I have attached a preliminary report of our collective intelligence wellbeing conference workshop, where we focused on the design of a new national wellbeing index for Ireland.  I have also attached a report of our collective intelligence work from last year, where the lack of a national wellbeing index was identified as a significant barrier to wellbeing in Ireland.  The first report also highlighted the importance of creating a space for dialogue to allow stakeholders to formulate a holistic perspective in relation to wellbeing, the absence of which was identified as a barrier to wellbeing.

We are currently using our collective intelligence methodology as the method of stakeholder consultation in a major EU project, the SeaforSociety Project.  We provided training in the methodology to 40 EU facilitators in a recent event in Dublin.  They are now in the process of consulting with stakeholders across Europe in an effort to learn more about barriers to sustainable marine ecosystems and options to overcome these barriers.  Our collective intelligence methodology is a systems methodology and it helps groups to understand interdependencies between problems in a problem field and options for overcoming problems in the field.  Ultimately, the methodology is designed to facilitate collective action and it works on a number of psychological and social levels to facilitate trust, shared consensus, and collaborative thinking and learning. 

By way of follow-up on our recent wellbeing conference, I plan to write a paper that reviews the major international trends in wellbeing measurement and policy and focus in particular on the value of using collective intelligence methodologies as part of the process of national consultation, wellbeing measurement design, and wellbeing policy planning.  I believe that if we brought the Health Promotion Departments, Healthy Cities Networks, and Health Inequalities groups together in Galway and offered training in the collective intelligence methodology to a group of key national facilitators, we would have a very strong foundation and capacity to engage in a national consultation in relation to wellbeing measurement, while also offering key players a new tool and process to further their objectives in relation to other collective intelligence projects focused on key strategic objectives designed to facilitate wellbeing in Ireland.  Aside from administration and coordination costs, the use of existing public sector expertise and capacity would mean that such an initiative would not necessary be very costly.  I’m happy to talk with those interested in relation to these ideas and I’m cc’ing Michael Corban in Minister Alex White’s office to keep him abreast  of our conversation.