Citizen Feedback Research Articles

Exploring the effectiveness of youth outreach programmes: the case of Singapore

ABSTRACT In recent decades, some governments have sought greater youth participation in government and public life. This study examines Singapore’s efforts to foster youth participation in government-led community service projects, public conversations, and opportunities for citizen feedback. Using a mixed-methods design that combines a survey questionnaire and semi-structured interviews, we explore the effectiveness of these government outreach programmes in the eyes of youth themselves, and whether they meet the government’s goal of promoting the active and engaged participation of young Singaporeans over the long term. We find that while local youth value the opportunity to participate meaningfully in governance, they also critique the government-led youth participation initiatives as top-down, choreographed, and inauthentic, saying that the views expressed therein do not sufficiently represent youth in Singapore. They also suggest feasible strategies to achieve genuine, inclusive youth participation in the public decision-making process.

Does Citizen Feedback Influence Public Service Motivation? Evidence From a Survey Experiment in the Context of Urban Service Provisions

Despite the growing interest of research on public service motivation (PSM), limited studies have considered the interaction between street-level bureaucrats and citizens. This study examined the impact of citizen feedback on PSM among street-level bureaucrats. Anchoring on the social exchange theory, this research posits that citizen feedback plays a pivotal role in influencing PSM. Using a vignette–survey experiment in the context of urban service provisions in Magelang city, Indonesia, this study empirically tested the causal relationship between citizen feedback and PSM. The finding reveals empirical evidence that positive citizen feedback enhances PSM, while, conversely, negative feedback diminishes PSM. These results underscore the importance of citizen feedback as an alternative managerial tool to motivate street-level bureaucrats who directly engage in service delivery. Public managers can also use these findings as a starting point to design a citizen feedback handling system in public service delivery.

On-line linguistic Decision Support System based on Citizen Crowd Decision Making

Scientific outreach and efforts to increase citizen participation have brought research closer to society and inspired new careers in STEM. In virtual events, it is now easier to monitor participation and get feedback through online surveys. However, in in-person events and crowded contexts, there is no technological solution to gather attendees’ opinions on a given event. This is why we are presenting a flexible online linguistic Decision Support System based on a Citizen Crowd Decision Making model, which can be used in a wide range of scenarios. It is powered by a mobile application to collect citizen feedback and a web environment that publicizes the event and generates attendee evaluation reports. DIME+ is a Decision Support System and is intended for the organizers of outreach events, especially Citizen Science events.

Deciphering Public Voices in the Digital Era

Problem, research strategy, and findings Planners are increasingly using online public engagement approaches to broaden their reach in communities. This results in substantial volumes of digital, text-based public feedback data, making it difficult to analyze efficiently and derive meaningful insights. We explored the use of the novel large language model (LLM), ChatGPT, in analyzing a public feedback data set collected via online submissions in Hamilton City (New Zealand) in response to a proposed local plan change. Specifically, we initially employed zero-shot prompts with ChatGPT for tasks like summarizing, topic identification, and sentiment analysis and compared the results with those obtained by human planners and two standard natural language processing (NLP) techniques: latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling and lexicon-based sentiment analysis. The findings show that zero-shot prompting effectively identified political stances (accuracy: 81.7%), reasons (87.3%), decisions sought (85.8%), and associated sentiments (94.1%). Although subject to several limitations, ChatGPT demonstrates promise in automating the analysis of public feedback, offering substantial time and cost savings. In addition, few-shot prompting enhanced performance in more complex tasks, such as topic identification involving planning jargon. We also provide insights for urban planners to better harness the power of ChatGPT to analyze citizen feedback. Takeaway for practice ChatGPT presents a transformative opportunity for planners, particularly those dealing with growing volumes of public feedback data. However, it cannot be entirely relied upon. Planners must be mindful of ChatGPT’s limitations, including its sensitivity to prompt phrasing, inherent biases from training data, tendency to overgeneralize, and occasional omission of nuanced details. To enhance accuracy, planners should prescreen data for consistency, provide clear and iteratively tested prompts, use few-shot prompts for complex analysis, and explore various combinations of prompting strategies to develop an effective local approach. It is also crucial to ensure human review of the results.

Exploring the typology of decision-makers, institutions, and incentives that shape health decisions in Pakistan and insulate decision makers from citizens feedback.

