E-democracy Services for Highland Youth Voice
  ITC worked with Highland Youth Voice (a youth parliament in the Highland Region) from 2000 to 2008. An e-voting website, with a discussion form, supported the parliament's first elections in 2000. From 2001 to 2007, we worked with HYV staff and members to create eParticipation tools that would support their work, including new e-voting systems, discussion forums for policy debates and external consultations, content management systems for news and photo diaries for events. These tools evolved with the parliament, while young people's use of and access to Internet technologies also changed dramatically.

During this period, we learned a lot about methods for working with  users- including good ways to involve them in specifying and evaluating technologies. We also encountered issues which are now seen as priorities for eParticipation, for example:
people with power to effect change need to be prepared to act on the outcomes of eParticipation and provide feedback online;updating the organisation's website needs to be integrated into its activities;participation needs to be meaningful AND fun.In the later stages of the project, we worked with local youth forums in Highland to create blogs to support their work.

Charles Kennedy launched the Youth Voice website in March 2002.

In 2002, the HYV website team won a Highland Council Quality Award and was shortlisted for an IPPR-Guardian Public Involvement Award.

More detailed information about the HYV project on the ITC website.
ITC's work with young people

  • Start Date:

    1 January 2000

  • End Date:

    31 March 2008

  • Activity Type:

    Externally Funded Research

  • Funder:

    The Highland Council

  • Value:

    £134176

Project Team