Open Process

Visual process storytelling is a powerful way to help organisations be more open and clearly and effectively communicate with multiple audiences.

We run workshops and provide design services to help people create process maps and pathways for print, presentations, and online interactive versions to connect content and data in meaningful ways.

Open process mapping workshops and visual pathways help people:

  • demystify complexity and gain a shared understanding

  • interpret and easily follow laws, legislation, regulation and policies

  • understand decision making, roles and responsibilities

  • connect and navigate information and data across organisations

  • create step by step guidance and design better forms

  • track and report on initiatives, services, projects, and programs

  • engage in constructive discussions to make positive change happen

Pathways are a compelling way to illustrate processes, journeys, workflows, life cycles, and connect information in a meaningful way for multiple audiences.

We have been self-funding the development of Make Paths collaboration tool and our open process work through content creation partnerships.

If you are interested in a workshop, funding us or have any stories want help visualising, get in touch.

We’ve worked on: interpreting legislation and regulation, natural resources (mining, oil and gas licences and project life cycles), environment protection laws, infrastructure projects, procurement and contract pathways, service design maps. We are constantly experimenting with new sectors and stories.


NSW mining & production | TITLES PROCESS

This poster tells the story of mining and production in NSW. Our objective was to show which stage community consultation and engagement should occur, when environmental reports should be available and when payments are made.

It was an essential service design and powerful engagement tool we developed whilst making Common Ground, Australia’s first open government web service designed using participatory design approach.

You can read more about the making of Common Ground project, see the interactive version of the process pathway or download the PDF poster.

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Once Common Ground was published the poster was adapted.

Seeing the mining and production licence process visualised in this way helped explain why people in communities across NSW were unhappy with the consultation and engagement process. The wider community had no idea exploration had taken place or projects had been planned for years until the PLAN phase when the Environment Impact Statement (EIS) was published for public comment usually for a window of only 45 days.

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The Minister for the Department of Trade and Investment, Resources and Energy at the time of making Common Ground was responsible for leading reforms in improving community consultation. After the launch, he became the Minister for Planning and Environment, where he changed policy and instated a CONSIDER phase in order for communities, the general public, and industry to be involved earlier in the process.

This exemplifies the positive impact of being able to visually see a process and the possibilities of simply showing a policy change over time.

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Transparency International, Accountable Mining

Transparency International’s Accountable Mining Program (formerly Mining for Sustainable Development) is responsible for coordinating work across multiple chapters to combat corruption in mining approvals. The program set out to understand where systems are vulnerable to corruption and why. They developed the Mining Awards and Corruption Risk Assessment (MACRA) tool.

Over 20 country chapters chose a number of mining and environmental processes to map, each with vastly different legal frameworks and contexts.

We designed the mining and production Make Paths template to cover part or the whole life cycle of a decision making process or project.

The maps provided clarity about roles and responsibilities, improved engagement with governments and industry, and helped bring people together to have constructive conversations about where improvements and reforms are needed.

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The Transparency International Australia (TIA) process mapping project focused on how to increase the transparency and accountability in the mining approval regimes in Queensland and Western Australia. In Queensland we focused on the process for Coordinated Mining Projects Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).

Through a series of roundtables and workshops, a group of over 50 individuals, organisations, industry members and government agencies worked together to map the policy and what happens in practice. The final process pathway has collective recommendations at each step.


Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment | process

We worked with the Australian Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment (DAWE) to interpret, visualise, and simply explain parts 7-9 of the EPBC Act Act (the referrals, assessment and approvals processes).

As well as mapping the processes, we provided recommendations on what information is needed for people to understand their obligations and what they need to prepare at each stage of the process.

The pathways were used to assist engagement efforts, process reform, and to help DAWE teams prioritise the content needed for their website and other services.

THE OPEN GOVERNMENT PARTNERSHIP | PROCESS

Open Government Partnership’s (OGP) Independent Reporting Mechanism team refreshed their process to be simpler and more collaborative.

We created the explainers to help people in the 70+ OGP member countries follow their new assessment process. The pathway shows who is involved at each step and links to guides.

THE OPEN GOVERNMENT PARTNERSHIP | PROCESS

To help raise awareness for Australia joining the Open Government Partnership (OGP), we made a process pathway to tell the story. The pathway shows how and when the Australian Government, citizens, civil society, the private sector, and small businesses worked together to develop Australia's 1st National Action Plan

This version of the OGP Pathway was developed to coincide with the Open Government Summit in Paris in 2016. 

The poster was used widely at events and meetings by civil society, the Prime Minister and Cabinet OGP team , and the Independent Reporting Mechanism. The interactive version had useful links to the content generated during the development of the National Actions Plans and how people were involved. Since publishing the pathway the Australian Government updated its website and submission information has been lost.