In developing countries such as Pakistan, program and policies underperform in providing public good as weak institutions lead to decisions that are unresponsive to citizens and are driven by personal motivations of the incumbents. We describe the decision-making processes in the health sector through the framework of "Public Choice" theory which posits how individual motives shape institutional performance and direction. We conducted 84 qualitative interviews with five types of stakeholders: politicians, senior and mid-level bureaucrats, donors, public health experts and media personnel spanning 2 periods over a decade. The initial interviews were conducted during 2013-2015 period and a case study on decision-making during the COVID-19 response was added in 2020-2022 period. Most new ideas originate from top political leadership, guided by personal agendas or political expediency. Senior bureaucrats implement politicians' agenda and mid-level officials maintain the status quo and follow established "authority." Since officials' performance, promotions, transfers, and the rare dismissals are based on tenure deviations rather than work performance, individuals and institutions are reluctant to take initiative without "consensus" among their colleagues often leading to inaction or delays that obviate initiative and reform. The public sector lacks institutional memory, formal information gathering, and citizen engagement, impacting public goods, health services, and policies. Media and donor personnel are important influencers. However, media mostly report only "hot issues" in health, with short publication and reader attention cycles. Donor personnel are the most likely to follow evidence for decision making, albeit while following their institutional priorities determined centrally. The COVID-19 response is presented as a contrast from usual practices, where evidence was used to guide decisions, as the pandemic was perceived as a national threat by the highest leadership. Absence of citizen feedback and formal systems for evidence gathering and processing leads to decisions that neglect the needs of those they serve, prioritizing personal or political gains and perpetuating the status quo. However, the COVID-19 pandemic emphasized the importance of evidence-based decision-making and offers valuable lessons for reforming decision-making processes.

Exploring Public Satisfaction in Rural Public Services: 2022 Case Study

This study investigates public satisfaction with service provision in Desa Larangan, Kecamatan Candi, Kabupaten Sidoarjo, focusing on nine key elements outlined in the Ministry of Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform's guidelines. Evaluating citizen satisfaction in areas ranging from requirements to infrastructure, the research surveys Organisasi Perangkat Daerah (OPD) and the Village Government as service recipients. Findings reveal an overall favorable assessment, showcasing a commendable service quality and performance with a Satisfaction Index of 79.02. Notably, infrastructure facilities garnered the highest average score (3.28), while requirements scored the lowest (3.02). This study highlights the positive quality of rural public service provision and underscores areas for potential enhancement, serving as a benchmark for governance optimization.
 Highlights:
 
 Comprehensive Assessment: Evaluated nine dimensions of service satisfaction.
 Favorable Findings: Overall positive performance with notable room for improvement.
 Governance Benchmark: Offers insights for optimizing rural service delivery.
 
 Keywords: Public Satisfaction, Service Quality, Rural Governance, Citizen Feedback, Administrative Performance

How Do Citizens View Digital Government Services? Study on Digital Government Service Quality Based on Citizen Feedback

Research on government service quality can help ensure the success of digital government services and has been the focus of numerous studies that proposed different frameworks and approaches. Most of the existing studies are based on traditional researcher-led methods, which struggle to capture the needs of citizens. In this paper, a citizen-feedback-based analysis framework was proposed to explore citizen demands and analyze the service quality of digital government. Citizen feedback data are a direct expression of citizens’ demands, so the citizen-feedback-based framework can help to obtain more targeted management insights and improve citizen satisfaction. Efficient machine learning methods used in the framework make data collection and processing more efficient, especially for large-scale internet data. With the crawled user feedback data from the Q&A e-government portal of Luzhou, Sichuan Province, China, we conducted experiments on the proposed framework to verify its feasibility. From citizens’ online feedback on Q&A services, we extracted five service quality factors: efficiency, quality, attitude, compliance, and execution of response. The analysis of five service quality factors provides some management insights, which can provide a guide for improvements in Q&A services.

MULTI-LEVEL GOVERNANCE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF EUROPEAN POLICIES REGARDING THE DEVELOPMENT OF UKRAINE AT THE SUBNATIONAL LEVEL

