Citizen Engagement Initiatives Research Articles

The Effectiveness of Digital Government Services, Public Participation Mechanisms, and Policy Innovation in Public Administration

This study investigates the effectiveness of digital government services, public participation mechanisms, and policy innovation in enhancing public administration. The primary objective is to qualitatively analyze the literature to understand how these elements contribute to improving the efficiency, transparency, and responsiveness of public administration. The research employs a qualitative literature review methodology, synthesizing findings from academic articles, government reports, case studies, and empirical studies to provide a comprehensive overview of current knowledge in this field. The literature review methodology involves systematically collecting and analyzing scholarly sources that discuss various aspects of digital government services, public participation mechanisms, and policy innovation. The study categorizes the literature into key themes, such as the benefits of digital government services in streamlining administrative processes, the impact of public participation mechanisms on policy legitimacy and public trust, and the role of policy innovation in addressing complex societal challenges. Thematic analysis is used to identify patterns and trends in how these factors influence the effectiveness of public administration. The findings indicate that digital government services significantly enhance administrative efficiency by reducing bureaucratic delays, lowering costs, and improving service delivery. Public participation mechanisms, including e-participation platforms and citizen engagement initiatives, are shown to increase policy transparency and accountability, fostering greater public trust in government. Policy innovation, through the adoption of new technologies and innovative practices, addresses emerging issues and improves public sector adaptability.

Citizen Participation Practices in the Governance of Local Food Systems: A Literature Review

Traditionally, food system governance has been executed at provincial, national, or supranational levels, but recently, there has been an increasing trend of local areas coordinating initiatives to influence their own food systems. They are distinguished by their focus on the principles of food democracy, especially in terms of citizen participation. Although initiatives to boost citizen collaboration in local food systems are on the rise, achieving active citizen involvement can prove challenging. This study aims to understand citizen engagement and participation in local food systems at the regional, municipal, or neighborhood levels. A narrative literature review was performed, covering academic and gray literature and using descriptive statistics and semi-inductive thematic analysis. The analysis identified five categories of local food system citizen participation programs, i.e., governance committees that include citizens, citizen working groups, participatory research, participatory workshops, and citizen forums and assemblies. The review highlighted factors that influence the operation and perceived success of citizen participation initiatives. Findings underscore the importance of creating citizen participation mechanisms that are inclusive, transparent, and adaptable. Proper organization and facilitation by a dedicated local organization ensure the success of citizen engagement initiatives. The identified categories and factors can guide policymakers in designing effective local food system initiatives that enhance meaningful citizen involvement.

MAINTAINING THE NEEDS OF CITIZENS IN SMART CITY

A smart city is a municipality that uses technology and data to improve the quality of life for its citizens. Sustaining the needs of citizens in a smart city includes identifying and addressing specific community needs and concerns such as transportation, energy, public safety, and environmental sustainability. This may include the introduction of smart infrastructure and services such as smart traffic lights and air quality sensors, as well as citizen engagement through digital platforms and citizen engagement initiatives. In this article, we will look at what defines a smart city and what infrastructure services must be provided in order to comply with the principles of a smart city.

‘Built from the internet up’: assessing citizen participation in smart city planning through the case study of Quayside, Toronto

Citizen participation in smart cities has come under ever more scrutiny in recent years. Whilst smart city projects across the world have proclaimed themselves as citizen-centric, scholars have found that these claims are still framed within a neoliberal, post-political conception of citizenship, whereby citizens are afforded little agency. In evaluating such projects and in aid of developing a better understanding of the citizen’s role in smart cities, scholars have developed various heuristics. This paper aims to further both empirical and theoretical developments in the field to evaluate citizen participation in Quayside, Toronto’s first smart city neighbourhood, using Cardullo and Kitchin’s Scaffold of Smart Citizen Participation. A document analysis of seventeen citizen engagement summary reports and advertisements, corresponding to eight citizen engagement initiatives, has revealed that the quality of citizen participation varied substantially according to individual initiatives in Quayside. It was also discovered that Cardullo and Kitchin’s scaffold was ineffective at capturing the complexity of citizen engagement in smart city planning. In light of this, a new heuristic which assesses the post-political spaces of citizen engagement has been developed. This heuristic can provide a productive foundation for further research in the field.

