The procedures and examples below are editorial tools. They describe a possible approach, not a test conducted by the named initiative.
- Reference and receipt
- Responsible office
- Private case / public status
- Substantive response
- Participant review
A channel needs a recipient
SEMA and Loop appear in the May 2024 booklet as different approaches to public-service and governance feedback. Their descriptions provide a starting point for design, not proof that a new tool will obtain a response. Agree with the receiving institution which subjects it handles, which contact owns each case and what happens when a report belongs elsewhere. Publish these boundaries before asking people to submit personal information.
Create a reviewable case record
Assign a reference, a category and a receipt time. Collect only the information needed to route the case. Keep the public status separate from names, contact details and sensitive attachments. Define statuses with real meaning: received, awaiting clarification, referred, answered and closed after review. Avoid treating an automated acknowledgement as a substantive response. Give staff a way to correct mistaken classifications without erasing the history.
Return the response to the participant
Ask the institution for a specific response format: action proposed, responsible office, next step and the date of the update. If a case cannot be resolved, explain why and provide the applicable review route. Let the participant indicate whether the response addressed the issue. A public dashboard can publish aggregated categories, unresolved cases and response times, provided small counts do not expose individuals.
Review failures as well as activity
Inspect unanswered cases, repeated referrals and topics that the service cannot handle. For a trial, measure receipt-to-first-substantive-response time and the share of cases with a documented answer. State the period, denominator and exclusions. Do not infer satisfaction from closure alone. Review deletion rules and access permissions with the case owner; volunteers should not retain private exports after their assignment ends.
Working template
- Reference and receipt
- Responsible office
- Private case / public status
- Substantive response
- Participant review
Illustrative example
A hypothetical broken-water-point report is acknowledged, routed to the maintenance office and updated after inspection. Mark it “answered” when a reasoned response exists; mark it “resolved” only when the applicable evidence supports that outcome.
Sources and provenance
Count substantive answers separately from automatic receipts
A fast acknowledgement can coexist with an unanswered case. Use a small fictional queue to test what your status labels mean; these are not results from a funded initiative.
- Define the observation window and which reports belong in it. Keep a public status separate from the private case record.
- For each case, distinguish receipt, a response addressing the issue, and evidence that the issue was resolved. Preserve who made each update and when.
- Report the denominator and unresolved cases together. Do not infer satisfaction or impact from the number of automated messages.
Filled queue: case A has an automatic receipt but no substantive answer. Case B has a reasoned response saying an inspection is planned; completion is not verified. Totals: 2 received, 1 substantively answered, 0 verified resolutions. The answered share is 1/2, or 50%; it is not a satisfaction score or proof that half the problems were solved.
Record: reference __; receipt __; substantive response __; resolution evidence __; responsible office __; next update __. This teaching example contains no resident data. OECD's 2022 participation guidance supports providing feedback; it does not validate the fictional figures, confirm programme results or establish a current funding opportunity.
Source context: www.oecd.org.
