This was presented by Emily Shaw from mySociety at the Impacts of Civic Technology Conference (TICTeC2016) in Barcelona on 27th April. You can find out more information about the conference here: https://www.mysociety.org/research/tictec-2016/

1. Impacts of Government-Led
Civic Tech: US Cities
Emily Shaw
US Civic Tech Researcher
mySociety

2. Studying the effects of government-led civic
tech tools in US cities
•Why?
•What?
•Where?
•How?
•…and what have we learned?

3. People Government
Improving two-way
information flow
Thinking about civic tech as a new pipe
connecting people and government

4. The model we know
People Government

5. The model we don’t know
People Government

6. What could be
different about
government-led
civic tech?
•Quality
•Equity
•Trustworthiness
•Ease of Use

7. More broadly:
What effects do we expect a government’s civic tech tool
to have? And are these expectations borne out?

8. Who’s looked at city-led civic tech in the past?
E-government literature (e.g. Palvia & Sharma 2006) locates two-way
dialogue as stage in government evolution.

9. Who’s looked at city-led civic tech in the past?
E-participation literature (e.g., Macintosh 2004) looks at the types of
public engagement that tools make possible.

10. Who’s looked at city-led civic tech in the past?
ICT4D literature (e.g., Peixoto and Fox 2016) has explored the
relationship between tools and government accountability.

11. Defining “civic technology” for project
• Lots of potential definitions for “city-led civic tech”
• For purposes of this project defined it as:
• Digital service
• Tool or process incorporates avenues for resident “voice”
• Government-owned—on a city-owned website, for example
• Led by a US municipality, not a county or region

12. First case: SpeakUpAustin

13. Second case: Chicago LargeLots

14. Third case: Oakland RecordTrac

15. Fourth case: DC 311

16. Fifth case: Seattle OPA Police Complaint Tracker

17. Research Methods
• Structured interviews in each city:
• Project manager
• Department head
• Internal users
• External users
• Tool developer
• Online surveys in each city:
• Tool users
• Facebook users (proxy for local internet-using residents)
Status as of April 2016:
• Interviews complete
• Surveys ongoing

18. People Government
General preliminary finding:
Civic tech tools create new forms of pressure on departments,
leading to regular incremental effects.
Whoa!

19. Impact of civic tech #1:
Shifting role for department staff
• Tools are new: DC 311 (2011) is oldest, OPA Complaint Tracker (2015)
newest
• In four of five cases, interest in the tool came from the department
head, not the program manager
• Project managers become critical point for dealing with new work
stemming from tool
• Role shift for this individual: more—sometimes all—of their time newly
devoted to tool-connected program

20. Impact of civic tech #2:
Discovery of maintenance needs
• Although projects often are not planned with future
maintenance in mind, all civic tech tools require updates and
changes to remain attractive to internal and external users
• If departments can’t devote additional ongoing funds for
tool improvement, tool uptake and sustainability is limited
• Where tools are externally developed, procurement creates
an additional obstacle for maintenance

21. Impact of civic tech #3:
Increased interest in digitizing records/assets
• In all cases, tool created interest among relevant staff in
improving digitization or digital records management
• In four cases, tool sparked internal interest in improving the
digitization and management of existing records
• In the fifth case, an internal stakeholder wanted to digitize in-
person input to consolidate the location for resident feedback

22. Impact of civic tech #4:
New focus—problems beyond the front door
• External stakeholders were moderately to very pleased with the way
that the tools themselves worked
• In three cases, external users expressed displeasure with city service
past the point of the tool
• External users expressed dissatisfaction with the speed or completeness with
which their request was addressed.
• In one city, external users from separate interviews independently observed a
jarring contrast between the smoothness of the tool and the impenetrable
bureaucracy past the first contact.

23. Impact of civic tech #5:
Use is by already-connected, unless intervention
• Only in one case was there a strategy for non-digital community
outreach about the tool, and that outreach was funded and
performed by non-government partners
• Tool-users who found and used the tool on their own appear to be
either people who were already in contact with government or
residents with higher socio-economic status.
• Examples of users mentioned in interviews included lawyers, real estate
developers, and bicyclists (in a city where bicyclists are disproportionately
high-income.)

24. Next!
• Survey analysis to come
• Looking to connect with people studying “incremental effects”
models of civic tech impact

25. Icon design credits
From the Noun Project:
• Weightlifting by Ben King
• Vanity by Luis Prado
• Police car by romzicon
• Trust fall by Juan Pablo Bravo
• Piggybank by Ryan Choi
• Rights by Alberto Miranda
• Community by Dmitry Baranovskiy
• Government building by Chacha Sikes