Rural development with a future (2005)

Feasibility study of a digitized transition management model

The primary purpose of this feasibility study was to examine the feasibility of the digitization of the model to support the communication and analysis with respect to the development of a rural policy for the target group of ‘members of the Flemish parliament’. In general can be stated that the discourse model that has been developed presents several application possibilities and that lots of instruments might be developed. However, an important point of interest in connection with this is the fact that the feasibility of those various instruments is principally driven by the content-based objectives. The more important the accuracy, the higher the investment cost. Not surprisingly, the feasibility is indeed more determined by the extra explorative content research and not so much by the technical preconditions (software-bound).

A number of variants for this option have been examined. In each of the variants, the developed basic concept remains the core of the tool. Moreover, the emphasis lays on the analysis of the policy discourse (and not on the eventual changes in the ‘rural system’). The greatest variety in the different developed variants has to do with the way the input is set up. For each of the three variants can be made use, in one way or another, of the content analysis that has been carried out as part of this research project. To avoid that users experience a black-box feeling when being confronted with the first two variants, the suggestion has been made to involve them somehow in the process of selecting the parameters and/or determining the scores. As far as the output is concerned, in each of the examined variants, the possibilities are limited to the visualization of a discourse onto a discourse triangle. More visualization possibilities would result from establishing a link with the physical system.

In the introduction has been indicated that the tool must preferably enable an application in a participative setting. From the analysis in the above sections, we conclude that variants number 2 (group discussion tool) and 3 (interpretation model) best satisfy that participative objective. Variant 3 seems more directed towards experts and number 1 (digital document) is rather indirectly applicable in a participative environment.