Civic technology

A worldwide organization for civic tech is the Open Government Partnership (OGP). It "is a multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance."[24] Created in 2011 by eight founding governments (Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, the Philippines, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States), the OGP gathers every year for a summit. Countries involved are located mainly in America (North and South), Europe and South-Asia (Indonesia, Australia, South Korea). Only a few African countries are part of the OGP, though South Africa is one of the founding countries.

Technological progress is rampant throughout the nations of the world, but there are dividing efforts and adoption techniques in how rapid certain countries are progressing compared to others.[25] How countries are able to use information pertains to how devoted nations are to integrating technology into the lives of their citizens and businesses. Local and national governments are funding tens of billions of dollars towards information technology, for the sake of improving the functions and operations of this technology to work for the people and the governments.[26] With more governments attaining a grasp on these technologies, it is paving the way towards more progressive and democratic political systems, for the concerns of future society and for those of the citizens of these nations.

The government of Burkina Faso has a government website portal offering citizens online information about the government structure, their constitution, and laws.[5]

Launched in Kenya in 2014,[27] "MajiVoice" is a joint initiative by the Water Services Regulatory Board (WASREB- the Water Sector Regulator in Kenya)[28] and the World Bank's Water and Sanitation Program.[29] As opposed to walk-in complaint centers, the initiative enables Kenyan citizens to report complaints with regards to water services via multiple channels of technology. The platform allows for communication between citizens and water service providers with the intention to improve service delivery in impoverished areas and user satisfaction. Users are given four options to report their water complaints. They can dial a number and report a complaint, send a text message (SMS) through their cell phone, or login to an online portal through a web browser on their phone or their laptop.[30] One evaluation highlights the citizen engagement achieved after its implementation, from 400 complaints a month to 4000 complaints, and resolution rates from 46 percent to 94 percent[27]

The South African government has a website portal for citizens called www.gov.za - this was created by Center for Public Service Innovation (CPSI) in partnership with the Department of Public Service and Administration and the State Information Technology Agency.[5][31] The government portal allows the citizens to interact with their government and provide feedback, request forms online, as well as access online to laws and contact information for lawmakers.[5] GovChat is the official citizen engagement platform for the South African Government - accessible via WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, SMS and USSD, it offers information to citizens about a wide-array of services provided by the Government.[32]

Citizen-led initiatives

Grassroot is a technology platform that supports community organizers to mobilize citizens, built for low-bandwidth, low-data settings that allows for smart-messaging through text message.[33] Research by the MIT Governance Lab suggests that Grassroot can have important effects on the leadership capacity of community leaders, an effect that is most likely to be achieved through careful design, behavioral incentives, active coaching and iteration.[34]

The Ugandan government has a website portal created for citizens called Parliament Portal, which gives citizens online access to laws, their constitution, and election related news.[5]

U- Report, a mobile platform introduced by UNICEF Uganda in 2011,[35] is an initiative that runs large scale polls with Ugandan youth on a wide range of issues, ranging from safety to access to education to inflation to early marriage. The goal of the initiative was to have Ugandan youth play a role in civic engagement within the context of local issues.[27] U-Report is still active (as of April 2018), with over 240,000 users across Uganda. Support for the initiative primarily came from the aid of the government, NGO's, youth organizations, faith based organizations, and private companies.[36] Users sign up for the program for free by sending a text on their phone, then every week "U-Reporters" answer a question regarding a public issue. Poll results are published in public media outlets such as newspapers, radio, etc. UNICEF takes these responses and provides members of parliament (MP's) a weekly review of these results, acting as a bridge between government and Ugandan youth.[27]

Taiwan has the world's most vibrant civic technology sector.[37]

The vTaiwan (v for virtual) was created initially by members of the open source community and later as a collaboration with the Taiwan's government.[38] They use a conversation tool called pol.is that leverages machine learning to scale online discussion.[39] Government minister Audrey Tang has been instrumental in popularizing civic technology in Taiwan and it formed a key component of Taiwan's successful response to the COVID-19 epidemic.[37]

In Australia, a platform and proposed political party called MiVote[40] has a mobile app for citizens to learn about policy and cast their vote for the policies they support.[41] MiVote politicians elected to office would then vote in support of the majority position of the people using the app.[42]

