Civic technology, or civic tech, is the idea of using technology to enhance the relationship between people and government through software for communication, decision-making, service delivery, and political processes. It includes information and communications technology supporting government with software built by community-led teams of volunteers, nonprofits, consultants, and private companies as well as embedded tech teams working within government.*
Definition
Civic technology broadly encompasses digital tools and platforms designed to strengthen interaction between citizens and government institutions. There are four different types of e-government services, and civic technology falls within the category of government-to-citizen (G2C). The other categories include government-to-business (G2B), government-to-government (G2G), and government-to-employees (G2E). A 2013 report from the Knight Foundation, an American non-profit, attempts to map different focuses within the civic technology space. It broadly categorizes civic technology projects into two categories: open government and community action. +Open government includes:Community action includes:Data access and transparencyPeer-to-peer local sharingVotingCivic crowdfundingVisualization and mappingNeighborhood forumsData utilityInformation crowdsourcingResident feedbackCommunity organizingPublic decision-makingParticipatory budgeting
Citizens are also now given access to their representatives through social media. They are able to express their concerns directly to government officials through sites like Twitter and Facebook. There have even been past cases of online voting being a polling option for local elections, which have seen vastly increased turnouts, such as in an Arizona election in 2000 which saw a turnout double that of the previous election. However, some scholars argue that while civic technology can improve government management, it may not always ensure fair democratic representation. Social media is also becoming a growing aspect of government, towards furthering the communication between the government and its citizenry and towards greater transparency within the governmental sectors. This innovation is facilitating a change towards a more progressive and open government, based on civic engagement and technology for the people. With social media as a communicating platform, it enables the government to provide information to the constituents and citizens on the legislative processes and what is occurring in the Congress, for the sake of the citizens' concerns with the government procedures.
The definition of what constitutes civic technology is contested to a certain extent, especially with regards to companies engaged in the sharing economy, such as Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb. For example, Airbnb's ability to provide New York residents with housing during the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy could be considered a form of civic technology. However, Nathaniel Heller, managing director of the Research for Development Institute's Governance Program contends that for-profit platforms definitively fall outside of the scope of civic technology: Heller has said that "while citizen-to-citizen sharing is indeed involved, the mission of these companies is focused on maximizing profit for their investors, not any sort of experiment in building social capital." From a goal perspective, civic technology can be understood as "the use of technology for the public good".
Microsoft's Technology & Civic Engagement Team have attempted to produce a precise taxonomy of civic technology through a bottom-up approach. They inventoried the existing initiatives and classified them according to: their functions the social processes they involved their users and customers the degree of change they sought the depth of the technology. Microsoft's Civic Graph is guiding the developing network of civic innovators, expanding "its visualizations of funding, data usage, collaboration and even influence". It is a new tool that is opening up the access to track the world of civic technology towards improving the credibility and progress of this sector. This graph will enable more opportunities for access by governmental institutions and corporations to discover these innovators and use them for progressing society towards the future of technology and civic engagement. To create an informed and insightful community, there needs to be a sense of civic engagement in this community, where there is the sharing of information through civic technology platforms and applications. "Community engagement applied to public-interest technology requires that members of a community participate." With communal participation in civic tech platforms, this enables more informed residents to convene in a more engaged, unified community that seeks to share information, politically and socially, for the benefit of its citizenry and their concerns. This work resulted in the Civic Tech Field Guide, a free, crowdsourced collection of civic technology tools and projects. Individuals from over 100 countries have contributed to the documentation of technology, resources, funding and general information concerning "tech for social good".
Technology that is designed to benefit the citizenry places the governments under pressure "to change and innovate the way in which their bureaucracies relate to citizens". E-government initiatives have been established and supported in order to strengthen the democratic values of governmental institutions, which can include transparency in government, along with improving the efficiency of the legislative processes to make the government more accountable and reactive to citizens' concerns. These will further civic engagement within the political spectrum for the sake of greater direct representation and a more democratic political system.
Civic hacking refers to problem-solving by programmers, designers, data scientists, communicators, organizers, entrepreneurs, and government employees. A civic hacker may work autonomously and independently from the government but may still coordinate or collaborate with them. For example, in 2008, civic hacker William Entriken created an open-source web application that publicly displayed a comparison of the actual arrival times of Philadelphia's local SEPTA trains to their scheduled times. It also automatically sends messages to SEPTA to recommend updates to the train schedule. SEPTA's response indicated interest in coordinating with this civic hacker directly to improve the application. Some projects are led by nonprofits, such as Code for America and mySociety, often involving paid staff and contributions from volunteers.
As the field of civic technology advances, it seems that apps and handheld devices will become a key focus for development as more companies and municipalities reach out to developers to help with specific issues. Apps are being used in conjunction with handheld devices to simplify tasks such as communication, data tracking, and safety. The most cost-effective way for citizens to get help and information is through neighbors and others around them. By linking people through apps and websites that foster conversation and promote civil service, cities have found an inexpensive way to provide services to their residents.
Civic technology represents "just a piece of the $25.5 billion that government spends on external information technology (IT)," indicating that this sector will likely grow, fostering more innovation in both public and private sectors and furthering civic engagement within these platforms.
Worldwide A worldwide organization that supports 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". 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. 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. 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.
Africa
Burkina Faso
Government-led initiatives The government of Burkina Faso has a government website portal offering citizens online information about the government structure, their constitution, and laws.
Kenya
Citizen-led initiatives Launched in Kenya in 2014, "MajiVoice" is a joint initiative by the Water Services Regulatory Board (WASREB- the Water Sector Regulator in Kenya) and the World Bank's Water and Sanitation Program. 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. 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.
South Africa
Government-led initiatives 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. 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. 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.
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. 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.
Uganda
Government-led initiatives 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.
Citizen-led initiatives