Customer story: NHS Digital, UK

Getting it right

NHS Digital is the national information and technology partner to the health and social care system. Their mission is to transform the NHS and social care services using digital technology.

So when it comes to procuring technology from external sources, they’re under a lot of pressure to get it right.

When it came to choosing a consultation platform, they knew they had to choose wisely. Having a platform that reflected its ambitions as a digital innovator in public health services was essential.

Citizen Space was the right fit. Its unlimited nature – that means as many consultations and admin users as you like – meant it was easily scalable across such a large organisation. It was important to them to find a tool that could support a large volume of activity; to date, they’ve run nearly 600 consultations on Citizen Space.

The transition between NHS Digital’s website and their consultation hub is seamless, thanks to Citizen Space’s customisable brand colours and banner images. It makes the journey between the two virtually unnoticeable and much smoother than if the interfaces looked completely different.

Consultation and beyond

The engagement activity that NHS Digital runs doesn’t stop at formal consultation. Citizen Space’s slick built-in survey tool means its ideal for engagement of any kind. NHS Digital also use their site to run staff surveys, stakeholder engagement, event and project feedback, as well as less formal engagement activities with the public.

Engagement best practice

NHS Digital have run hundreds of surveys and consultations. However, that doesn’t mean they’ve had to compromise on quality. They’ve adopted best practice habits across the board. These include:

- Featuring data protection and GDPR information on the overview page, so that respondents can make an informed decision whether or not they’d like to take part.

- Using Citizen Space’s integrated feedback feature, ‘We Asked, You Said, We Did’ consistently, increasing their accountability and demonstrating that peoples’ views have a demonstrable effect on a decision's outcome. The feature is set up so that respondents can easily see a summary of how their responses informed the outcome of a decision.

- Listing how long from the closing date feedback is expected to be provided. This creates a publicly accountable deadline, but also keeps respondents in the loop. If people are kept waiting for feedback for months without explanation it can decrease public trust – so by being open about processing times, NHS Digital are helping their respondents feel like their time and opinions were valued.