The article examines the institutional foundations of the formation and features of the use of the concept of multi-level governance, the determination of methodical approaches to the formation and possibilities of applying an integrated approach to multi-level governance at the subnational level in the context of the implementation of European policies on the development of Ukraine. It has been found that the role of sub-national structures in European politics is becoming increasingly independent and may partially depart from the direct influence and control of national governments. At the same time, regionalization, which took place in a number of leading European countries, ultimately contributed to the decentralization of political power and the transfer of significant powers from the national to the subnational level. The most significant principles of multi-level governance are defined, which should include: transparency and openness of the process of development and adoption of political decisions; compliance with the principles of subsidiarity, inclusiveness and proportionality within this process; comprehensive protection of basic individual rights; development of partnership with the participation of institutions and persons of both public and private law; achieving management efficiency and budgetary balance at all levels of multi-level governance. The principle of partnership in the system of multi-level governance provides for the equality of different levels of power within the European Union, as well as their recognition of mutual democratic legitimacy. The specified principle also provides that the supranational, national and subnational levels of government should develop cooperation, which is carried out on a voluntary and mutually beneficial basis. It is emphasized that the institutional capacity of the governing bodies of the subnational level is the ability of these bodies to effectively, competently and stably perform their functions and powers. This concerns the legal, resource capabilities, competences of the relevant bodies and their ability to coordinate collective actions in the direction of promotion and implementation of public projects and public initiatives that are significant for society. It provides for effective partnership and coordination of relevant bodies, including with government institutions; interdepartmental partnership and coordination; increasing one's own capacity in the field of finance and in the provision of public services in accordance with the principles of subsidiarity and inclusiveness; partnerships and coordination outside the sphere of public administration; as well as audit, evaluation and citizen feedback. Attention is focused on the fact that the consolidation of efforts, that is, the joint interaction of local state authorities and local self-government bodies, is an important condition and at the same time a means of implementing democratic, decentralized management of territories and a condition for proper multi-level governance in the context of the European integration goals and objectives of Ukraine. The implementation of such cooperation will ensure the effectiveness of the mechanism of interaction between executive authorities and local self-government bodies; establish high-quality interaction of local authorities with territorial divisions of central executive authorities; to increase the professional level of employees of local state administrations; regulate the legal status of heads of local executive bodies; to ensure the provision of services to the population of appropriate quality.

European small-town Renewable Energy Communities: Participatory design of supporting tools as a vehicle to engage and understand local communities and their energy related concerns

Renewable Energy Communities (REC) are an emerging initiative that aims to contribute to the energy transition towards a more decentralised system in Europe by encouraging local communities to come together and invest in and operate renewable energy assets together.Decision-making processes of these communities need to be supported by adequate tools, which also can be used in the formation of the community groups in the first place. In this paper a case-study of four European small-town communities in Berchidda (Italy), Ollersdorf (Austria), Ispaster (Spain), and Kökar (Finland) carried out in the context of the LocalRES project is presented, where a participatory design methodology has been applied to co-create community supporting tools. Feedback gathered during four citizen workshops is presented, showing that to optimally support RECs in their formation and operation three main topics need to be supported: (1) the technical realisation and potential upgrades of the energy system, i.e., visualising energy generation and consumption on an individual and a community level, (2) the financial and economic implications of investments, i.e., calculating costs and return on investment for the individual and for the community, as well as (3) the social dimension and communication between community members and other relevant stakeholders, i.e., helping with community building and community engagement. The participatory process presented in the case studies does not only serve to gather requirements for tool design, but it also is a useful vehicle to bring together all interested citizens and understand their needs and concerns. A summary of this detailed citizen feedback is also presented.

Managing Smart City development using citizen feedback: transforming opinions into a multi-criteria tool for evaluation and validation of city policies

In the last decade, research in the field of smart cities has expanded from purely technological aspects to include the areas of management development, urban planning and social sciences. In general, the discussion focuses on how the use of technology contributes to the development of the city, urban space and improving the quality of decisions[1].The article offers a tool to enrich the urban development management system. It is argued that by developing appropriate scales, subjective views and perceptions of the citizen can be objectivized and, therefore, are very useful for managers and politicians.In this paper, the development process is carried out in several stages, using inductive and deductive methods. Following focus groups and interviewing representatives of the city authorities, a survey was conducted with the participation of almost a thousand city inhabitants from all Kazakhstan regions. The data were analyzed using IBM SPSS 24 and AMOS 20 tools.The study proposes a scale that includes statements structured in five identified dimensions: willingness to interact, expectation of improvements, willingness to use, concern about efficiency, concern about abuse. As the methodology is disclosed, important theoretical and managerial implications are discussed, the need for information flow management in the interests of participants in the implementation of Smart City is justified.