In 2002, MindLab an innovation public sector service design group was established by the Danish ministries of Business and Growth, Employment, and Children and Education.[43] MindLab was the one of the world's first public sector design innovation labs and their work inspired the proliferation of similar labs and user-centered design methodologies deployed in many countries worldwide.[44] The design methods used at MindLab are typically an iterative approach of rapid prototyping and testing to evolve not just their government projects, but also government organizational structure using ethnographic-inspired user research, creative ideation processes, and visualization and modeling of service prototypes.[43][44][45] In Denmark, design within the public sector has been applied to a variety of projects including rethinking Copenhagen's waste management, improving social interactions between convicts and guards in Danish prisons, transforming services in Odense for mentally disabled adults and more.[43]

As of 2020, Estonia has one of the most advanced digitalizations of their public sector authority and government.[46] The processes of digitalization began in 2002, when they started addressing the local and central government and building an infrastructure that allowed autonomous and interconnected data.[46] That same year in 2002, Estonia launched a national ID system that was fully digitalized and paired with digital signatures.[47] The national ID system allowed Estonians to pay taxes online, vote online, do online banking, access their health care records,[47] as well as process 99% of Estonian public services online 24 hours a day, seven days.[46]

In 2007, the country faced a large cyber attack, and as a result became the home of NATO Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence.[47]

In 2013, the online platform People's Assembly (Rahvakogu) was launched for crowdsourcing ideas and proposals to amend Estonia's electoral laws, political party law, and other issues related to democracy.[48][49]

In 2014, Estonia launched the e-Residency, which allowed users to start businesses in the country without living there.[47] That was followed by an immigration visa for digital nomads, which was a new way of approaching immigration policy.[47][50]

The most dynamic French city regarding civic tech is Paris, with many initiatives moving in the Sentier, a neighborhood known for being a tech hub.[51] According to Le Monde, French civic tech is "already a reality" but lacks investments to scale up.[52]

In France, public data are available on data.gouv.fr[53] by the Etalab[54] mission, located under the authority of the Prime Minister.

Government agencies are also leading large citizen consultation through the Conseil national du numérique[55] (National digital council), for example with the law about the digital republic (Projet de loi pour une république numérique).

The French citizen community for civic tech is gathered in the collective Démocratie ouverte[56] (Open democracy). The main purpose of this collective is to enhance democracy to increase citizen power, improve the way to decide collectively and update the political system. Démocratie ouverte gathers many projects focused on understanding politics, renewing institutions, participating in democracy, and public action. Several open-source, non-profit web platforms have been launched nationwide to support citizen's direct involvement: Communecter.org,[57] Demodyne.org[58] as well as Democracy OS France (derived from the Argentinian initiative).

LaPrimaire.org organizes open primaries to allow the French to choose the candidates they wish to run for public elections[59][60]

The Icelandic constitutional reform, 2010–13 instituted a process for reviewing and redrafting their constitution after the 2008 financial crisis, using social media to gather feedback on twelve successive drafts.[61]

Beginning in October 2011, a Citizens Foundation platform called Betri Reykjavik[62] had been implemented for citizens to inform each other and vote on issues.[63] Each month the city council formally evaluates the top proposals before issuing an official response to each participant.[64] As of 2017, the number of proposals approved by the city council reached 769.[65]

The Pirate Party (Iceland) uses the crowdsourcing platform Píratar[66] for members to create party policies.

A consortium made by TOP-IX,[67] FBK[68] and RENA[69] created the Italian civic tech school.[70] The first edition[71] was in May 2016 in Turin.

The Five Star Movement, an Italian political party has a tool called Rousseau[72] which gives members a way to communicate with their representatives.

The Madrid City Council has a department of Citizen Participation[73] that facilitates a platform called Decide Madrid for registered users to discuss topics with others in the city, propose actions for the City Council, and submit ideas for how to spend a portion of the budget on projects voted on through participatory budgeting.[74]

Podemos (Spanish political party) uses a reddit called Plaza Podemos[75] where anybody can propose and vote on ideas.

The City of Stockholm has a make-a-suggestion page on stockholm.se and available as an app, allowing citizens to report any ideas for improvement in the city along with a photo and GPS. After receiving a suggestion, it is sent to the appropriate office that can place a work order. During 2016, one hundred thousand requests were recorded. This e-service began in September 2013.[76]

The city government of Gothenburg has an online participatory voting system,[77] open for every citizen to propose changes and solutions. When a proposal receives more than 200 votes, it is delivered to the relevant political committee.[78]

In 2007 and 2008 documents from the British government explore the concept of "user-driven public services" and scenarios of highly personalized public services.[79][80] The documents proposed a new view on the role of service providers and users in the development of new and highly customized public services, utilizing user involvement.[79][80] This view has been explored through an initiative in the UK. Under the influence of the European Union, the possibilities of service design for the public sector are being researched, picked up, and promoted in countries such as Belgium.[81]

