How much would you like to be paid to delete all your social media accounts?
Liz Plank, a producer and host at Vox Media, created a poll with the above question on her Instagram and Twitter. Almost all the answers have a high price tag. People don't want to be paid cheaply so they don't tweet on social media anymore. She read the answers in front of Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, in a talk show session at the opening of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Global Conference (OGP Summit) in Ottawa, Canada (5/29).
Trudeau picked up on something else from these answers. He cited the words of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, who argues that people are free to choose to use or not to use the platform. Trudeau did not fully agree with that opinion. Actually we are not given much choice. There are only two very binary options: use the app and provide personal data with one click “agree” or click “disagree” and we can't use the app at all.
"The more they develop, the more people will realize that the value placed on these platforms is far greater than the value they get back from them in their daily lives," Trudeau said (5/29).
Liz Plank then asked Trudeau a similar question in her poll, “How much would you like to be paid to delete all your social media accounts?"
"I still need it to work," Trudeau said followed by the audience laughed.
Trudeau is an active social media user. He uses it to interact with the community. He and his social-media friendly and tech-savvy communication team managed to reach 1.2 million followers when he was sworn in as Prime Minister in 2015 and now has 4.52 million followers.
Social media and technology play an important role in Trudeau's government in Canada. The most visited page on the Canadian government web is the mandate tracker page. On the page there is a list of matters mandated by the minister, the progress of its completion, and the challenges in its completion. In addition, the transparency of the use of artificial intelligence in government has been a hot topic of debate in Canada—where in other parts of the world new technologies are being introduced into government processes—because of concerns about abuse and disregard for human rights.
The existence of social media has disrupted many things, including politics. Social media and technology in general have been widely used as tools that help streamline citizen interactions and relations with the government, as well as make the government process run inclusive. The Open Government Partnership (OGP), as one of the global partnerships, is one of the initiatives that promote increased transparency, accountability, and participation in government by utilizing new technologies. OGP, at its sixth conference in Ottawa on 29–31 May 2019, promoted its collaborative work with civil society organizations, business entities and governments focused on three priority themes: inclusion, impact and participation.
Through the theme of “inclusion,” OGP highlights the challenges and initiatives that empower under-represented citizens to engage actively with government. Under the theme of “impact,” OGP shares stories about government openness initiatives that have an impact on people's daily lives. Under the priority theme of “participation,” collaborative innovations—between government, political parties, civil society organizations, and business entities—that are able to increase the political participation of the wider community in policy formulation and decision making were discussed by various parties.
Technology for citizen participation in elections
In this priority theme of participation the Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem) together with the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) was selected to organize a discussion session with the theme “Take advantage of Open Government” which was held at the Shaw Center, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada on May 30, 2019.
In this discussion, Titi Anggraini, Executive Director of Perludem, shared a story about the Elections API (Application Programming Interface) initiative, a platform that provides election data in an open data format. In an open data format, IT programmers and web developers can use it more freely and easily to create various applications for electoral socialization tools based on the Android, iOS, Windows, or website operating system platforms.
This Election API is also the raw material for the web-based platform http://pintarmemilih.id which is managed by Perludem with the support of Google Indonesia. In the context of the Indonesian General Election, the largest and most complicated one-day general election in the world, the presence of http://pintarmemilih.id can help voters by providing adequate information on election technicalities and curriculum vitae of candidates for legislative members. This platform has helped to present information on Indonesian elections (of which 250,000 candidates are contesting twenty thousand seats in two thousand electoral districts) in a simpler and interactive format that makes it easier for voters to identify the candidates who will represent them in parliament and government.
“Open Election platforms have fostered broad public participation to be more meaningfully involved in elections. The adoption of the principles and mission of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) in the electoral process is important for building and managing trust from the public. Public trust is one of the keys to realizing a participatory democracy. We hope that the Election API or similar initiatives can continue," said Titi Anggraini, Executive Director of Perludem, as a speaker in the session "Taking Benefits from Open Government" (30/5).
