What We Heard on Public Engagement During Pandemic
Monday, April 27, 2020 - 2:15 PM
On April 13, the City announced a public engagement process to seek feedback on whether it should continue with public engagement online during COVID-19.
A project page was created at engagestjohns.ca which included quick poll questions, a question and answer section, and an ideas section and individuals were invited to email engage@stjohns.ca or contact their Councillor with ideas. Engagement was open from April 13 to April 26, 2020.
The full report of the engagement is now available at engagestjohns.ca.
534 people visited the project page on engagestjohns.ca during the two-week period, 150 people actively engaged on the site and three emails were received. Interestingly, 110 registrations on the site took place during the promotion time for this project and a total of 200 new registrations have occurred since March 17.
Three survey questions were asked:
- 90% of respondents indicated that the City should engage on projects/initiatives not related to the current public health crisis at this time.
- Regarding using online tools for work or personal purposes, 70% indicated they are using tools such as Zoom and Miscrosoft Teams and are comfortable with them; 16% are still learning and getting comfortable with these tools; and 14% had not used any of tools.
- 63% are very likely to participate in city public engagement activities using engagestjohns.ca or other online tools; 24% are somewhat likely and want to participate; 12% are not sure; and 1% are not comfortable participating in online engagement.
Based on what we heard there is an appetite to move forward with public engagement work. Most people who participated said they were comfortable participating online using existing or new tools; however, while engagestjohns.ca can be a primary site for information related to the project, it cannot be the only way people participate. It will be important to ensure people can provide input through other means such as email, phone and live virtual events.