Civic Tech = a Fundamental Trust in People
My friends over at Civicist are running a series of blog posts defining the term “Civic tech.” So far they’ve got quite a few excellent posts, and you should check them out.
I want to add a few thoughts from my perspective. To me, civic tech is based on a faith in democracy: it represents a fundamental trust in people. People, rather than in experts, the wealthy, or the well-connected: there’s really no need for civic tech if you’re just going to rely on technocrats, oligarchs, or aristocrats.
Civic tech represents a fundamental trust in people.
This becomes more clear in light of recent trends in civic technology. Opening up government data via APIs is about increasing government data access to small businesses, researchers, app developers, and residents with good ideas — not to insiders. The tools that are being built to solicit input on city decisions or encourage debate about pressing problems are being designed to stimulate board participation from city residents — not to poll CEOs. Civic tech initiatives are founded on a deep trust in people.
With this focus, civic tech has exciting potential to address some big problems we don’t currently have solid answers for. When you trust people it becomes much easier to address issues such as campaign finance abuse, low voter turnout, and loss of trust in government. For the rest of this post, I’ll consider those three issues and lay out what a civic tech answer might look like for each.
Campaign finance
As Lawrence Lessig argues on a regular basis, money in politics isn’t about overt bribery, but rather about institutional corruption that decreases trust in the political process. If I think government policy is shaped by the biggest donors rather than the best research and arguments, why should I participate (unless I can afford to join the big donor class)?
There’s no need for civic tech if you rely on technocrats, oligarchs, or aristocrats.
While there are many theories about how to counteract the effects of big money in politics, the civic tech answer is to place research and arguments at the center of the legislative process once again. Civic tech focused on citizen policy formation, participatory budgeting, and distributed decision making are built to help the people take back the policy reigns.
There isn’t a silver bullet when it comes to campaign finance reform. But if the civic tech way wins out, people will be deeply involved experimenting until we find a way to counteract the worst effects of big money in politics.
Voter turnout
Elections in the United States are often proudly compared with power transfers in other nations — look at how peacefully we transfer power from one group to another! Unfortunately, we also know that U.S. turnout rates are depressingly low in comparison with many other parts of the world. This voter apathy is caused in part by the not completely unfounded perception that in many important ways all the candidates are essentially the same.
It seems counterintuitive to say that low voter turnout is caused by a lack of trust in people: our election system claims to be one of the purest form of putting power in the hands of the people. People don’t seem to buy it any more. Dollars go further than votes, candidates are unable to get their ideas heard unless they have (enough money to advertise their way into) good poll numbers, and divergent ideas are overshadowed by horse race political coverage.
People engaged in the art of civic tech have an uphill battle.
It is difficult to imagine a system where the people are trusted, but by definition that system would be a civic tech model. Perhaps a tool or process that decentralizes candidate debates, provides real time campaign finance reports for candidates, crowdsources analysis of electioneering communications, or tracks and displays exactly how much impact each elected official has had while in office. Any tool or process that puts power in the hands of people rather than financial or status gatekeepers would be a civic tech solution.
Trust in government
It doesn’t take a political scientist to know that people just don’t trust or approve of their government. Elections, it seems, don’t really matter. No matter who’s in office, the same general things seem to keep on happening. Whether you’re worried by wars, by politicians who don’t read legislation, budgeting concerns, ineffective or nonexistent aid to the poor, or any other of a large number of issues, elections just don’t seem to matter. The more our elected officials change, the more their policies stay the same.
The civic tech answer to this problem revolves around the principles of transparency and openness. Problems will never be solved if the people can’t see them. Civic tech tools and processes work to shine light on everything from budgetary decisions to campaign donations, from lobbyist influence to city procurement policies. The more people are able to have access to knowledge about what is going on, the more they’ll be able to influence it.
Tools or processes qualify as “civic tech” when they are based on a fundamental trust in people. This is not always a popular stance to take, as “the people” are easily demonized as rioters, mobs, or uncultured masses. And in some cases those demonizations are accurate. Civic tech, then, must fight the battle on two fronts at once: first, to return power to the people; second, to make sure the people have the tools and the guidance to use it well.
Those engaged in the art of civic tech have an uphill battle. But as they say, they people united will never be defeated.
