Go Vocal
How AI sped up reporting on consultation feedback for West Oxfordshire and Cotswold District Councils
How AI sped up reporting on consultation feedback for West Oxfordshire and Cotswold District Councils
Details:
- Company: Go Vocal
- Client: West Oxfordshire and Cotswold District Councils
- Year: 2023
- Region: England
Service areas:
- Community engagement
- Artificial intelligence (AI) and software solutions
Introduction
Both Local Planning Authorities were in the process of updating their Local Plans and used £280,000 PropTech Innovation funding to explore whether AI could tackle some of the lengthy back-office processes involved with summarising the increased volume of citizen feedback.
Challenges
West Oxfordshire and Cotswold District Councils piloted moving Local Plan consultations to new digital platforms as part of Round 1 and 2 PropTech Innovation funding. Multiple benefits were delivered including higher levels of participation and enhanced ease of use for both citizens and officers. However, this growth in citizen engagement led to new challenges with managing and summarising the increase in responses.
Solutions
West Oxfordshire and Cotswold District Councils ran a pilot with Go Vocal to develop the systems-integrated AI analysis tools which have various advantages including the ability to group input by auto-tagging keywords and generate concise summaries of qualitative feedback, distilling key findings quickly.
Results
The pilot showed a dramatic reduction of up to 85% in planning officer time, resources and costs required per consultation to summarise and report on feedback received.
In terms of reporting, the test-case consultation conducted in West Oxfordshire in August – October 2023 was compared to the Cotswolds consultation in February 2022 as the baseline. It was shown that the AI interventions could offer an average saving in officer time of up to 85%. That’s a significant reduction in time spent summarising and reporting on thousands of words in qualitative responses received in a consultation. The pilot delivered considerable savings.
In terms of reporting, the test-case consultation conducted in West Oxfordshire in August – October 2023 was compared to the Cotswolds consultation in February 2022 as the baseline. It was shown that the AI interventions could offer an average saving in officer time of up to 85%. That’s a significant reduction in time spent summarising and reporting on thousands of words in qualitative responses received in a consultation. The pilot delivered considerable savings.
