Organising submission dataEverything you do during the plan change process should be done with the future in mind. As you get ready to summarise submissions, you need to think about how you will use that data during the rest of the plan change process. You have further submissions, s42A reports and pre-hearing meetings coming up. Commissioners need the submission information to help them make decisions, so it should be easy to read, and easy to search. Our planner, Jen Olson, talks about how she learned this the very, very hard way, and why she loves using Spoken for summarising submissions.
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The very sad planner story |
I’ve summarised a lot of submissions. And I really like doing it. I have this idealistic Wonder Woman outlook and need to make sure everyone feels valued. That everyone who took the time to make a submission (on something they might find quite dry) is rewarded with an accurate summary.
My first lot of summaries were stored in some word tables, and I thought it wasn’t too bad. To keep it tidy, each submitter had their own table. I included the submitters details, whether they wanted to be heard, a summary of their submission points, and a column listing the plan sections the submission points related to. It looked tidy, had a nice succinct summary, and all the relevant provisions were identified. My biggest concern was getting the summaries nice and short, while still giving them the Wonder Woman treatment. I carried on and entered 100 more submission points this way.
Look at me, in my invisible Wonder Woman plane! Doing good! And then… The senior planner asked me how many people made a submission on Policy 1.2.3. Oh, no! I couldn’t answer quickly – I’d have to go in and search 100 tables manually for that! Because, as I just realised, you can’t search on a bunch of separate word tables. Argh! And then she asked me how many people so far have submitted about Heritage issues in general? Nooooooooo!! Admittedly, that was my worst one. I looked even sadder than that dog. Soon after, I moved on to using a spreadsheet and entering a separate line for each submission point, but I still didn’t really get how to organise the data to use easily later. For lots of things. And honestly, no matter how good I got at setting up a spreadsheet (planner + ex-science geek = spreadsheet love), something always came up that I couldn’t filter, search or chart they way I wanted. I got by, but I wished it was a little bit less painful, and I secretly wanted a lot of those hours back. And I didn’t want to admit this, but, I worried that my reports were Missing Things. And that really, really important decisions were being based on my Bad Data. Cue the sad dog. |
The very happy planner story |
Now, I use Spoken and wonder where it’s been all my life!? I know, I get paid to say that. But cross my heart, I wouldn’t be without it. My new mantra is “I need to use this data later” and Spoken makes that a breeze.
When Spoken is set up for my next plan change, all of the Topics, Issues, Objectives, Policies and Rules are in my database. Yes, I’m still responsible for great data entry, but now when I enter a submission point it is automatically tagged to all of the relevant provisions. When my database is full of Wonder Woman summaries, I can search on any of the provisions I want! Yay! Remember when I couldn’t do that with my horrible word tables? I know, you’ve blocked the horror from your mind already. Well, now I can search on nearly anything I want. This super-mega-searchability is gold when we start putting the s42A reports together. Using Spoken to search, filter, and report on the data has actually meant we can structure s42A reports in the best way for that particular plan change. I’ll let that soak in. We no longer use one standard format for s42 reports. It's true. And it is a bit of a game changer! One report was structured around topics. Another one was structured around the Policies. Being able to do that meant the reports were much more readable. The commissioner understood what was going on and why we recommended the plan amendments that we did. Spoken made it possible for us to see the s42 format possibilities. |
Take home some superpowers |
The ultimate goal of a lot of plan change work is to make it easy for the commissioner to make good decisions. Spoken's superpower is that stores your summary data so you can search the daylights out of it.
Wonder Woman, out. If you'd like specialist training or need a hand organising your submissions process, we can help! |