Civic application

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Civic application is application software aiming at users' activation to participate in public good development through this application. In civil societies, civic applications are created to enhance public good, civic engagement, and generally social capital.

Civic applications can for example aim at:

  • development of engaged citizenship,
  • strengthening of local communities,
  • growth of democracy,
  • supporting entrepreneurship,
  • protection of nature and common living space, etc.

Civic applications are to some extent often social networking services, but what distinguishes them is the civic goal, the mission funding its existence.

Interaction between the user and the application is what differentiates civic applications from any IT service (website, portal) speaking about any citizen's topics, where interaction is not necessary and if exists often takes the form of commenting under articles.

Civic applications can be accessed from a server via an Internet browser (online) or using mobile devices, such as mobile phones or tablets (mobile), less often from the user's local drive (offline).

Origins

On January 20, 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama signed the "Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government,[1]" requesting that government agencies make their data–such as real-time crime feeds and air-quality metrics–open and available to the public.[2] This memorandum marked a pivotal legislative moment, as the government improved the distribution of public services through new technologies characterized by civic open data. The "Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government" also provided companies seeking to join the civic technology world with a framework to build their own civic applications.

However, the history of civic applications can be traced back years earlier, with the creation of various civic technology platforms such as Ushahidi[3] which supports election monitoring and crisis reporting, as well as TheyWorkForYou, which simplifies complex political information into layman's terms for voters.

Current Applications

One potential benefit of civic applications is that they can help disseminate democracy.[4] On social media applications, users have widespread access to political information, including the voting decisions of their elected representatives and information on legislative ballots.[5] Civic applications can help politicians bridge the communicative divide between the government and their constituents.[6]

However, civic applications also have shortcomings. For example, many civic applications struggle with financial sustainability.[7] Many civic applications have either non-profit or not-for-profit corporate strategies, which prevent them from adopting stable strategies of fundraising and a majority end up failing from lack of income stream or funding.[8]

Non-Governmental Organizations and public national institutions are noticing the value of the civic apps and invite people working in the Information Technology domain to participate in their development (e.g. in Greater Portland,[9] Chicago,[10][11] Boston, Boulder, Washington D.C, Seattle[12] and other American cities as part of the Code For America initiative[13]). Very often they are created as part of "hackathons", IT development competitions.[14] In 2008, Vivek Kundra hosted the first open government data hackathon.[15] The event, called "Apps for Democracy" invited outside civic hackers to make use of the city’s open data portal, leading to the creation of 47 apps.

Civic applications are part of a greater concept of civic technologies, which encompass a variety of civic applications,[16] together with any software tools and platforms, enabling its development or hosting, and the software supporting local and national governments in performing their public functions.

References

  1. ^ Block, Fred L.; Keller, Matthew R. State of Innovation: The U.S. Government's Role in Technology Development. doi:10.4324/9781315631905.
  2. ^ "A Timeline of Civic Tech Tells a Data-Driven Story of the Field". Civic Tech Field Guide. Retrieved 2022-10-25.
  3. ^ Gutierrez, Miren (2019-02-01). "Maputopias: cartographies of communication, coordination and action—the cases of Ushahidi and InfoAmazonia". GeoJournal. 84 (1): 101–120. doi:10.1007/s10708-018-9853-8. ISSN 1572-9893.
  4. ^ Lee, Gwanhoo; Kwak, Young Hoon (2012-10-01). "An Open Government Maturity Model for social media-based public engagement". Government Information Quarterly. Social Media in Government - Selections from the 12th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o2011). 29 (4): 492–503. doi:10.1016/j.giq.2012.06.001. ISSN 0740-624X.
  5. ^ Jäske, Maija; Ertiö, Titiana (2019-03-06). "The democratic potential of civic applications". Information Polity. 24 (1): 21–39. doi:10.3233/IP-180105.
  6. ^ Stoddard, Jeremy (2014-04-14). "The Need for Media Education in Democratic Education". Democracy and Education. 22 (1).
  7. ^ Balestrini, M. (2017). "A city in common: explorations on sustained community engagement with bottom-up civic technologies". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  8. ^ Dada, Danish (August 2006). "The Failure of E-Government in Developing Countries: A Literature Review". The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries. 26 (1): 1–10. doi:10.1002/j.1681-4835.2006.tb00176.x.
  9. ^ "civicapps.org for Greater Portland".
  10. ^ "Open City - Civic apps built with open data".
  11. ^ "Harris: A selection of civic apps that aid Chicagoans".
  12. ^ "Five Cities Get Free Civic Apps Through Code for America". Mashable.
  13. ^ "Code for America Apps and APIs".
  14. ^ "Civic Apps Competition Handbook".
  15. ^ "A Timeline of Civic Tech Tells a Data-Driven Story of the Field". Civic Tech Field Guide. Retrieved 2022-10-25.
  16. ^ "Hundreds of developers use open data to create civic apps".

Further Reading

  1. Dunaway, Johanna, and Doris A. Graber. Mass Media and American Politics. SAGE Publications, Inc., 2023.
  2. Lee, Gwanhoo, and Young Hoon Kwak. “An Open Government Maturity Model for Social Media-Based Public Engagement.” Government Information Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 4, Oct. 2012, pp. 492–503, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0740624X1200086X, 10.1016/j.giq.2012.06.001. Accessed 20 Sept. 2022.
  3. “Scaling Civic Tech.” How Can We Harness Technology to Promote Civic Engagement and More Responsive Government?, 2022, knightfoundation.org/features/civictechbiz/. Accessed 20 Sept. 2022.
  4. Moore, Martin. Centre for the Study of Media, Communication, and Power, 2016, pp. 1–92, Tech Giants and Civic Power.
  5. Chan, Clarice. “Corporate Civic Responsibility: A New Paradigm for Companies to Advance Public Interest Technology.” Corporate Civic Responsibility, Tech Talent Project, 21 Dec. 2020, techtalentproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Corporate-Civic-Responsibility_Chan_TechTalentProject_1.6.21.pdf.
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