Guest authored by Dr Audrey Lobo-Pulo - Founder Phoensight (insight in data)

As social media continues to dominate our digital lives, there is a growing awareness of its influence on public opinion and our democracies. The prevalence of its use within our communities goes beyond just social connection and shapes the public discourse on national and community needs. Meanwhile, governments are also increasing their use of digital platforms to improve their outreach, and connect with citizens on many civic issues.

It has been over a decade since Gov 2.0 was first envisioned as a way to “harness collaborative technologies and interactive internet tools” to create a platform where governments, citizens and organisations can improve transparency and efficiency.

Yet, despite the unprecedented scalability and connectivity we have today, trust in government has globally declined. Citizens are expecting a lot more from their governments —  and the need for genuine civic engagement, in the midst of misinformation and increased political polarization, presents its own challenges.

Far from being seen as a way to better inform citizens, how governments conduct public consultations is critical to achieving their desired outcomes.Governments are rethinking their consultation processes so that engagement is more meaningful and public trust may be strengthened. Many government agencies around the world have adopted social media platforms in an effort to keep their citizens up to date with the latest developments — but there are many reasons why these platforms may not be appropriate for true dialogue between governments and their citizens.

While there has been much focus on the role of social media in recent government elections, what isn’t as apparent is how these platforms shape the dialogue between government and citizens — which plays an important role in their relationship, particularly around trust. Research done by the Canadian International Council has found that digital platforms influence the quality of democracies, and that their design and the interactions that they enable can generate different social dynamics.

On examining various social media platforms, they concluded that the main social outcome on Facebook is ‘homophily’ -  a tendency to associate with people who agree with your views and disassociate from those who don’t. They also found that while Twitter had the social benefit of radical openness, and allowed for more independent and far reaching broadcasting, it was also devoid of social rules and conventions which are needed for effective collaboration.

That these digital platforms may not be ideal for civic engagement should come as no surprise as they were not designed for this purpose, but were intended for social communication and are now designed to optimise interactions with advertisement. Moreover, there have been public concerns as to how the information collected on these platforms is used - and whether they are capable of acting as manipulative social instruments.

Without even going into the data privacy and ethics issues, studies have shown that the culture of Silicon Valley’s technology industry may create some tensions in technology design preferences as they apply to civic technologies. While social media may not be the best way to engage with communities on social and policy issues, what does the rest of the civic technology ecosystem look like?

The Knight Foundation has estimated the annual growth rate in the launch of new civic tech organisations to be around 20 percent, and their services range from data collection to civic projects that are initiated by individuals and communities. And this ecosystem is still growing rapidly  -  2019 trends in the civic-tech market indicate that half the civic-tech providers today were created in the last three years!

While most of these have contributed to the digitisation of governments, a third are focussed on citizen autonomy and democracy tools, with another one third being more data-driven  -  collecting data, analysis and visualisations so that citizens can better understand any civic-related information pertaining to them.

The expectations that citizens have around their digital interactions today are based on their experiences with other commercial digital products - and government services are also held to these standards. While governments continue building their capacity to deliver and integrate new services, they are also adapting to how civic engagement is translated in the digital space. The mix of digital services in catering to the specific needs of a community seem to allow for better collaborative processes.

What’s interesting about this, is the deliberate design of these platforms (i.e. the architecture and user interface design) in achieving the outcomes intended. While it is well known that citizen empowerment and a general sense of efficacy in decision making contributes towards the relationship between government and their citizens, how this translates to a digital platform is unclear - and depends on multiple contexts related to transparency and trust.

Another, lesser known, attribute contributing to meaningful engagement and collaboration is ‘deliberation’ - which is the space to allow new insights and ideas to emerge. Deliberation allows participants to build on their knowledge of the issues through the provision of resources and ‘open spaces’ for reflection. A key feature in any good government consultation process, deliberation may also involve ‘uncovering and weighing’ a range of options that improve the decision making process.

How well a digital platform is able to provide opportunities for participants to deliberate on important issues remains to be explored (and depends on many contexts such as cultural, societal and economic amongst others) , but the presentation of key information and a space to explore new ideas and alternatives may provide new solutions and insights for effective collaboration in a more organic way.

By carefully attending to the design of civic engagement platforms, public participation may also be facilitated across a larger demographic range to include rural, minorities or indigenous groups with varying affordability and access to technologies. These are important considerations as any feedback from minorities contributes towards a deeper understanding and appreciation of the complexity of the issues themselves.

In the Australian City of Port Phillip, civic engagement efforts in improving the relationships between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and other Australians are seeking public views to understand attitudes towards reconciliation. Using a mix of approaches that seek citizen views through surveys and by providing benchmark results from previous surveys, they strive to progress the public dialogue on strengthening community interrelationships.

Another example is the City of Calgary in Canada’s “Engage Portal” where digital engagement with local communities are helping to identify mobility issues and missing links in the Heritage Communities for people walking and wheeling. By seeking local information on community needs, providing feedback on the process itself and public communication through interactive street maps and visualisations, the platform allows civic dialogue to be enriched by providing a wonderful balance in both citizen empowerment and deliberation.

That civic engagement technologies require more thoughtful and careful design may not seem obvious at the outset, but today’s social media platforms have shown that they are not to be relied on for building relationships in communities or strengthening trust in government. This means that governments have to be more deliberate in the digital tools they employ for civic engagement.

More is expected from governments today than ever before - but more is also possible with the digital technologies available today. By carefully considering the attributes and requirements of their digital platforms, governments may be able to work with communities more collaboratively towards creating better societal outcomes and building public trust.