Hello @reef-building,
So the next step is creating a process to select the sites that we would like to send for a feasibility study. This is quite important, because we can only do 10, and so we need to make sure that the entire process is fully transparent.
Sophie and Sarah will be working out a detailed proposal, but what we know from our Governance Document is that it will most likely be a “multi-voting” system, in which every household gets a certain number of sticky dots that they can freely attribute to the sites that have been shortlisted.
To make this work, it is really important that
- Everybody understands why certain sites have been shortlisted
- Everybody can easily access all the important information about the sites that are subject to the vote
Having filled in a couple of scouting fiches the other day I have a couple of concerns about the current system of scoring the sites, which is an important first step in the process to decide which sites we’ll send for a feasibility study. One concern is about the scoring system, and another about transparency. Below you can find a detailed explanation on both.
The scoring system
My most important objection relates to the 1-6 scoring of the different criteria.
Looking at the overview file (“follow-up fiches” - internal link) I worry that there is a possibility that a site that gets a low score for an important criterion gets a high score overall because it gets a high score for certain less important criteria.
For example: a site that gets a high score for all our criteria (the garden, close to a park, 30 minutes from the station etc), but is located next to a disco or padel place: this is probably not a site that we want to consider. An example is the site in the rue de Danmark (STG-01), which currently gets the 4th highest score, but which is super far away from a park.
Looking at the scores in the overview table I also find it difficult to see what explains the differences between the scores of the different sites. The rather complicated formula to calculate the scores doesn’t help in that regard.
Finally I am also not sure whether it makes sense to differentiate the score for certain criteria. For example: either there is a low flood risk either there isn’t. Any site with even a moderate flood risk should be excluded right away (IMHO), i.e. the only acceptable score should be a 6.
Transparency
When we are going to take a decision on which sites to send for a feasibility study, it will be super important that everybody can quickly get the essentials about all the sites that are potential candidates. In the current system, to me at least, it seems that it is going to require quite some work to be able to understand the pros and cons about every site.
Here are a couple of suggestions:
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Giving the sites a code is great, but it quickly becomes a bit abstract. Example STG-01 (abstract number) = rue de Danmark (a street that many people may know). Can it be an option to put the column with the address next to the one with the location number?
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Linked to that I think it will save everybody a lot of time if we can make sure that we have consistent file naming, with all files in the same folder. If anybody can be bothered, having the link to the file in the overview file would be fantastic, but I am of course aware like nobody else that this takes some extra effort.
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I’ll leave it up to you how you want to remedy the issue with the scores. One alternative could be to reduce the scoring to 2. The default “yes” would be 2, 1 would be “it’s not great, but it could be acceptable” and 0 would be “no”. With automatic formatting zeros could be coloured red, and ones could be orange, so that it becomes more visual which are a site’s downsides.
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This could be accompanied by an extra column that says “candidate?” with a simple “yes / no” as possible answers. I myself for example, realised when filling in my fiches that some sites that I reported are most probably not good candidates because they are too small. Having a column that just says “no” can even save the reviewers a lot of time?
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Likewise I think it would be an absolute win if we could add some columns that are like an executive summary. For example one column could be “the site’s main advantages” and another “the site’s main disadvantages”. Using a couple of short sentences, I think this will make things more concrete and easy to access. An additional plus I think would be that it gives feedback to the people who scouted the site.
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A final extra column could be for feedback from non-reviewers. Given that tracked changes are close to impossible in Excel and you probably don’t want people to mess around with what has been written, adding an extra column where people can put any questions or remarks may save us a lot of misery?
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An additional advantage of all this (I believe) would be that it should become easier for more people to review the fiches. This is important for business continuity and efficiency, which are two things we highly value in our working methods.
Disclaimer
To be clear: I am super grateful for the current strategy and all the work that has been invested in it. It’s fantastic beyond any doubt, and nothing that I said in this post makes it any less fantastic.
Having gone through the exercise for real however, things have become a bit more concrete, which makes that I see a couple of concerns further down the line. I always feel a bit uncomfortable to deliver detailed feedback because we attach so much importance to team autonomy. At the same time I trust that it has to be possible for feedback not to be seen as criticism, but rather as a contribution towards making it to the finish line all together, as efficiently as possible.
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