In just three years, Engage Victoria has set an international standard for whole-of-government engagement platforms. Using The HiVE, Engage Victoria hosts consultation projects across a range of departments, agencies and bodies across the state. The platform was a highly commendable finalist in BCG’s GovCX awards to honour excellence in the digital citizen experience, and is viewed internationally as an exceptional example of best practice in digital engagement.

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A common challenge for government

In 2016, the Victorian Government recognised that it had a problem many governments share. Its approach to community engagement was fragmented and inefficient, with constant procurement activity, a lack of tools or mechanisms for ongoing engagement, limited data analysis and insights, and no opportunities to unify data or user experience across departments.

The government’s Information Technology Strategy committed to addressing many of these issues. The government was ready to engage with citizens online and consolidate its presence in an agile, efficient and accessible platform that would allow better service delivery and better data collection and management and, consequently, better decision-making.

The result was Engage Victoria, the world’s biggest and most comprehensive engagement platform. Taking advantage of The HiVE’s uniquely flexible and scalable platform, Engage Victoria united various engagement projects and practitioners from across the state in one place.

A whole-of-government solution

Engage Victoria delivers a centralised, whole-of-government service with a range of benefits and efficiencies for both citizens and government.

From a citizen point of view, the site offers:

• Centralised and easily navigable information - the whole government ‘under one roof’
• A unified, recognisable brand and experience that rewards repeat visitation
• Opportunities to easily re-engage
• The ability to engage on a range of topics and areas of interest
• The opportunity to keep up to date with projects across multiple departments/agencies.

For the government, centralising its engagement offering came with a range of benefits, including:

• Considerable cost savings and better return on investment for taxpayer money
• ‘Single source of truth’ datasets and analytics capabilities
• A robust quality assurance model, with distributed teams, authorship and workflows
• Increased reach and uptake for consultations and engagement projects
• Integration with external systems, breaking down data silos
• The opportunity to better understand, re-engage and close the loop with participants
• One easy-to-use system, reducing training costs and requirements
• The opportunity to set the bar for best practice, citizen-centric engagement.

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Large scale without compromise

Engage Victoria takes advantage of The HiVE’s distributed authorship model, allowing for a range of different access, permissions and approval workflows. This means individual teams, departments and authors can create and edit projects and submit them to project managers for approval, all under the auspice of the Engage Victoria team, who oversee the platform and provide support, guidance and advice to teams, project managers and authors.

The uniquely customisable workflows model means Engage Victoria has a level of quality assurance rarely seen in whole of government platforms, striking a perfect balance between giving teams and authors to freedom to be creative and tailor their projects to their individual audiences, while maintaining an appropriate level of centralised oversight that is neither obstructive nor resource-intensive.

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Breaking down data silos

The HiVE can be integrated with and adapted to a range of other platforms, applications and technologies. This means the government has been able to consolidate its data, allowing for more open sharing of information and the ability to contextualise data and results better.

A notable example is integrating Engage Victoria with Power BI, a Business intelligence Tool which allows the government to build custom dashboards and perform analysis based on data from the Engage Victoria API, such as users, projects and participation data.

Recently, Engage Victoria has been integrated with the Salesforce CRM application. This has allowed government to centralise their user data (including attributes and actions) across multiple applications (including Pick My Project). They are then able perform a range of analysis and send users custom email notifications.

Easy to use

The real beauty of Engage Victoria is in its ability to undertake complex tasks while remaining easy for both staff and citizens to use. The HiVE’s elegant, drag-and-drop interface, in-page editing and intuitive design means departments and agencies have been able to swiftly adopt and incorporate Engage Victoria into their consultation processes.

The cost and time savings of a single, intuitive piece of software are incalculable, with lower training and support requirements and the peace of mind that comes from a platform that visitors can navigate and engage with without learning curves or other barriers to engagement.

This ease of use – at both ends – drives uptake, fuelling creativity in project design and inviting engagement from the public.

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Putting citizens first

Engage Victoria is built on a platform with unique tools, capabilities and features. However, it is the Victorian Government’s application of a genuinely citizen-first approach to community engagement that has made the platform a success story.

Engage Victoria allows project managers to create projects that start and sustain meaningful conversations with citizens over long periods of time, growing a relationship between government and its citizens, increasing trust and reshaping the community’s expectations of government. It is a powerful tool not just for engagement, but for conducting social research and gathering actionable data that can shape important decisions, arming policy-makers with evidence that can improve the lives of Victorians.

It can also allow the government to grow conversations within the community, encouraging people to listen to, understand and learn from each other.

Visit Engage Victoria