Citizen engagement initiatives in precision health in the European Union member states: a scoping review

IntroductionPrecision health requires citizens that are empowered to orient health decisions towards their personal values, aware of the benefits and risks, and committed to sharing their personal data to trustful...

Embedding knowledge transfer in digital citizen engagement in South Africa: Developing digital literacy

Basic service delivery is a fundamental right for all South Africans, especially vulnerable groups. Effective and efficient channels of communication between multi-stakeholder groups involved and affected by service delivery are essential. Digital citizen engagement has recently emerged as a key approach for supporting two-way communication between citizens and the government. It is essential for building evidence-based data to engage with government and apply social accountability measures to lobby for the provision of basic services. Key to building capacities and learning, is developing the abilities of both local government and citizens to become digitally literate (including civic and responsiveness literacy), in order to realise and action the true benefits of digital citizen engagement. This research set out to identify the roles of digital literacy in digital citizen engagement, and how it may be embedded in knowledge transfer processes for implementing digital citizen engagement initiatives. A pragmatist philosophical approach was applied: studying, observing and reflecting on actions in the MobiSAM case study. Using Szulanski’s four-stage model of knowledge transfer, key focus areas for developing digital literacy were identified, contributing to a Quadruple-E process of: (1) explore, (2) enable, (3) engage and (4) embed. Practices identified in the MobiSAM case study are provided as suggestions for each phase, with an indication of possible constraints that may be experienced in the knowledge transfer and digital literacy development process – a potential guideline for developing digital literacy in digital citizen engagement initiatives. The process for knowledge transfer and developing digital literacy that was identified in this article provides a guideline for future implementation of digital citizen engagement initiatives in resource-constrained contexts.

Your Comments Here: Contextualizing Technologies, Seeking Records and Supporting Transparency for Citizen Engagement

Today, governments the world over are opening decision-making processes to citizen engagement as an aspect of open government. Citizen engagement initiatives may range from making information available and seeking feedback, to highly dynamic processes that transfer authority to communities and individuals. As part of these initiatives, governments are actively using digital technologies to gather, analyze, and store citizen input; activities that in turn create an array of records. My paper surveys a range of digital technologies used by Canadian citizen engagement case initiatives. In linking technologies, recordkeeping and citizen engagement, I present the combined frameworks of the IAP2 Spectrum and archival diplomatics as one method of understanding how recordkeeping and citizen engagement frameworks may be joined. I conclude with a discussion on defining and locating the records of citizen engagement initiatives and how records and recordkeeping may support transparency and trust in citizen engagement.

Participatory enthusiasms: a recent history of citizen engagement initiatives

ABSTRACTThere have been waves of enthusiasm for citizen participation before. I discuss several features that make the current one distinctive: Its scale and scope, its reliance on modes of collaboration made familiar by digital media, its dependence on coalitions of actors, within and outside the state, for its effects, and its professionalization in techniques of facilitated discussion. I focus on the latter, exploring how professionals’ understandings of the aims and limits of participation sometimes conflict with those of participants. More broadly, I argue for a better understanding of how models of participation diffuse across institutional settings and with what effects.

Choosing Healthcare Options by Involving Canada's Elderly: a protocol for the CHOICE realist synthesis project on engaging older persons in healthcare decision-making

IntroductionWhile patient and citizen engagement has been recognised as a crucial element in healthcare reform, limited attention has been paid to how best to engage seniors—the fastest growing segment of...

