In August, we published a Request For Information on the use of technology to reduce travel.
The RFI publicised the fact that by 2010, each Public Service department must have a workplace travel plan in place, aiming for a 15 per cent reduction in kilometres travelled. It noted that technology offers several ways to reduce workplace travel, through such options as video conferencing, flexible working or user self-service on the Internet.
The RFI tried not to limit the scope of the information, but rather sought information from any interested parties who might have any examples of best practice in using and sharing technology/services aimed at reducing travel, whilst not reducing departmental performance.
Part of the RFI asked the private sector to provide information of available video conferencing bureaux services around New Zealand, for potential use by government departments. The service information was not personal information, but of a type that would typically be advertised in places such as the Yellow Pages.
It was noteworthy in that respondents were encouraged to fill in a form provided via the Google forms service. Respondents were told that all responses were to be public, and no information would be accepted from respondents on a confidential basis. Users were given an alternative of emailing the information, if they had privacy concerns about the Google service, which stores the information offshore.
This means of collecting information was very fast. It saved double-handling with information being received in different formats, and then being rekeyed into some other format, like a spreadsheet. Any submitted information was immediately available online. In addition, several vendors took the initiative further by offering to provide spreadsheet files for bulk uploading.
We’re still reading the RFI responses, but we’ve already learnt some interesting things, which will be a topic for a future post.
2 Comments
Mike,
Great move. Couple of questions:
Was the response in line with what you would have expected for such a RFI? (Only me and a couple of others responded via the wiki for the digital strategy earlier this year).
Did anyone chose the confidential approach? (and if so, was there any qualitative difference in those submissions?)
Cheers
SaM
Hi SaM,
A Request for Information is not the same as a public consultation. Typically, from a vendor viewpoint, this is a way to promote their commercial services to agencies at little cost.
Regarding our expectations, our RFIs are typically on different topics so its hard to know what to expect. For this RFI, 386 people accessed the RFI advertisement on http://www.gets.govt.nz, of which 187 proceeded to download the RFI document. We then had 31 companies/individuals provide a response.
1 respondent chose to email rather than use the form, but that was more because they wanted to bulk load data, rather than manually enter it. No one expressed any concerns over the confidentiality of the forms.
Several respondents had their information rejected because they indicated it was provided IN-CONFIDENCE and could not be distributed publicly. They have all responded again, with a revised set of information that can be made public.
Thanks.