It seems like AI is everywhere, from diagnosing diseases more accurately than doctors, to composing symphonies. One other emerging AI use is analysing thousands of public submissions to help governments understand what their citizens think about new laws, plans and policies.

In this article we compare human and AI analysis and suggest reasons why the human analyst isn’t quite ready to be superseded by stings of code.

Our analysts read thousands of submissions when reporting on a public consultation. More and more often, submitters are utilising our handy friend ChatGPT to organise ideas and help write their submissions.

Like any tool, it can be used in positive and negative ways. Read more about what our staff are observing.

We’re proud to announce that Global Research has achieved SOC 2 Type I accreditation, marking a significant milestone in our commitment to data security, privacy, and client trust.

We work extensively with sensitive public, commercial, and personal data, and recognise that ensuring data protection isn’t additional to what we do—it’s a core component of our work.

Libraries, those tranquil places to get out of the rain, charge your phone, do your homework, and of course engage with knowledge and entertainment, have found themselves a focal point of the current US culture war. Increasingly, segments of the community are calling for libraries to be defunded over allowing them to hold books considered harmful to children because of their progressive themes

In New Zealand, we also face funding challenges, not on the back of moral outrage, but to save Councils money, during tight economic times. Auckland Council threatened cuts to library services and operating hours as part of their response to 2023’s $295m budget shortfall, and in 2021, Christchurch City Council proposed to reduce the operating hours of its libraries to save money, as part of “a $329 million package of operational savings that have been incorporated into the Draft 2021-31 Long Term Plan.”

In today’s world, we are so used to having information at our fingertips, accessible from anywhere at any time. You can have any question you want answered in a matter of seconds just by typing it into google. University assignments can be done without even setting foot in a library. Having so much information available to us instantaneously has opened so many opportunities, but it has also made it more difficult to scrutinise the information and find what we are truly after amid the tens of thousands of search results and the constant flow of new information. How can infographics help you reach your audience more effectively?

Sometimes I talk with organisations that consider it too challenging to ask open questions when seeking feedback from their customers or public. Instead they consider it safer to ask closed, tick the box survey questions.....There is no need to panic though – don’t deploy the life boats just yet! There are solutions available that support an open-ended questioning approach.

If you’re wanting to learn how to grow your following on Instagram or negotiate a brand deal for the latest collagen powder, this is probably not the article for you. However, if you’re looking to make a difference in your community and make your voice heard, keep reading!

At Global Research, we analyse submissions for council and government department engagements across New Zealand and Australia, reading and organising every single response into different themes to report them back to the organisation and community. This means that we’ve read tens of thousands of written comments over the past decade. Along the way, we’ve learned a few qualities that make some submissions more useful and easier to deal with than others.

The proliferation of cheap online survey software over the last 15 years has meant that now everyone has access to a survey tool box. But a tool box doesn’t automatically lead to success – the most valuable tools in research are your questions, and knowing which question types to use is what can make all the difference.

If there’s one thing that we’ve learned from reading and analysing tens of thousands of comments made on city place making and development projects, it’s that not everyone wants the same thing and that is because everyone wants the same thing: to have it their way.

We compared the value of social media posts with City of Melbourne’s Participate Melbourne, read the key findings.

In almost every consultation we analyse there is one recurring cry – “will we be listened to?” It seems people worry there is no point making the effort. But do the public grasp what consultations are actually for?

Throughout history, humans have had a habit of making decisions based on what they think the people want, assuming they know what’s best for others. One lesson we’ve learned over the past few hundred years is how important it is for governments to understand their people.

New Zealand is about to embark on its largest infrastructure programme in a generation and the Government has proposed avoiding public input to speed up the delivery of projects. We outline an alternative, which accommodates valuable public input, without delaying delivery and avoiding our children and grandchildren having to live with short-sighted decisions.

The world looks very different in April 2020 than most of us would have imagined only a couple of months ago. The ways in which our day-to-day lives have changed are innumerable, but it is nice to see that governments and organisations are adapting in these uncertain times, keeping their people safe and their cities moving.