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In the face of this growing mistrust among the citizenry, what is the role of technology and what do local governments have to do?

Citizen engagement through technology is especially powerful at the local government level. In this context, we have seen the rise in the use of mobile apps related to the provisioning of basic services, such as suspicious activity alerts, garbage pickup, pothole fixing, etc.

However, we are also keenly aware that technology is only an instrument, and unless carefully woven into the existing mechanisms through which citizens and governments interact, it can be irrelevant, at best, or even damaging to the social fabric. What if an app creates citizen demands that the government has no capacity to respond to? How to avoid building a technology solution that has a regressive effect, increasing the voice of some, while making the voice of others even harder to hear?
 

Please respond to the following questions:


The better a local government can understand the unique needs of the citizen, the better equipped it is to choose a technology and predict the type and scope of services needed to provide. 

  1. Does technology have a role to play in building citizen’s trust in local governments? How can local governments effectively use technology to build trust with their citizens?
  2. What have been the success factors in the examples where technology has contributed to building trust between governments and citizens?
  3. What are the opportunities, challenges and risks of governments engaging with citizens through technology?
20 Nov 2019 - 17 Dec 2019

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