gifts we all bring?

Provincial Policy Mandate

case-study — Thu, 26 Dec 2024 03:02:37 +0000

Engaging citizens to develop a direct democracy mandate around the BC Election

In the weeks leading up to the 2013 BC Provincial election, the non-profit organization PartyX Progressive Democracy Society aimed to identify a non-partisan policy platform that could provide a broad mandate for the next elected provincial government. Majority vote systems often create polarization and engender resistance from minority groups. However, PartyX sought to demonstrate how technology could help develop a policy platform that represents a fair compromise between people of diverse political persuasions.

21 policy
positions

350
participants

John Richardson

John Richardson, Founder, PartyX

Approach

Twenty-one high-profile policy “planks” were selected by PartyX from the policy platforms of the 4 major political parties (Liberal, NDP, Green and Conservative) as well as a number of leading civic organizations. These planks were organized into 5 different Issue areas: Natural Resources, Community Services, Finance and Taxes, Government and Law, Education and Health.

Participants were invited to participate by discussing the policy planks, scoring them to indicate support or opposition, and then weighing the relative importance of the 5 policy areas. Participants were able to see the Ethelo engine dynamically identify their personal “Top Choice” policy platform as they voted. Ethelo also allowed people to weigh how important the different policy areas were to them, and in calculating the group results, gave participants more inﬂuence on areas they felt were more important.

For example, a participant might wish more inﬂuence on environmental issues, giving up some inﬂuence on social issues.

Some of the policy planks were not consistent with each other, for example “Oppose Pipelines” and “Oil Industry Expansion”. Ethelo was configured to ignore possibilities which contained contradictions. Nevertheless, most policies were compatible, and even after inconsistencies were removed, there were more than 220,000 possible policy platforms.

Results

Of the 580 individuals either invited or registered, 350 voted and provided 121 comments on the specific policies.

The Ethelo engine evaluated more than 220,000 possible scenarios to identify the policy platform that would generate the most support, while ensuring that that support was distributed as fairly as possible.

The results that Ethelo generated showed that 16 specific policy initiatives, spread out across 5 topic areas – Natural Resources, Finance & Taxes, Education & Health, Government & Law, and Community Services- received the most support with strong unanimity across all areas. These 16 initiatives contained policy options from three of the political parties and a number of civic organizations.

By identifying a consistent non-partisan policy platform that would receive broad support, Ethelo demonstrated the ability of technology to harness the public’s collective intelligence and achieve policy compromises outside the traditional political processes.

“The BC Mandate consultation platform is designed to empower British Columbians to learn about and vote on policy proposals on a convenient and social online platform. They can will also be empowered to realize discover that the internet will offer new ways for large groups to make important political decisions.”

John Richardson, Founder, PartyX

Political Policy Platform

case-studies — Thu, 26 Dec 2024 01:31:12 +0000

Engaging Members About the Future of Party Policy

The Ontario Liberal Party (OLP) regularly engages its thousands of active members across the province on policy development. Traditionally, the party has reached out to its membership using in-person or online meetings and written submissions. But when the COVID 19 pandemic hit in 2020 and face-to-face gatherings were no longer possible, the OLP needed a new way to engage its members online.

They chose Ethelo because they wanted a digital platform that would be equitable, accessible and capable of sparking conversations that would capture people’s attention. Ethelo’s real-time feedback capability kept conversations flowing and helped the OLP team discover new ideas. They continue to use the final report data to help make decisions long after the engagement concluded.

> 6000
Participants

233,791
votes cast

Grassroots engagement, online

With thousands of active members across the province, gathering the Ontario Liberal Party’s (OLP) membership for policy development discussions is no small task.

The OLP traditionally brought its members together through a combination of in-person meetings and a written submission process.

But when the COVID 19 pandemic hit in 2020, the face-to-face gatherings that the party traditionally relied on were no longer an option. The OLP needed to find a new way to engage its members online as it developed its 2022 election platform.

“It was incredibly important to the leader and the party administration to engage our members across the province in a really grassroots way,” the OLP shared. “It’s an important aspect for any political party to give its members a seat at the table when you’re having conversations about public policy development.”

Because of the variety of experiences people were having during the pandemic and different levels of comfort with digital technology amongst the membership, it was essential to the OLP that their online engagement process was as equitable and accessible as possible.

They also wanted a process that would let members engage in theme-based policy discussions that would capture people’s attention and spark conversations instead of a more open-ended ideation approach.

“It was about putting some high-level, mission-oriented statements in front of people and being able to capture their feedback based on everything that’s been going on in the past year and a half in their lives,” the OLP explained.

Real-time feedback from thousands of members

The OLP team chose Ethelo as the best platform for engaging its membership in online policy discussions.

“The Ethelo technology served as a platform to be able to have these conversations and get a report with data at the end that told us what people said and thought.” they shared.

They were also happy with Ethelo’s real-time feedback capability and the ability to see what did or didn’t get support.

“We got some great real-time feedback about some of the big issues people are concerned about, like long-term care, education, and managing a global pandemic.”

Ethelo also created space for people who might not otherwise be heard to share ideas and have those opinions considered by other party members.

And with more than 6,000 participants engaging in English and French, the OLP says their membership loved the platform.

“Some of the folks that work on the campaign team are pollsters, so they have a better sense of uptake and participation rates. They’re all satisfied with the level of engagement we got across the party membership.”

Putting data to work

One of the most significant benefits for the OLP from their Ethelo engagement was showing members that their ideas and opinions were being heard in the process.

“It’s important for people, whether in a political context or any kind of civil engagement process just to be heard,” they said. “Everybody is looking for a place to send their ideas and register their opinions.”

Two equally important parts of the engagement process are following up and acting on what you hear. Both of which the OLP is doing as well.

They’re hosting a series of sessions about what they heard from party members, which are open to anyone who wants to participate. And they’re using the data from their Ethelo report regularly to prepare presentations to share with the membership.

“Ethelo was easy to use, accessible, and it gave us great feedback and data. It’s nice to have a centralized document with everything included to be able to go back and reference.”