When engaging citizens online, it is crucial from the beginning to manage their expectations. Most engagement projects have a concrete decision making process. CitizenLab now introduces a dynamic timeline to help governments communicate on this transparently.
How to do it?
As an administrator of the CitizenLab platform, you can easily activate a timeline per project. This timeline consists of phases and events describing the (decision-making) process. The following features allow you to further customize these phases and events:
- Title & description
- Start & end date
- Voting method
- Which ideas proceed
- Location (optional when event)
When to use it?
The dynamic timeline is a useful tool to split up the collection of input during an engagement project. In a first phase, you might want to crowdsource needs from your citizens. Out of this needs, concrete proposals can arise. A timeline allows project leaders to manage this process by – for example – merging different needs in to one proposal. Later on, citizens can then decide on the proposal to implement in the voting phase.