Translating between social worlds of policy and everyday life: The development of a group-based method to support policymaking by exploring behavioural aspects of sustainable consumption

A large international literature on how lay citizens make sense of various aspects of science and technology has been generated by investigations which utilise small group methods. Within that literature, focus group and other group-based methods have come to co-exist, and to some extent, hybridise, with the use of small groups in citizen engagement initiatives. In this article, we report on how we drew upon these methodological developments in the design and operationalisation of a policymaking support tool (STAVE). This tool has been developed to gain insight, in a relatively speedy and cost-effective way, into practical details of the everyday lived experience of people's lives, as relating to the sustainability of corresponding practices. An important challenge we faced was how, in Kuhn's terms, to 'translate' between the forms of life corresponding to the world of policymaking and the world of everyday domestic life. We examine conceptual and methodological aspects of how the tool was designed and assembled, and then trialled in the context of active real-world collaborations with policymaking organisations. These trials were implemented in six European countries, where they were used to support work on live policy issues concerned with sustainable consumption.

Investigating the Landscape in National Interoperability Frameworks

Openness, accountability, and transparency have attracted researchers’ and practitioners’ interest as open data and citizen engagement initiatives try to capitalize the wisdom of crowds for better governance, policy making, or even service provision. In this context, interoperability between public organizations, citizens, and enterprises seems to remain the center of interest in the public sector and national interoperability frameworks are continually revised and expanded across the globe in an effort to support the increasing need for seamless exchange of information. This paper outlines the current landscape in eGovernment interoperability, analyzing and comparing frameworks that have reached a certain degree of maturity. Their strengths and weaknesses at conceptual and implementation level are discussed together with directions for reaching consensus and aligning interoperability guidelines at a country and cross-country level.

Citizen Participation and engagement in the Design of e-Government Services: The Missing Link in Effective ICT Design and Delivery

Enid Mumford championed an ethical, socio-technical, and participatory approach to the design of ICT systems. In this paper, we focus on the development of e-government as an example of such a system. First, we present an extension of Mumford¡¯s ideas about the benefits and process of participation, based on an analysis of recent citizen engagement initiatives. We then examine the extent to which e-government reflects the principles she espoused. The evidence collated indicates that e-government development is currently characterised by a technocentric approach with minimal engagement of citizens. We discuss the implications arising from this analysis, and explore the benefits that governments could achieve from adoption of a socio-technical, participatory approach to e-government development. The crucial enabling role of capacity building is highlighted. Providing citizens with the necessary skills and capabilities to engage effectively offers the key to the successful development of systems such as e-government which impact our lives in the 21st century Information Society.

L'empowerment au canada et au québec : enjeux et opportunités

Resume Cet article sur l’empowerment au Quebec et au Canada met l’accent sur la capacite des citoyens a creer des nouveaux espaces insitutionnels dans lesquels ils jouent un role decisif a travers le developpement de strategies socio-economiques. En faisant reference au concept de la « gouvernance participative et empowered » d’Erik Olin Wright et Archong Fung, l’accent est mis est sur les liens entre les dimensions politiques et economiques de l’action collective dans le contexte canadien. En explorant le concept « d’empowered participation » a travers plusieurs experiences au Canada, et en particulier, au Quebec, l’article fait la distinction entre l’engagement des citoyens et les initiatives communautaires integrees comme source d’empowerment et d’innovation institutionnelle par rapport aux autres formes de consultations publiques. La capacite des acteurs et des reseaux d’influencer et de transformer les institutions de l’Etat au cours des dernieres 20 dernieres annees illustre l’importance de l’empowerment et du changement social.

From consultation to participatory governance? A critical review of citizen engagement strategies in Queensland

This article explores what appears to be a major shift in the policies and practices of national and international governments–the increased attention to, and use of, citizen engagement strategies as a basis for developing more participatory forms of governance. The article examines recent citizen engagement initiatives of the Queensland state government which have grappled with these complex political, policy and service concerns. The potential innovation and effectiveness of citizen engagement techniques and approaches are examined. The limitations of technical methodologies based on a traditional consultative framework are highlighted. The article analyses the relationship between these citizen engagement practices and more strategic democratic reforms based on notions of participatory governance.