Innovation and technology beyond election times
Democracy is often determined by the sovereign at the ballot box—citizens determine who will represent their interests in government. However, this sovereignty often fails to translate into policies that live in the realities of everyday citizens. In many countries, citizens perceive elected governments as disconnected and unresponsive to their needs. As many as 64 percent of citizens living in democracies, according to the Partnership for Open Government Global, believe that elected governments rarely or never act in the public interest.
"Our efforts have to go beyond the ballot box to fulfill the sovereignty that is deposited in the ballot box," said Sanjay Pradhan, OGP's Chief Executive Officer, while giving an opening speech in Ottawa (5/29)
The growing public participation in this election needs to continue after the candidates are elected. This is a challenge in itself because often the involvement is interrupted after the candidate is selected. Citizens often rely on their aspirations for the work of the elected candidates. Meanwhile, the elected candidates no longer involve citizens as intensely as when they are interested in gaining votes in elections.
Julia Keutgen, Senior Transparency Advisor, Westminster Foundation for Democracy shared about how political parties are struggling with new technologies to reach citizens and innovations that can intervene to improve the party system that is able to resolve the rift relations between political parties, parliament, and citizens.
When OGP was launched in 2011, according to Julia, parliament was not involved and could not imagine being part of the open government initiative. However, the development of an open government action plan attracted parliamentarians and civil society organizations to formally include parliament in the OGP. The OGP Steering Committee approved a policy of involving parliament in OGP in September 2016. This initiative enabled OGP to build greater political consensus to enhance the sustainability of open government reform beyond election of government positions and elections.
“As part of the many commitments under the OGP, parliament has developed various tools to involve citizens in the legislative process. The idea is to involve citizens in law-making and allow them to amend the laws that are being discussed in parliament before they are passed,” said Julia at the discussion session.
However, she emphasizes the fact that these tools are not panacea. The democratic system also requires real cultural change. To be open, one should not underestimate small steps such as simplification of procedures for the entry of citizens into parliament buildings, which is a challenge in many parliaments, or proper archiving and collection of data. Without this cultural change, technology as a tool of open innovation becomes useless.
Simon Berger, Legal Officer of the High Authority for Transparency in Public Life (HATVP), a French-based civil society organization speaks from the open side of the public sector. HATVP uses an open data strategy in managing data on asset and interest declarations of high-level public officials and lobbying registers. HATVP is revolutionizing handwritten documents on paper by digitizing them into an open format. HATVP also prepared online forms which later became mandatory in place of handwritten forms.
Instead of using a particular technology or programming language as a tool to digitize, HATVP actually involves young people to register the data in digital form. The participation room raises their awareness to be more involved in supervising the follow-up to the lobbying register.
In terms of government relations with citizens, Carolina Better, Senior Associate Ideas42, shares the results of research using a behavioral science approach that investigates the factors that influence the government's response to complaints or requests from citizens through digital platforms. Carolina explained that the government can be said to be responsive when the response, response, or reaction to requests or complaints from citizens is carried out in a timely, accurate, equal and satisfying manner.
Timely response measures the time between acceptance of a citizen's request and a response or reaction. The government is responsible for ensuring that citizen requests are completed as quickly as possible within the available resources. Response accuracy refers to the quality of the work performed when completing the request as well as the reliability of the platform conveying the progress of the process. Equity of response occurs when no response favors a request based on demographic characteristics such as geography, income, and race. Meanwhile, response satisfaction measures how happy residents are with the request completion experience and whether they feel heard during the process.
“An important aspect of the platform is to create a channel that strengthens the bonds and trust of citizens and governments. Responsive satisfaction is critical to developing this trust and may even lead to higher citizen engagement and a more responsive government,” said Carolina.
But above all, keep in mind that technology is just a tool. Technology does not necessarily replace all citizen participation and interaction through virtual spaces. It's important to stay connected with people in physical spaces and build meaningful conversations with trust. Citizens will not trust the government unless the government is willing to trust the citizens by disclosing information, data, and commitments to be implemented.
Translated by Catherine Natalia
