Upon exiting the secretive deliberations in Independence Hall during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was met with a crowd of anxious citizens. Eagerly waiting to hear about the decisions made behind closed doors a woman asked “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin replied, without hesitation “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Active civic participation has always been vital to the liberal democracy of the United States. It benefits us in many ways: it gives political institutions insight into the interests of the people, stimulates economic growth, reduces societal conflict, improves public services, produces more successful educational programs, leads to improved quality of community and personal life, and, perhaps most importantly, re-affirms our trust in and the legitimacy of political institutions as a whole.
Today, however, most research affirms that civic engagement (at least as traditionally measured) has declined in recent decades. Participation has decreased among independent and moderate voters who play an important role in keeping national policy from drifting too far to either extreme. Moreover, the views of different races and ethnicities are unequally represented in civic issues. What factors have contributed to the decline of Civic Engagement in local communities and what can we do to alter course?
There are many factors that could explain why governments are so ineffective: risk aversion, a lack of innovation, scant financial resources, or the often self-interested motives of politicians. One area that stands out, above all others, is the anachronous way in which governments communicate with their constituents.
The methods governments employ to reach out to citizens stopped being useful decades ago. Town hall meetings and supervisor hearings are easily hijacked. Door-to-door outreach is time-consuming. Municipalities can take years to update a project. Moreover, there is no single place where citizens can go to find out about these projects and contribute feedback. Instead, in cities like San Francisco, there are more than a dozen different websites containing lists of developing projects the city is working. This is inefficient and reveals the fragmented inner complexity of our city’s government.
How can we fix these problems? Civic thinkers across the globe have found inspiration in tools that we use everyday like Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, and Kickstarter.
The British government has been consolidating all its online resources for citizens since 2004 in a single destination now known as Gov.uk. The site provides a place where citizens can easily access information and services from across hundreds of government departments and public bodies. Rather than just providing links to government departments, Gov.uk carries its own material, designed around users’ needs. As their website attests, the aim of the British Government Digital Service “is to be the unequivocal owner of high quality user experience between people and government through being the architect and the engine room of government digital service provision.” In doing so they have applied methodologies from the startup world such as agile software development to create a more usable and engaging service than most governments can dream of.
In 2011, a trio of designers achieved one of the earliest civic Kickstarter successes when they created a campaign to fund the + POOL, an initiative to build a floating pool that filters river water off the shores of New York City. The initial Kickstarter campaign was used to assess and generate interest in the project. It raised more than $41,000 allowing the creators to validate the idea and garner support from public officials across the state of New York. The creators used the money to hire the help of global engineering firm Arup to build and test a prototype of the filtration system. The prototype was a massive success and the creators are now preparing to host a live, full-scale test pool in the East River for three months.
In Iceland, the Constitutional Council was tasked with creating a more modern constitution. Rather than designing the constitution in isolation, the council solicited citizen feedback throughout the drafting process. Each week, the council posted a new proposed clause online, allowing citizens to comment or wholly rewrite the selection. The completed constitution also stipulated that any future changes will be put to a vote among all eligible Icelandic voters. This crowdsourced constitution was unanimously approved by all delegates in the council.
What can we learn from these examples? How can we reinvent the tools we take for granted everyday and use them to improve our government? What could we change? Transportation? Public safety? The environment? Education?
No matter how we implement change, it is certain that we must. Our government cannot fix itself and it needs its citizens now more than ever. Now is the time for us to educate ourselves and act. As individuals, community members, and citizens of this country we have a responsibility to fix these problems – and to preserve the integrity of our republic.
