Engagement Strategy

FoI 66-14
6 November 2014

“The Assembly’s 2010 Engagement Strategy states that:

‘An annual audit of public engagement will be undertaken to measure the level of public engagement with the Assembly on an ongoing basis…In particular, a number of key metrics will be measured, for example:

• Transparency of proceedings of the Assembly;
• Youth awareness of the political process;
• Number of inward / outward visitors;
• Number of inward / outward events;
• Number of members of the public attending plenary and committee meetings; and
• Level of media coverage

Could you please provide information as to the results of any such audits that have been carried out since the publication of the Engagement Strategy in 2010.”

The key metrics in the 2010 Engagement Strategy provide detail on the level of public engagement undertaken by the Assembly through a range of projects and programmes. The results are detailed below.

You may also be interested to know that a new Engagement Strategy has just been approved and will be issued for public consultation in the coming weeks.

Education Service Inward and Outward Visits 2010 – 2014

01/01/10 – 31/12/10
Inward visits
Total number of groups: 564
Total number of participants: 16624

External outreach Total number of groups: 6
Total number of participants: 634

01/01/11 – 31/12/11
Inward visits Total number of groups: 538
Total number of participants: 15349

External outreach Total number of groups: 38
Total number of participants: 2836

01/01/12 – 31/12/12
Inward visits Total number of groups: 541
Total number of participants: 15027

External outreach Total number of groups: 46
Total number of participants: 2475

01/01/13 – 31/12/13
Inward visits Total number of groups: 489
Total number of participants: 15552

External outreach
Total number of groups: 31
Total number of participants: 2072

01/01/14 – 31/12/14
Inward visits Total number of groups: 430
Total number of participants: 12645

External outreach
Total number of groups: 36
Total number of participants: 3060

Specific youth group figures are noted in the table below. Please note, the figures have been included in the overall numbers of Education Service Inward and Outward Visits 2010 - 2014, as noted above.

The NI Youth Assembly launched in early 2010 and its first action was to put together a youth panel who would act as a steering group for the foundation of the Youth Assembly including, establishing its structure, how young people would be elected, the number of members etc. The panel consisted of 30 young people from across Northern Ireland. The panel were selected by their peers at a selection event held in the Black Box, Belfast, on Friday 12th March 2010.

A series of residential events were held in 2010 to facilitate team-building amongst the panel members and encourage them to consider various aspects of the practical operation of a future Youth Assembly. The panel also met at Parliament Buildings to consider submissions from stakeholders and held an evidence session at the Balmoral Show, on the subject of how to involve young people from a rural background.

Outreach Service Inward and Outward Visits 2010 - 2014

Parliamentary Outreach

Inward Visits

Parliamentary Outreach has the responsibility for the organisation and management of detailed programmes for visitors to the NI Assembly. Visitors to the Assembly include Royalty, ambassadors, politicians, academics, students and international bodies, for example, The Ramallah Centre for Human Rights Studies.

There are various reasons for visiting the Assembly, including learning about the Assembly’s parliamentary procedures; hearing about Northern Ireland’s experience of peace-building; making trade and investment links.

Please see details of the number of visits each year since 2010 in the table below:

Outward Visits

The Northern Ireland Assembly is represented on various parliamentary bodies by MLAs. These bodies include the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, the British Irish Parliamentary Assembly, the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe and the Committee of the Regions. Involvement with these bodies allow MLAs to voice their opinions on various global issues and to learn from the experiences of other parliaments throughout the world.

Please see details of the number of visits each year since 2010 in the table below:

Business Outreach

The business outreach service provides representatives from the business community with an opportunity to find out how the Assembly works and to encourage involvement and engagement.

Internal events include briefings and seminars in Parliament Buildings. External events include educational visits, Inter-parliamentary Education Programmes and fellowships.

Please see details of the number of external and internal events in the table below:

Please see details of the number of people attending internal and external events in the table below:

Community Outreach

The NIA has engaged with over 40,000 members of the public since community outreach was initiated in 2010. Assembly Community Connect was launched in May 2013 and works to enhance connections between the Assembly and the Community and Voluntary sector through education and outreach. Assembly Community Connect provides free training, information and support for the local community and voluntary sector. Assembly Community Connect is open to all individuals and organisations that wish to engage with the Assembly, its processes and structures.
The table below shows the number of events held in Parliament Buildings and those that took place at external venues:

Please see the table below detailing the total number of guests at events and people engaged with at large events such as The Balmoral Show and The Belfast Mela.

¹ The Assembly did not attend the Balmoral Show in 2014 which explains the drop in numbers.

Events and tours at Parliament Building 2010-2014

Below is a breakdown of events* and tours which have taken place since 2010 as requested – all figures relate to events and tours which have taken place in Parliament Buildings.

Number of inward visitors – 284,688
Number of inward events – 7,246

*Please note the ‘function only’ figures below include outreach functions held within Parliament Buildings, as noted above.

2011# 6 weeks of Purdah
2014* Up to 30 September 2014

Media Coverage

The Assembly monitors and records coverage of Assembly related media, including the number of stories, the outlets in which they appeared, the length of each article or timing of each radio/TV interview or story and the readership of each article.

The Assembly monitors local media outlets including the Belfast Telegraph, the Irish News, Newsletter and Mirror as well as BBC and UTV websites, print and online magazines such as AgendaNI, The Detail, blogs such as Slugger O’Toole. In addition, the Team monitors the cross channel and Republic of Ireland papers (Times, Telegraph, Guardian etc, Irish Times, Irish Independent), television news (BBC, UTV, Radio Ulster, Downtown, Radio Foyle, U105). The Assembly also monitors and records coverage in local regional newspapers.

Should you require further information, the Assembly can provide a monthly breakdown of the extent of coverage of Assembly related stories in the media for the years 2010 through to the present.

The Assembly is equipped with 6 broadcast cameras. We have 3 committee rooms, including the Senate Chamber equipped with 5 cameras for broadcast. In an average Assembly Session i.e. September to July we broadcast and record over 70 Plenary sessions from the Chamber, approximately 360 Committee meetings and record over 300 hours of audio from meetings held outside Parliament Buildings. In an average week we broadcast and record around 50 hours of footage.

All footage is made freely available to any external broadcaster and is regularly used by the BBC and UTV. BBC Democracy Live broadcast coverage of the Plenary every Monday and Tuesday and take video from Committee meetings every Wednesday and Thursday. We also provide footage to BBC Parliament on a weekly basis.

Via our website we live stream coverage of the Plenary every Monday and Tuesday and throughout the week we live stream coverage from Committee meetings. In January 2014, to enhance the access for our stakeholders to the work done in the Chamber and by Committees, we created dedicated YouTube and SoundCloud channels/streams. These provide an online archive of video and audio footage. The public can watch Committee meetings and footage from the Chamber e.g. Questions Time, key debates directly on YouTube or via our website. They can subscribe to areas of interest to receive notifications when new content is posted, share footage via Social Media and embed it in their own sites. From January 2014 to date, we have had 71,280 views via YouTube, 6,800 plays and over 650 downloads via SoundCloud.