The Gap Between Consultation and Genuine Input
An Interview with Ruth Jarman, Environmental Risk Sciences Pty Ltd
What does an effective consultation process look like when government is developing guidance, policy or legislation, and are there examples that stand out as having worked well?
In my view, effective consultation starts at the beginning of the process, not after the draft guidance has been written. An open (and widely published) invitation to provide consultation is helpful. Some recent guidance documents have been sent out for targeted consultation, and it has not been clear who is on the target list or why. Relevant stakeholders also appear to have been left off the list. This suggests that feedback from some stakeholders is not welcome. This is not a good starting point for consultation.
Adequate time is required for effective consultation – 2 to 3 weeks is not an adequate timeframe particularly when consolidated stakeholder feedback (e.g. from an industry group) is required and/or documents are length and complex.
I recall that the consultation process for version 1 of the PFAS NEMP worked well – there were information sessions prior to and during development of the guidance. Enough time was provided to review and consider the guidance and provide comment. Comments were addressed in the final guidance. This contrasts with later versions of the PFAS NEMP, the PFAS ADWG and the enHealth EHRA guidance, where there have been significant issues.
Based on your/enRiskS experience in recent years, how effective have consultation processes been in providing stakeholders with meaningful opportunities to contribute their technical and practical expertise?
Unfortunately, in my view, recent consultation processes have been highly ineffective. Some of the issues are identified in the response to the previous question. In addition:
- Sometimes draft guidance has been released without adequate peer review e.g. typos present, complicated or lengthy text that doesn’t read well or is difficult to follow, inconsistency in guidance between sections of the document or with other widely published guidance documents used by Industry etc. This provides the impression that stakeholders are expected to use their volunteer time to help author the document. It is ironic that time would likely have been willingly volunteered, should stakeholders have been asked up front.
- Feedback is now commonly requested via text boxes in an online survey, where survey questions are often leading. This makes the consultation process appear disingenuous and does not allow for feedback to be provided as considered appropriate by the Stakeholder.
Feedback provided by stakeholders during consultation has often not been considered in the in final guidance, or token updates have been made e.g. version 3.1 of the PFAS NEMP acknowledges some of the issues with the reptile guideline. However, the guideline was retained as is and there is no acknowledgement of the key issues (which would invalidate the guideline).
What could agencies do better to demonstrate how stakeholder feedback has been considered and reflected in the final guidance, policy or regulatory outcome?
- Come back to stakeholders with questions, or to discuss comments, if comments are not clear and/or are not able to be easily addressed.
- Hold workshops to discuss comments and how to address them, and to communicate any issues with the comments, or any issues faced in general.
- Don’t indicate comments have been considered/addressed when they clearly haven’t been. Instead, explain why some comments couldn’t be addressed.