About Forums on TheParliament.com

What is The Forum?

The Forum is the area of TheParliament.com where, for an annual membership fee, we build, update and host specialist public affairs websites for hundreds of organisations.

These organisations include: campaigning groups, blue chip companies, NGO's, trade and professional associations, trade unions, government agencies, and diplomatic missions.

Communicating

Following the experience gathered from our sister service in the UK, ePolitix.com, and market research carried out on what policymakers like and dislike about the way organisations communicate with them, we found that the political community often dislikes being sent information directly.

They receive too much information to deal with, much of it irrelevant to them or at a time when it isn't needed.

The Forum solves this problem as it enables organisations to house the information they want to communicate to the political community but provides the facility for policymakers to use it as and when they need it.

Everyone involved in the policymaking process recognises the need to gather information on a specific policy in a comprehensive and efficient manner, especially when time is at a premium.

By being able to read a news article, EU Law item or interview on a specific policy issue and then study the views of the Forum Members that have a real interest in this area, the reader will have instant access to a number of authoritative, conflicting/complementary views on specific policy issues.

Policymakers place a great value on the speed and effectiveness of this service as it allows them to go straight to the heart of individual and specific issues and if they so wish directly contact the right person to further explore the topic at hand.

Read about an organisation's public affairs views

Organisations use the Forum to house their public affairs information.

This usually involves: a description of what the organisation does, its views on relevant policies and legislation, pertinent press releases and policy briefings.

Organisations can update this information whenever they wish by simply emailing the changes to Forum communications services so their websites can be used as a highly topical and adaptable communications tool.

How to search for relevant Forum sites

We provide an effective search mechanism so that policymakers can search by organisation, policy sector or subject area to find out the views of the Forum.

If a policymaker wants to find out some authoritative views on the environment for example, they can simply type 'environment' into our subject search and will instantly get a list of all the Forum members who have an interest in that subject.

Policymakers tell us that by using this search facility to find out an organisation's view on a particular policy they save a great deal of time.

For further information contact info@theparliament.com

How the Forum works - a demonstration

1. Click on a news article on the home page.

2. Click on the Forum links in the right-hand column.

3. This is a Forum member's home page.

4. This is a Forum member's contacts page.