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Engage @ Scottish Parliament

Timeframe: November 2019 – Present

Project Description:

The Scottish Parliament is using Your Priorities to engage with citizens in Scotland. The first three consultations were about Community Wellbeing, a new Civil Partnership Bill and Climate Change. There have also been two consultations on Covid-19, a consultation on what committees should focus on between 2021-2026, a review of upcoming new fireworks laws, and many others.

Challenge Addressed:

• Scottish Parliament committees must better understand the needs of Scottish citizens concerning various subjects.
• Citizens in Scotland want to have their voices heard in the turmoil following IndyRef & BREXIT.

Key Outcomes: Citizens:

• As of early 2022 then over 40,000 Scottish citizens have visited the engagement platform creating over 6,000 new user accounts, taking part in many different types of engagement projects.
• Over 5.000 visited the Community Wellbeing project and 645 logged in and took direct part in idea generation and debate having their voices heard by the Scottish Parliament.
• The Scottish Parliament started using the Your Priorities platform to support the work of its committees, with Alistair Stoddart, senior participation specialist for the parliament’s committee engagement unit, seeing it as a way to involve people who live a long way from Edinburgh. “It overcomes barriers of time and space,” he says.

Key Outcomes: Government:

• An in-depth gauge of opinion through deliberation and dialogue gives a clearer picture of attitudes and opinions than traditional polling gives
• A chance to debate “hot button” issues with minimum acrimony

Visit Engage @ Scottish Parliament here: https://engage.parliament.scot/