A Twitter Framework to assess the Effectiveness of Indian Government Campaign

Many government and private agencies introduce social, governmental, educational, commercial and public-health based campaigns to refine various sections of the society. Traditionally, citizen feedback and on-field surveys are performed to assess the effectiveness of such campaigns. However, there is limited availability of the social media tools that assess the impact of different government campaigns automatically. In this research work, a framework has been proposed which uses the social media data i.e. Twitter data pertaining to an Indian Cleanliness Campaign Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (SBA) to perform the effectiveness assessment. This research work has been performed in two parts. First, Twitter data has been processed to predict the perceptions of citizens using Word Embeddings -based Tweet Pooling and Subjectivity score -based Sentiment Analysis and second, the performance of the cities has been predicted using the demographic features based predictor models. The experimentation shows a 0.77 correlation between the proposed framework and the government surveys while predicting the citizens’ perspectives and 80(+/-15)% accuracy while predicting the performance of cities using Random Forest Regression. Furthermore, the cities have been clustered using Twitter and the demographic data to find out the interesting patterns and behaviors. This research work provides better insights to the potential of social media data in the interventional studies of the developing countries such as India.

An IoT-Aware Solution to Support Governments in Air Pollution Monitoring Based on the Combination of Real-Time Data and Citizen Feedback.

One of the main concerns of the last century is regarding the air pollution and its effects caused on human health. Its impact is particularly evident in cities and urban areas where governments are trying to mitigate its effects. Although different solutions have been already proposed, citizens continue to report bad conditions in the areas in which they live. This paper proposes a solution to support governments in monitoring the city pollution through the combination of user feedbacks/reports and real-time data acquired through dedicated mobile IoT sensors dynamically re-located by government officials to verify the reported conditions of specific areas. The mobile devices leverage on dedicated sensors to monitor the air quality and capture main roads traffic conditions through machine learning techniques. The system exposes a mobile application and a website to support the collection of citizens’ reports and show gathered data to both institutions and end-users. A proof-of-concept of the proposed solution has been prototyped in a medium-sized university campus. Both the performance and functional validation have demonstrated the feasibility and the effectiveness of the system and allowed the definition of some lessons learned, as well as future works.

Developing Participatory Analytics Techniques to Inform the Prioritisation of Cycling Infrastructure

The planning of bicycle infrastructure across our cities remains a complex task involving many key stakeholders, including the community, who traditionally have had limited involvement in the planning process. This research develops an interactive bicycle prioritisation index tool which includes participatory spatial and textual citizen feedback. The research involves three components. Firstly, results of a survey of current cyclists in Sydney (n = 280), their current level of participation, priorities in investment in cycling and preferred locations for cycling infrastructure. This survey was undertaken between May and June 2020. Secondly, it documents the development of an interactive, digital bicycle planning tool which is informed through citizen feedback. Thirdly, it evaluates the approach in conversation with potential end-users, including government, planning practitioners, and advocacy group members. A clear preference for active participation mechanisms (86%) was articulated by current cyclists, as opposed to a reliance on the existing data available and passive data. The resulting tool was understood by interview participants and documented both existing utility and future work needed for practical implementation of similar systems. The research proposes the combination of multiple passive and active data traces with end-user evaluation to legitimise the citizen co-design of bicycle investment prioritisation initiatives. A case study approach was taken, focusing on the city of Sydney, Australia. The bicycle planning support system can be used by cities when engaging in cycle prioritisation initiatives, particularly with a focus on integrating citizen feedback and navigating the new and complex data landscapes introduced through recent, passively collected big data sets.

The composition of the petroleumscape of port cities in North Africa, the case of Skikda (Algeria)

This article discusses the composition of the oil landscape, using Carola Hein's hybrid, multiple, transformative and uneven ways of multi-layering, and its impact on societies such as industry, administration, architecture, oil culture and citizens' response to the oil landscape. This approach is presented in a panel, which is projected on Skikda, the northeast stronghold of the Algerian oil industry in North Africa, as a case study. Citizen feedback as a component layer of the oil landscape are presented through the text mining method, which is a word cloud text visualization. This study deals with aspects of the oil landscape, their economic and cultural importance and their impact on the city and society of Skikda.

Extracting Citizen Feedback from Social Media by Appraisal Opinion Type Viewpoint

Extracting Citizen Feedback from Social Media by Appraisal Opinion Type Viewpoint

Democratizing design: possibilities for Detroit’s community benefits ordinance

ABSTRACT The scholarship on participatory design has indicated continued struggles to develop processes that genuinely include citizen feedback in an inclusive manner. This paper explores whether Detroit’s Community Benefits Ordinance, that has allowed for residents to negotiate community benefits like parks, public spaces and streetscape improvements is a possible avenue for improved participatory design. This research shows that the Ordinance allowed for citizens to negotiate benefits related to the built environment, accounting for about one third of benefits won. However, there are significant barriers towards the Ordinance providing a transparent, non-elitist, and non-tokenistic environment for citizen participation in urban design.

