e-Consultation
Welcome to Advice NI's eConsultation Service
Check out Advice NI's eConsultation forum
Advice NI believes that eConsultation can be an effective tool in encouraging participation and gathering responses to consultation documents and social policy issues as part of a broader range of methodologies. A well run eConsultation has the following advantages:
- It enables people to immediately highlight their views;
- It enables people to engage in a discussion which may in turn stimulate further ideas;
- It reduces the chill factor of responding to consultations in a traditional written format
Key Highlights
Advice NI eConsultation on Tax Credit Overpayments
Advice NI was invited to give parliamentary evidence to the UK Treasury sub-committee in the House of Commons in London.
Advice NI eConsultation on Bank Charges in Northern Ireland
Advice NI was invited to give evidence in support of the Consumer Council's super complaint to the Competition Commission's legal investigation into the personal current account market in Northern Ireland.
"Consumers can claim a major victory today as the Competition Commission confirmed that the personal current account market here is anti-competitive, anti-consumer and it that it is going to take steps to sort it out." Consumer Council October 2006
What is eConsultation?
"E-consultation is the use of electronic computing and communication technologies in consultation processes and is complimentary to existing practices." - ECRP
"Further, online consultation consists in using the Internet to ask a group of people their opinion on one or more specific topics, allowing for trade-offs between participants." - Wikipedia
eConsultation in Practice
The aim of Advice NI's most recent eConsultation was to give people the chance to have their say on what the future provision of advice services in Northern Ireland should look like. 
In it's consultation document A Strategy for Supporting Delivery of Voluntary Advice Services to the Community government proposed changes to the advice sector. For example the number of advice centres it will fund, their location and the type of advice given.
Advice NI ran an eConsultation on the document (from Wednesday 22nd February to Friday 24th March 2006) and invited a member of government to answer questions online. Messages can be still be viewed.
The voluntary advice sector in Northern Ireland deals with over 450,000 enquiries per year on debt, employment, immigration, benefits and other issues.
The aim of advicenet is to develop a new online community of advice workers, to enable the discussion of social policy issues via discussion forums. This online community will enable frontline advice workers to participate in social policy formulation and implementation debates.
Bill McCluggage, Director of the e-Government Unit NI, formally launched Advice NI's e-consultation project, advicenet, in Parliament Buildings, Stormont, in May 2004
Past eConsultations
A report of the Advice NI eConsultation Debt on your Doorstep - Who's Responsible? is now available. With the average UK household debt of £6,800 (excluding mortgages) and 23 per cent of people unsure of how much they actually owe, Advice NI believes money advice has an increasingly important role to play in the advice sector. June 2005
The Advice NI online Social Policy e-consultation Tax Credits: Looking Back, Moving Forward is now closed. This was an opportunity for Advice NI members to contribute their views and experiences on the issue of Tax Credits, how they impacted on their work, their clients and any suggestions for improvements to the Tax Credit system. The e-consultation ran from 1st March to 24th March 2004 after which a report of the findings was sent to the Inland Revenue.
The Advice NI e-consultation on Pension Credit - the First 60 Days is now closed. The e-consultation ran from 3rd December 03 until the 17th December 03 and targeted advice workers.
If you are interested in running an e-consultation please contact Kevin or Patricia at Advice NI
The Advice NI Social Policy Online project was originally supported by
Registered Charity No: XR16104