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Stakeholder engagement, reporting and analysis

Client name Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA)
Year 2025
Work completed Government and stakeholder engagement
Team Cameron Wong, Ben Cole

Overview

The department sought external support to activate engagement with the community, industry, government, Traditional Owners and other key stakeholders to inform the planning and drafting of the draft forest management plan.

This phase of engagement was critical to identifying the issues and opportunities and managing the expectations of actively involved stakeholders.

Challenge

Purple was presented with a number of challenges:

Developing questions that benchmarked respondents, were relevant to all stakeholders and provided valuable insights to the Department;
Analysing large quantities of data and identifying trends and risks within the long and short form responses;
Liaising with other third parties undertaking supporting stakeholder engagement activities such as Focus Groups to identify trends across a larger stakeholder group;
Ensuring the engagement method was inclusive and considered the various accessibility needs of interested and impacted community stakeholders.

Solution

Purple developed and implemented an online survey that was embedded on the DBCA website and shared with Department owned digital channels and within State newspapers using a QR code. A second confidential and voluntary internal digital survey was developed by Purple to capture DBCA staff feedback about working in the south-west forests as well as their experiences in relation to unauthorised use of the south-west forests.

The survey was open for a three-week period and included 19 questions which were displayed in various formats. A statistical method was used to analyse and tag the raw data, using this approach ten top themes were identified and discussed in detail within the final report.

Results

The survey received over 2, 200 unique responses from diverse, interested and impacted individuals across Western Australia. The survey was deemed successful with a completion rate of 55% and an average completion time of 49 minutes. The survey included benchmarking questions which were used to group and compare responses, including key demographics and forest uses.

Following the completion of the survey, Purple was engaged for an additional scope to compile a larger analysis and recommendations report that included the findings of key stakeholder Focus Groups. The findings were analysed and summarised and a report of key themes, insights, topics, demographic splits as well as risks and opportunities for next steps was prepared. The final report was formatted to include infographics which summarised the survey responses an detailed how the information could inform the draft EMP.

In October 2022, the Draft Forest Management Plan 2023-2033 was released for public feedback for a period of two-months.

1000

unique survey responses from diverse, interested and impacted individuals across Western Australia

10 %

completion rate