From Bulletin Boards to Big Data

Why do Chinese governments at various levels set up public complaint websites where citizen petitions and government responses can be reviewed by the general public? We argue that it is the result of two factors: strong signals sent by the central government to improve governance, and the availability of new technologies to promote policy innovation. To impress their superiors, local officials adopted newly available commercial technology to innovate existing citizen feedback systems, which presented a developmental trajectory from “openness,” “integration,” to “big data-driven prediction.” Drawing on policy documents and interviews with local politicians and administrators, we provide a chronological perspective of how technical development, central government’s signals and local decision-making have interacted in the past two decades to bring forth today’s public complaint websites. The contingent and non-teleological nature of this development can also be applied to other policies such as the social credit system.

Развитие человеческого потенциала, социальная политика и электронное гражданское участие в российских регионах

Человеческий потенциал, социальная политика и электронное гражданское участие взаимообусловлены. С одной стороны, грамотное социальное инвестирование в человеческое развитие – важное условие появления спроса на механизмы участия со стороны граждан, что в свою очередь усиливает готовность органов власти к внедрению инноваций. С другой стороны, электронное участие само по себе является воплощением социального инвестирования, направленным на усиление «обратной связи» общества по вопросам реализации социально-экономической политики. В статье тестируется данная взаимосвязь применительно к российским регионам. За последние годы в России появилось большое количество площадок электронного участия. Однако исследователи часто отмечают их недостаточную эффективность, а также существенные диспропорции в их развитии на региональном уровне. С помощью авторской методики оценки нами были получены данные о представленности и функциональном развитии каналов электронного участия в субъектах РФ. Полученные показатели были использованы в количественном исследовании. Результаты корреляционного и регрессионного анализа свидетельствуют о значимости человеческого потенциала и социальной ориентированности бюджетов регионов для развития электронного участия по сравнению с другими потенциальными предикторами: развитием политических институтов, качеством государственного управления, а также расходами на ИКТ. Нельзя утверждать, что человеческое развитие с неизбежностью приводит к росту «спроса» на электронное участие со стороны граждан или «предложения» подобных механизмов со стороны органов власти. Однако наш анализ позволяет сделать вывод о важности социальной политики для его развития: помимо вложений в цифровую инфраструктуру, необходимо активное социальное инвестирование в человеческий потенциал. К возможным направлениям инвестиций здесь можно отнести выравнивание возможностей через повышение качества жизни незащищенных социальных групп, развитие социальных программ для активного населения, выравнивание региональных диспропорций, а также инвестирование в цифровые компетенции граждан и общественные инициативы.

A digital twin smart city for citizen feedback

A digital twin is a digital representation of a physical process, person, place, system or device. Digital twins were originally designed to improve manufacturing processes using simulations that have highly accurate models of individual components. However, with increasingly large and accurate building information models (BIM) combined with big data generated from IoT sensors in a smart city, it is now possible to create digital twin smart cities. An accurate 3D model of a city can be published online and walked around by the public to view proposed changes in urban planning and policy. This allows for easier dissemination and transparency to the public before putting these decisions into practice. This open and public model allows for an additional virtual feedback loop where citizens can interact and report feedback on planned changes in the city. Citizens can also interact with components to tag and report problems in their area. The digital twin also allows for additional experimentation where 3D data is necessary, such as flood evacuation planning. In this paper, we demonstrate a public and open digital twin of the Docklands area in Dublin, Ireland and show how this model can be used for urban planning of skylines and green space allowing users to interact and report feedback on planned changes.

Performance Information, Racial Bias, and Citizen Evaluations of Government: Evidence from Two Studies

AbstractSocial accountability reforms emphasize expanding performance information disclosure and incorporating citizen feedback into performance evaluations of public organizations. However, social accountability scholarship has largely ignored possible discriminatory implications of performance information use despite calls for more social equity research. We look to bridge these two literatures, arguing that increasing exposure to performance information can actually activate racial bias in citizen feedback. Using two samples of White MTurk participants residing in the United States, we test this argument in a Negative Performance Information Study (n = 800) and a Positive Performance Information Study (n = 800). In the Negative Performance Information Study, we find increased exposure to negative performance information triggers more negative performance evaluations of public organizations led by Black public managers, but not White public managers, and strengthens preferences to fire Black public managers, but not White public managers. In the Positive Performance Information Study, we find increased exposure to positive performance information has no impact on performance evaluations of Black, nor White public managers but strengthens preferences to reappoint White, but not Black public managers. These findings suggest increasing exposure to performance information triggers racial bias in performance evaluations and preferences for holding public managers accountable.