Government launched a new consultation today on Digital IDs. Understandably a topic that will attract much attention. Built in both English and Welsh, it looks pretty dapper. You can even choose which part to complete – which is just as well given it could take between 20 and 40 minutes to complete.
However, it’s also a bit different from the norm. That’s because in parallel the government will run a ‘People’s Panel for Digital ID’. This is described as an in-depth deliberative engagement process with a broadly UK representative sample of 100-120 individuals to discuss the policy in detail. Individuals will be selected through sortition (a sort of civic lottery).
According to the chief secretary to the prime minister the reason for this is to “seek the views of ordinary people from all walks of life and from right across the country – so it’s not just the loudest or most powerful voices who are being heard.”. And let’s be honest, it could easily become an exchange between experts.
Permanent panels are not new; many local authorities use them to solicit views because they can provide rich insights or reach audiences that are otherwise seldom heard. For example, creating an equalities panel can take the pain out of poor representation.
What is less clear is if this panel is, in-fact, an assembly. That’s because it is reported it will meet over several weekends, interviewing experts and officials and hosting public debates, before coming up with its own recommendations. That is, not just deliberating on how to answer the questions in the consultation. And that raises the question about the weighting that will be given to the output of it compared to other ways to respond.
A real assembly might have other powers too. For example an influencing, governing, agenda setting, contextualising or a grounding role.
Despite this, some design considerations are emerging in our minds. Firstly, it’s possible to form or recruit to a panel during a survey. Take the consultation opened by UK charity Designability on Monday asking 10,000 disabled people have to share their everyday barriers to create urgently needed fairer design (we love that the survey has been co-designed with the target audience and can be taken in standard, easy read or BSL formats).
Secondly, it’s important to ask yourself why certain audiences didn’t respond. This is likely to be a complicated mix of factors but one niggling argument is that a lack of participation could sign that the consultee tends to agree with proposals. For that reason alone, this experiment could be very revealing.
While we find it hard to believe this hybrid approach will strike a natural rhythm, we’re open minded about its potential. That is, if the additional cost can be justified. For now, check the post…or maybe your email?