Submission - Use of Citizens' Panels, Assemblies and Juries - Sortition Foundation - 16 November 202

Tuesday 16 November 2021

The States of Jersey Public Accounts Committee Review November 2021

Sortition Foundation responses to the following questions from the PAC:

1. Can you please describe briefly your organisation and its role and remit for working with Jersey Government, Citizens' Panels and Juries?

The Sortition Foundation offers bespoke selection and stratification services for deliberative events. An outline of how that works can be found here.

We were part of a consortium and our specific role was to randomly select representative samples of participants for the Jersey Citizens' Assembly on Climate Change and the Citizens' Jury on Assisted Dying. We worked with the Government of Jersey and our consortium partners, the event delivery organisations Involve and the New Citizen Project "NCP", to select participants for both events (45 for the Assembly and 23 for the Jury) using the methodology described in our brochure.

2. What process did you undertake to engage in work with the Government of Jersey?

We worked with the Government of Jersey, Involve and the New Citizen Project to co-create a specification outlining the desirable targets for each event and recruited randomly selected Jersey residents to satisfy those targets as closely as was feasible.

3. Did you sign a Service Level Agreement with the Government of Jersey prior to undertaking your work on the Citizens' Assembly and Jury? If so, may the PAC be provided in confidence with a copy of the Agreement(s)?

We were part of a consortium and NCP signed all agreements on behalf of the consortium.

4. Could you please provide a detailed breakdown:

1. on the original planned membership criteria for each of the Assembly and Jury (e.g. age, gender, profession)

Participants were chosen by stratified random selection to ensure they matched the latest government or survey data, according to various criteria. In the case of the Citizens' Jury on Assisted Dying the criteria were as follows:

• age (source: Opendata.gov.je 2018 Population Estimate)

• gender (source: Opendata.gov.je 2018 Population Estimate)

• location (source: Jersey Opinions and Lifestyle Survey 2020)

• socio economic status, based on housing tenure (source: Jersey Opinions and Lifestyle Survey 2020)

• place of birth (source: Jersey 2011 census data)

• attitude towards assisted dying (source: British Social Attitudes Survey 34 (2017)

In the case of the Citizens' Assembly on Climate Change the criteria were as follows:

• age (source: Opendata.gov.je 2018 Population Estimate)

• gender (source: Opendata.gov.je 2018 Population Estimate)

• location (source: Jersey Opinions and Lifestyle Survey 2020)

• socio economic status, based on housing tenure (source: Jersey Opinions and Lifestyle Survey 2020)

• place of birth (source: Jersey 2011 census data)

• attitude towards climate change (Ipsos MORI Climate Change Polling, August 2019)

The attached two documents (Jersey-AD-CJ-Tables.pdf and Jersey-Climate-CA-Tables.pdf) outline the exact target numbers and percentages, numbers and percentages of those that registered their interest in the events, and the numbers and percentages of our initial sample and that after a few replacements to the initial selection were made when people withdrew their interest during the confirmation phase of the process.

2. the selection process (including what forms the invitation to apply' process took, and how many replied).

The selections were a 2-phase process. The first phase involved sending 4,600 (for the jury) and 9,000 (for the assembly) invitation packages to randomly selected households. Anyone living at these addresses could register his or her interest in participating in the jury or assembly. These addresses were selected from the JLPI – Jersey Land and Property Index - using a random number generator). The invitation package consisted of an invitation card and letter and FAQ inside specially designed envelopes.

In the second phase, we used our software - StratifySelect - to perform the random stratified selection, to match specified demographics (as listed above), from the pool of registrants:

477 residents of Jersey registered an interest in the Citizens' Jury on Assisted Dying and 476 registered an interest in the Jersey Citizens' Assembly on Climate Change.

3. the final' membership per criteria

Our involvement in both projects ended when we handed over the confirmed samples of participants as outlined in the Tables referred to above and attached. This typically happened several weeks before the events began and we were not kept informed if further replacements happened after that point i.e. the "confirmed" statistics in the Tables may not be an exact reflection of the final membership (but should be close) - for that you would have to communicate with the event delivery organisations.

5. How did you work with the Government of Jersey to understand how the Citizens' Assembly and Jury should be organised?

1. What responsibility did you have in administering the Citizens' Assembly and Jury? How was this work divided between yourselves and the Government of Jersey?

Our role was limited to recruiting the participants for both events, as outlined above. The delivery of the events was coordinated by our other partners.

2. How would you describe your partnership with the Government of Jersey? How did it work and what worked well? The PAC would be grateful if you could provide specific examples.

We had an effective working relationship with both the Government of Jersey and our partner delivery organisations. The recruitment for both events went very smoothly, with the Citizens' Jury on Assisted Dying achieving our best ever response rate of 10.4%. The response rate for the Citizens' Assembly on Climate Change was a very respectable 5.3%. For example, developing the invitation material was done collaboratively and we found the representatives of the GoJ responsive, helpful and attentive to the deadlines required to print and deliver that material in a timely fashion.

Of course the event was initially interrupted and postponed by the COVID-19 pandemic which led to some duplication of work as we re-started the project some months later and had to review what had previously been done and adjust for the new conditions.

3. What lesson did you learn and what would you do differently?

The most important lesson for us was that we should be clear that using age brackets such as 16-29 does not imply with any certainty that there will be participants in the 16-17 age category. We could have been more explicit there and indeed could have stratified on a 16-17 age category to ensure a youth presence. This was felt particularly important for the Climate Assembly.

There were minor collaboration issues dealing with different technologies (Zoom and Google Workspace vs MS Teams) but these had little to no overall effect.

6. How did you provide feedback and identify lessons learned to improve the Government of Jersey's engagement and understanding of this area of work?

1. Did you undertake any exit interviews or similar feedback opportunities with the Government of Jersey following the completion of the Assembly and Jury to identify areas of improvement for the Government?

We organised and carried out quality reviews of the recruitment process, inviting our partners and the relevant GoJ staff, after completing the recruitment of each event.

2. How did you facilitate, receive and process feedback from participants?

Our role with the participants was limited to the recruitment stage of the process. During that phase we advertised in the invitation material and on our registration of interest page a free phone number to contact us. Registrations through the webpage received a confirmation email from our team and were encouraged to contact us with any questions and concerns. All such contacts were answered within 2 working days.

After the recruitment phase ended our partners managed all relationships with participants. Yours sincerely,

Rich Rippin rich@sortitionfoundation.org Project Manager

Sortition Foundation