Technology matching for E-consultation

Technology Matching for E-Consultation

There are hundreds of potential electronic communication technologies that could be used to support different parts of a consultation. So how can people organizing a consultation choose appropriate technologies? One way, is to consider the stages of a policy-making cycle: agenda setting, analysis, formulation, implementation and monitoring (Macintosh, A. in OECD 2003). However, this takes only the perspective of the consultation organiser, not the consultees. It defines the problem as one of information management in public administration. Another approach is to conceive of consultation as a process analogous to mediation and negotiation, through which different groups come to an accommodation of what should be done (Morison and Newman, 2001) as shown in the following table.