Care Opinion was set up to strengthen the voice of patients in the NHS in 2005. Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) (also known as Nudge) was originally part of the British cabinet and was founded in 2010, in order to apply nudge theory to try to improve British government policy, services and save money. As of 2014, BIT became a decentralized, semi-privatized company with Nesta (charity), BIT employees and the British government each owning a third of this new business.[82] That same year a Nudge unit was added to the United States government under president Obama, referred to as the 'US Nudge Unit,' working within the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.[83]

FixMyStreet.com is a website and app developed by mySociety, a UK based civic technology company that works to make online democracy tools for British citizens. FixMyStreet allows citizens in the United Kingdom to report public infrastructure issues (such as potholes, broken streetlights, etc.) to the proper local authority.[84] FixMyStreet became inspiration to many countries around the world that followed suit to use civic technology to better public infrastructure.[27] The website was funded by the Department for Constitutional Affairs Innovation fund and created by mySociety.[85] Along with the platform itself, mySociety released FixMyStreet, a free and open-source software framework that allows users to create their own website to report street problems.[86] mySociety has many different tools, like parliamentary monitoring ones, that work in many countries for different types of governance. When such tools are integrated into government systems, citizens can not only understand the inner workings of their now transparent government, but also have the means to "exert influence over the people in power".[87] Newspeak House is a community space and venue focused on building a community of civic and political technology practitioners in the United Kingdom.[88]

Spacehive is a crowdfunding platform for civic improvement projects that allows citizens and local groups to propose project ideas such as improving a local park or starting a street market.[89] Projects are then funding by a mix of citizens, companies and government bodies. The platform is used by several councils including the Mayor of London to co-fund projects.[90]

Democracy Club is a community interest company, founded in 2009 to provide British voters with easy access to candidate lists in upcoming elections.[91][92] Democracy Club uses a network of volunteers to crowdsource information about candidates which is then presented to voters via a postcode search on the website whocanivotefor.co.uk.[93][94] Democracy Club also works with the Electoral Commission to provide data for a national polling station finder at wheredoivote.co.uk and on the commission's own Your Vote Matters website.[95]

In Ukraine, major civic tech movement started out with open data reform in 2014. As for now, public data are available on data.gov.ua, national open data portal.[96][97]

Some widely used Ukrainian civic tech projects are donor recruitment platform DonorUA, Ukrainian companies' data and court register monitoring service Open Data Bot, participatory budgeting platform "Громадський проект". The latter accounts for over 3 million users.[98][99][100]

In 2017, to foster the growth of civic tech initiatives, Ukrainian NGO SocialBoost launched 1991 Civic Tech Center, a dedicated community space in country's capital, Kyiv. The space opened following a $480,000 grant from Omidyar Network, the philanthropic investment firm established by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.[101]

Canadian Digital Service (CDS) was launched in 2017, as part of an attempt to bring better IT to the Canadian government.[102][103] The CDS was established within the Treasury Board of Canada the Canadian agency that oversees spending within departments and the operations of the public service.[103] Scott Brison, the president of the Canadian Treasury Board, launched CDS and was Canada's first minister of digital government.[103]

As in other countries, the Canadian civic technology movement is home to several organizations. Code for Canada is a non-profit group, following somewhat the model of Code for America.[104] Several cities or regions host civic technology groups with regular meetings (in order from West to East): Vancouver,[105] Calgary,[106] Edmonton,[107] Waterloo Region,[108] Toronto,[109] Ottawa,[110] Fredericton,[111] Saint John,[112] and Halifax.[113]

The Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations sought initiatives to further openness of the government, through either increased use of technology in political institutions or efficient ways to further civic engagement.[114] The Obama administration pursued an Open Government Initiative based on principles of transparency and civic engagement.[115] This strategy has paved the way for increased governmental transparency within other nations to improve democratically for the citizens' benefit and allow for greater participation within politics from a citizen's perspective. During his run for president, Obama was "tied directly to the extensive use of social media by the campaign." [116]

According to a study conducted by the International Data Corporation (IDC), an estimated $6.4 billion will be spent on civic technology in 2015 out of approximately $25.5 billion that governments in the United States will spend on external-facing technology projects.[10][117] A Knight Foundation survey of the civic technology field found that the number of civic technology companies grew by roughly 23% annually between 2008 and 2013.[118]

Civic technology is built by a variety of companies, organizations and volunteer groups. One prominent example is Code for America, a not-for-profit based in San Francisco, working toward addressing the gap between the government and citizens.[119] College students from Harvard University created the national non-profit Coding it Forward that creates data science and technology internships for undergraduate and graduate students in United States federal agencies.[120] Another example of a civic technology organization is the Chi Hack Night,[121] based in Chicago. The Chi Hack Night is a weekly, volunteer-run event for building, sharing and learning about civic technology. Civic Hall[122] is a coworking and event space in New York City for people who want to contribute to civic-minded projects using technology.[123] And OpenGov creates software designed to enable public agencies to make data-driven decisions, improve budgeting and planning, and inform elected officials and citizens.

