The Deliberation Matrix is a community process tool that has been developed by Professor Martin O'Connor at Université de Versailles Saint Quentin-en-Yvelines. It allows for stakeholder groups to evaluate the outcomes of policy decision and deliberate the suitability of these outcomes from their perspective. The Deliberation Matrix is being applied to the local government process in New Zealand to see if it can be applied in a way that adds value to both the decisions that are made and the involvement of the community in decision making processes.
The deliberation tool can be used to provide additional contextual input from key community groups about their views on policy options. Using this method of community involvement can create a deep level of understanding about areas of agreement and conflict between stakeholders and then allows for productive discussions on possible trade-offs to occur. The deliberation tool is also supported and improved by using the information that can be produced by a spatial model.
The Deliberation Matrix - a three-dimensional Deliberation Matrix, or “Cube”, as a framework for presentation of the judgements offered by each stakeholder class should offer a judgement (e.g., satisfactory, poor, intolerable, etc.) of each scenario in relation to each of the key governance or decision issues. In an iterative process outputs from the deliberation process can be evaluated in the quantitative simulation model WISE, following by another deliberation process using the model outputs (see below).
The deliberation tools were developed through a series of workshops with key stakeholders and potential end users.
See Deliberation Workshop Reports