Citizen Participation and Technology: An NDI Study

"While technology has the potential to amplify citizens' voices, it must be accompanied by clear political goals to increase its clout."

Drawing upon case studies from 9 programmes around the world and a citizen participation theory of change, this study from the United States (US)-based National Democratic Institute (NDI) explores this question: Does the use of technology in citizen participation programmes amplify citizen voices and increase government responsiveness and accountability?

Research conducted for this project used a qualitative, mixed-method approach. This included: a review of literature related to technology and citizen participation; a desk-based review of approximately 56 citizen participation programmes conducted from 2009-2012 where NDI employed technology tools; and roundtable discussions with external experts on technology and democracy development and with the NDI staff involved in technology and participation programmes.

As outlined here, NDI's theory of change posits that, while each one of the 3 democratic dimensions (citizen voice, political space, and government accountability) is essential to democratisation, there is an underlying interrelationship that is necessary to ensure democratic governance. Relationships between citizens, civil society organisations (CSOs), political parties, and public officials are "initiated or enhanced" and "political space is created, occupied, or made more meaningful." Case studies were conducted to explore programmes in Burma, Mexico, Uganda, Egypt, Ghana, and Peru, as well as a global project, OpeningParliament.org (a web portal serving as a networking hub for parliamentary monitoring organisations (PMOs) on issues of parliamentary openness and democratic reform).

In brief, the research shows that, while more people are using technology (such as social media for mobile organising, interactive websites, and text messaging systems that enable direct communication between constituents and elected officials or crowdsourcing election day experiences), the type and quality of their political participation - and, therefore, its impact on democratisation - varies. It also suggests that, in order to leverage technology's potential, there is a need to focus on non-technological areas such as political organising, leadership skills, and political analysis. For example, the "2% and More Women in Politics" coalition led by Mexico's National Institute for Women (INMUJERES) used a social media campaign and an online petition to call for reforms that would allocate 2% of political party funding for women's leadership training. NDI describes this effort as successful and notes that technology helped the activists reach a wider audience, but indicates that "women from the different political parties who made up the coalition might not have come together without NDI's role as a neutral convener."

An excerpt sharing conclusions from the report follows:

