Customer story: Dublin City Council, ROI

Scaling across a city

Dublin is a dynamic and vibrant city, with a rapidly growing population. Dublin City Council recognised the need for a consultation platform that would allow them to easily reach their citizens and respond to the organisation’s needs as they changed over time.

Dublin’s site is a good example of how the platform scales across an organisation: their Citizen Space is used by a wide range of departments, like schools, planning and local tax. And it’s not just used for statutory consultation: Dublin have used their site for non-statutory consultation, engagement exercises and even, more recently, as a virtual condolence book for those who have sadly passed away. Unlimited admin users mean that an organisation can easily grant access to its different departments without having to buy extra licences.

Dynamic planning consultations

When it comes to consulting on spatial planning and changes to the built environment, Dublin has really embraced the best of what Citizen Space can offer. Consultation on things like Traffic Road Orders or planning applications can often be stuffy, dry and difficult to access. They tend to rely heavily on documents and technical speak, which is sometimes necessary for stakeholder consultation, but can render it inaccessible to the general public.

Citizen Space allows users to embed rich media into the body of their consultation, such as images, video, interactive maps, PDF viewers, and so on. This is ideal for consultations on changes to the built environment as it means that respondents can view a visual representation of the proposed changes without having to leave the page they’re already on. This means that there’s no need to download a separate document to view the maps or plans, or visit a council office where the plans are on display.

Dublin have consistently made use of the ability to embed maps and images into their consultations, as well as other features like chapter-based or routed surveys. The result has been a range of dynamic, easy-to-follow and accessible consultations on things like cycle routes and park refurbishments that are pleasant to respond to for the public and stakeholders alike.