OneBusAway, a mobile app that displays real-time transit info, exemplifies the open data use of civic technology. It is maintained by volunteers and has the civic utility of helping people navigate their way through cities. It follows the idea that technology can be a tool for which government can act as a society-equalizer.[124]

Princeton University Professor Andrew Appel set out to prove how easy it was to hack into a voting machine.[125] On February 3, 2007, he and a graduate student, Alex Halderman, purchased a voting machine, and Halderman picked the lock in 7 seconds.[126] They removed the 4 ROM chips and replaced them with modified versions of their own: a version of modified firmware that could throw off the machine's results, subtly altering the tally of votes, never to betray a hint to the voter. It took less than 7 minutes to complete the process.

In September 2016, Appel wrote a testimony for the Congress House Subcommittee on Information Technology hearing on "Cybersecurity: Ensuring the Integrity of the Ballot Box", suggesting to for Congress to eliminate touchscreen voting machines after the election of 2016, and that it require all elections be subject to sensible auditing after every election to ensure that the systems are functioning properly and to prove to the American people that their votes are counted as cast.[127][128]

Within the Mexican president's office, there is a national digital strategy coordinator who works on Mexico's national digital strategy.[129] The office has created the gob.mx portal, a website designed for Mexican citizen to engage with their government, as well as a system to share open government data.[129] According to McKinsey & Company, in a 2018 survey Mexico had the worst-rated citizen experience (4.4 out of 10) for convenience and accessibility of Mexican government services, of the group of countries surveyed (Canada, France, Germany, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States).[129]

Arena Electoral was an online platform created by Fundación Ethos during the Mexican electoral process of 2012 to promote responsible voting.[130] An online simulation was created by taking the four presidential candidates in that election cycle and each were given policy issues based on the Mexican national agenda that they had to come up with a solution to. Once each candidate gave their solutions, the platform published it on their website and left it to the Mexican citizens to vote for the best policy.[131]

Partido de la Red (Net Party) is an Argentinean political party using the DemocracyOS open-source software with the goal of electing representatives who vote according to what citizens decides online.[132]

Because of the conveniences provided by civic technology, there are benefits as well as growing concern about the effects it may have on social behavior and civic engagement.[133] New technology allows for connectivity and new communications, as well as changing how we interact with issues and contexts beyond one's intimate sphere.[133] Civic technology affords transparency in government with open-government data, and allows more people of diverse socioeconomic levels to be able to build and engage with civic matters in a way that was not possible prior.[134]

The importance of face-to-face interactions has also been called to question with the increase in e-mails and social media and a decrease in traditional, in-person social interaction. Technology as a whole may be responsible for this change in social norm, but it also holds potential for turning it around with audio and video communication capabilities. More research needs to be conducted in order to determine if these are appropriate substitutes for in-person interaction, or if any substitute is even feasible.[8]

Preece & Shneiderman discuss the important social aspect of civic technology with a discussion of the "reader-to-leader framework", which follows that users inform readers, who inform communicators, who then inform collaborators, before finally reaching leaders.[135] This chain of communication allows for the interests of the masses to be communicated to the implementers.

Regarding elections and online polling, there is the potential for voters to make less informed decisions because of the ease of voting. Although many more voters will turn out, they may only be doing so because it is easy and may not be consciously making a decision based on their own synthesized opinion. It's suggested that if online voting becomes more common, so should constituent-led discussions regarding the issues or candidates being polled.[8]

With advanced technologies coming at higher costs and with an increased reliance on civic technologies may leave low-income families in the dark if they cannot afford the platforms for civic technology, such as computers and tablets. This causes an increase in the gap between lower and middle/high socioeconomic class families.[8]

Knowledge of how to use computers is equally important when considering factors of accessing civic technology applications online, and is also generally lower in low-income households. According to a recent study performed by the National Center for Education Statistics, 14% of students between the age range of 3 and 18 do not have access to the internet. Those with a lower socio-economic status tend to cut their budgets by not installing internet in their homes.[136] Public Schools have taken the lead in ensuring proper technology access and education in the classroom to better prepare children for the high-tech world, but there is still a clear difference between online contributions from those with and without experience on the internet.[8]