1. "Technology that was used to purposefully amplify the political organization of citizens' groups had more political traction and impact. For example, interactive websites in both the Burma Election Tracker and the Citizen Security and Justice Program in Mexico served as umbrellas that unified disparate groups in coalition under a common campaign theme. This resulted in greater coordination and cooperation amongst the groups, greater impact on their issues, and demonstrated the transformative possibilities of the strategic application of technologies.
2. Technology can be used to readily create spaces and opportunities for citizens to express their voices, but making these voices politically stronger and the spaces more meaningful is a harder challenge that is political and not technological in nature....For a technology intervention to have the desired impact, it may require the development of clear political goals, opportunities for leadership development, substantive work with intermediary groups, and for relationships with public officials to be fostered and established - all of which take time and resources.
3. Programs need to define a plausible connection between the use of technology and the factors that contribute to democratic development....In order for a technology intervention to have the desired impact, it will require clear political goals, opportunities for leadership development, substantive work with intermediary groups, and the opportunity to establish relationships with public officials....
4. Technology enables citizen self-organizing and the rapid creation of loosely formed groups that can quickly react to political openings, build support, and bring focus and energy to issues....More research is necessary to determine whether the technology-enabled loosely formed groups, while effective in short-term campaigns with clear political or policy goals, can sustain a strong enough voice or exert similar significant leverage or political influence over time without more formal and strategic organization.
5. There is a blurring of the meaning between the technologies of open data and the politics of open government that clouds program strategies and implementation....For example, individuals with a technology focus more often cited social media, legislative websites, or application programming interfaces (APIs) as positive examples of technology's impact on government. In this case, access to government data defined government openness and implied corresponding citizen action and government responsiveness as a result. Meanwhile, issue advocacy groups and civil society leaders complained that, despite access to more information and new communication channels, they were no better able to engage in meaningful policy discussions or influence decisions. For these individuals, open data indicated more transparent government, but did not offer more opportunities for participatory, inclusive, or accountable decision making...
6. While technology has opened up new avenues for citizens to engage with public officials and institutions, substantive input into political processes remains elusive....While being heard or accessing political information is important, it is a far cry from the type of engagement in which citizens are involved in decision making. The challenge is rarely, if ever, as simple as citizens making more demands or government listening more attentively. Rather, citizens must organize in ways that get them a seat at the decision-making table. Technology may or may not be key to this in a given context.
7. Some of democracy's intrinsic aspects, for example, the freedoms of speech and association, appear to be more readily advanced by technology than the development of the norms, values, and practices that are necessary for democracy to take root....The research found that donors, practitioners, and local groups alike constructed programs around an exuberance for technology and the idea that increasing citizens' access to information and providing avenues of communication would transform political practices and outcomes. The approach presumes that providing information about how to express their voice with new technology tools will be sufficient for citizens to do so, and that this will lead to transformational interactions with government. Research highlighted the uncertainty of these assumptions. For example, extensive radio marketing campaigns designed to increase general public awareness of the Uganda programs proved to have limited impact on the use of the technology-enabled channels for engagement that were being advertised.
8. Digital technologies in the hands of citizens have become ubiquitous, especially in the form of mobile devices, and have increased the possibility of political process monitoring. This includes systematic monitoring of election processes, political violence monitoring, monitoring instances of corruption and delivery of government services, and other examples involving citizen reporting. Mobile technology, especially, allows citizens to document and report directly issues they see in their communities. New methodologies such as uploading reports to public websites using crowdsourcing tools need to evolve to become effective for many situations. These tools can be used very effectively as part of a program using methodologies for reporting, response, analysis, and interpreting and communicating results, but they are not by themselves likely to produce significant outcomes. For increased transparency to have an impact, citizens must be able to process, analyze, or use the newly available information. Their capabilities can be strengthened by active media, prior social-mobilization experience, coalitions, and intermediaries who can 'translate' and communicate information. Programs that identify and incorporate these intermediaries into design and implementation increase their chances for impact.
9. Political will and the technical capacity to provide accurate data on government performance or engage citizens in policy making are lacking in many emerging democracies....[I]ncreased access to information and communication channels increases citizens' expectations that their input will be considered and that public officials will respond. Failure to manage or meet these expectations can have a deleterious effect on citizen trust in government institutions and ultimately on democratic development.
10. There is a scarcity of data on specific demographic groups' use of, or barriers to technology for political participation. Programs seeking to close the digital divide as an instrument of narrowing the political divide should be informed by more research into barriers to access to both politics and technology. This should be carried into monitoring and evaluation, where additional work is needed to identify better data points for effective evaluations on political participation that is enabled specifically by technology, especially for constituencies such as women, people with disabilities, young people, ethnic minorities, and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community....
11. Research suggests that technology-enabled citizen participation and government accountability programs are often treating the public strictly as consumers of government services or information, rather than citizens with agency and the competency to act collectively, yet expecting outcomes associated with organized collective activity....In programs that use technology at the expense of political analysis and strategy, the underlying power dynamics, patronage patterns, and processes that hamper democratization remain in place. For example, programs that use technologies to promote a 'citizen as consumer' dynamic that casts government as a vendor of services to be delivered to individual citizens may make it harder to get to the critical democratic development stage of building productive relationships between citizens, public officials, and institutions. Researchers observed programs substituting communication, advertising, and marketing for political engagement, neglecting opportunities to build normative, democratic citizenship competencies...
12. Likewise, attempts to simply crowdsource public inputs will not result in users self-organizing into politically influential groups, since citizens lack the opportunities to develop leadership, unity, and commitment around a shared vision necessary for meaningful collective action. Citizens must engage in a variety of activities beyond communication and information sharing in order to build a counterweight to entrenched power inequities. These may include joining civic associations, civic education, deliberation and dialogue, negotiating, lobbying, mobilizing and civil disobedience. For example, in the Mexico Citizen Security and Justice program, coalitions of CSOs used a crowdsourcing approach to engage large numbers of citizens who they then engaged in a range of activities, incrementally bringing them into a broader political campaign that expanded citizens' skills and knowledge, provided meaningful interactions with public officials, and strengthened the coalition's political base. Conversely, the Uganda USpeak and Peru 131 Voices programs also used a crowdsourcing approach for citizen inputs but did not offer additional opportunities for engagement. As a result, each is struggling with the next steps that would allow citizen voices to resonate.
13. Political realities and programmatic expertise matter, yet, increasingly, so does applying technology strategically. The requirements for democracy practitioners are changing rapidly and will require new skills - those of smart political organizers and analysts, but also keen knowledge about relevant technologies that can be used to increase and deepen citizen engagement and democratization."