“We wanted something that looked more modern, more exciting, and eye-catching.”
- Jonathan Hamston, Consultation and Involvement Officer within the Community Engagement Team at the London Borough of Southwark
The challenge: A fragmented system needing an upgrade
After seven years of using the same systems, the London Borough of Southwark’s online engagement needed a refresh. While their main platform functioned well, they needed a separate platform for map-based projects, resulting in a clunky user experience.
For community members, having to navigate different platforms made it difficult to find what they were looking for. For staff members, the lack of integration and outdated systems made comprehensive reporting inefficient and time-intensive.
One of the key challenges they faced was creating a joined-up view of consultation and engagement projects, both internally and to the community, as the disconnected tools made it difficult to present a sense of story.
When the yearly contract came up for review, they wondered whether they were using the best solutions or just what they’d been used to.
To see if the grass really was greener, they conducted a technological audit. This culminated in a full procurement process, which included input from internal stakeholders and multiple departments.
“We wanted a single platform that could do everything.”
- Jonathan Hamston, Consultation and Involvement Officer within the Community Engagement Team at the London Borough of Southwark
The solution: An integrated, modern, and interactive platform
After comparing a range of providers, Go Vocal came out on top. Not only is Go Vocal an integrated, one-stop hub with an intuitive and modern user interface, but its interactive consultation and engagement methods also provide all the tools for a richer participation experience.
Jonathan’s department arranges engagement projects across departments, ensuring that there's consistency throughout the organisation. Jonathan: “What we're doing when we're taking people through an engagement process, is storytelling.”
With Go Vocal, his team can easily present the multiple elements of a project under a unified umbrella as opposed to separate projects. The sub-consultations can be grouped and presented together, making their consultation narrative more easily understandable.
Early results: Saving time with AI reporting
Following the launch, there was a period of adjustment as the team got used to their first new platform in seven years. But Go Vocal was there to help, and staff across the council even found the platform intuitive enough that new users can experiment with it.
Jonathan: “What’s brilliant, is after we’ve given people a brief walk-through of the platform, within a week they've done all sorts of exciting stuff.”
Time-saving has been a key benefit for Southwark, particularly with the AI reporting functionality, which condenses pages and pages of information and generates reports within five minutes. Now, they’re able to easily access live data from a survey that hasn’t yet closed, giving insight into how a consultation or engagement project’s phase is progressing.
“Go Vocal has reduced project setup time by about two-thirds compared to the previous platform.”
- Jonathan Hamston, Consultation and Involvement Officer within the Community Engagement Team at the London Borough of Southwark
A successful transition: Recommended to other local authorities
When asked directly about their experience with the switch to Go Vocal, Jonathan is clear that Southwark made the right choice:
“For other councils considering Go Vocal, we recommend the platform. We really like its storytelling capabilities and provision of end-to-end digital engagement for projects, and the fact that it will evolve with us.”
After choosing to try something new rather than playing it safe, Jonathan confirms their satisfaction with their choice: “It’s more intuitive than the systems that I’ve seen, and it’s very good.”
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