The Alberta Government recently won a Social Innovation Endowment (SIE) for $1 billion to help, “deliver on the goals, visions and principles defined by Alberta’s Social Policy Framework.” The aim of the framework is to help renew and strengthen the Canadian province’s social and cultural sector with innovative solution-oriented approaches. The government hopes to continue tackling issues such as homelessness, family violence and poverty, with social innovations coming from all levels of their community (individuals, groups, and organisations working alone or together).
The news is incredibly positive and we’re happy to have worked closely with the team at the Alberta Department of Human Services since 2012 to provide a wiki-based policy collaboration platform for the development of the Social Policy Framework. We became involved because Minister Dave Hancock (then Minister for Education and Health, now Premier and Minister of Innovation and Advanced Education) had a strong commitment to transparency, and recognised the usefulness of a wiki to construct the province’s first ever social policy framework.
Collabforge set up the wiki, trained the team on using it and provided strategic advice on how to get the most out of the platform. From June 7 to November 30, 2012, the site reached 31,300 people, with volume of participation activity (e.g. number of tweets, site visits, community conversations) calculated to be 59,600. The site had 49,057 site visits, with 20,371 returning visitors. Full results can be viewed via their publicly reported Engagement Results.
Part of Collabforge’s approach to working with our clients is building collaboration capability so that they can continue working together to bring about their best future on their own. We believe in being highly involved with projects at the outset and slowly reducing our level of support as our clients learn how to successfully collaborate.
We are so pleased to see that the Alberta Government has not only continued to use the wiki platform collaboratively for their Social Policy Framework, but that they’ve also applied it to the areas of Poverty Reduction, Children’s Charter and Early Childhood Development, and are continuing to use it as they roll out the Social Innovation Endowment.
Update 26/2/2016 – The described consultations have now ended. You can view details of the consultations here.