As economies and societies become increasingly digital, governments around the World are prioritizing the use of digital technologies and data to increase the participation and engagement of civil society in public matters. At the same time, citizen¡¯s rising expectations and demands require public sectors to strengthen civil society engagement. Digital technologies and data have the potential to increase substantially the tools that governments have available to further involve citizens in policy and service design and delivery.
Citizen engagement is one of the four focus areas of the World Bank GovTech initiative. As GovTech connects the state-citizen interface with government systems, processes, and services, CivicTech is positioned as one of the built-in features for citizen-centric service delivery. This boosts the potential for improving government responsiveness, which is a critical element for more open, transparent, inclusive and collaborative public governance. However, according to the GovTech Maturity Index (GTMI) 2022 update, the Digital Citizen Engagement Index scored the lowest average among four focus areas of GovTech. This indicates that there is room for improvements especially in the area of digital citizen engagement through developing multifunctional citizen engagement platforms to improve public trust.
provides practical guidance on how to use technology to strengthen the engagement between the State and non-state actors ¨C citizens, civil society organizations, and the private sector to governments, practitioners, and task teams. Also, the How-to-Note introduces what CivicTech is with various examples, why it is an important element of the GovTech approach, how to adopt, implement and assess it, and key issues for successful CivicTech.
WHAT WE WILL LEARN
- Understand the three levels of CivicTech depending on the nature of the engagement between government and citizens ¨C Openness and transparency, Participation and Engagement, and Collaboration, co-design, co-creation, co-production.
- Explain the benefits of CivicTech approach and learn the five phases of the CivicTech solution cycle from understanding the problem to evaluate for designing and implementing sound CivicTech solutions.
- Understand key issues to be considered when designing, developing, and operating CivicTech approach.