Participation through tech: a new era for local democracy

GovTech Europe speaks with the CEO and founder of a company that dedicates itself to helping citizens connect with their local governments. Tech developments are what fuel this connection, he explains.

There’s a persistent issue in many localities within European democracies. It’s called the “same ten people problem,” and it can distort the opinion of the majority of people in that area – garbling their true political wishes.

The issue stems from the more traditional ways of working within local democracies, according to Wietse Van Ransbeeck, co-founder and CEO of Brussels-based CivTech company CitizenLab.

“The main concern is that when governments run a town hall meeting, you get the same ten people participating,” he explained in an exclusive interview with GovTech Europe.

“This gives you a very skewed view and misrepresentation of what your community is actually thinking, because you only ever get the ‘loudest voices in the room’.”

He warned that despite their input, these “same ten people” could never be assured to truly represent their community, leading to a difficulty where, although voices are being heard – and although they matter – what they’re saying may not reflect the voices of many others. 

It is one of the reasons why Van Ransbeeck founded CitizenLab, an organisation dedicated to the public sector and enhancing the reach of local administration. It aims to make this process more transparent, more collaborative, and more effective – fuelled by tech solutions and many years’ worth of data.

In 2021, CitizenLab unveiled a report highlighting its impacts, based on feedback from over half of the 300+ government institutions that currently use its services.

“The very first important added value – which is clear from the impact report – is that we have enlarged the pool of people participating in local democratic efforts,” he explained.  

“Looking at our numbers, we are getting twelve times more participation than traditional methods.”

It was just one of several benefits he said have been seen right across its client base, which extends across six countries worldwide.

“The second benefit is in terms of inclusion,” he said. “60% of the residents participating in government discussions are under 45 years old. This is way younger than the age bracket you would expect at this level. Historically, this has been a pain point for governments, who found it harder to engage with youngsters, younger families, singles, etc.”

Alongside both of these benefits, Van Ransbeeck also praised the fact that two thirds of people using CitizenLab services said that they have never engaged with their governments before.

“It’s an entirely new pool of participants,” he said. “And these are citizens who, for the first time, are engaging with their government. It’s fantastic to see that online community developing; not just more people, but new people.”


CitizenLab believes that people can engage far more thoroughly with their local democratic institutions through the use of tech.

The tech behind the vision

CitizenLab’s aim is to enhance the connection between citizens and the elected officials who serve them. The firm argues that tech solutions open many new avenues on this front.

Its work involves allowing citizens to engage on topics such as planning, transport, community initiatives and budgets. This is done through tech solutions that allow things like survey responses, workshops and idea sharing – all managed through one central hub and all adapted for use in a government setting.

Ultimately, these functionalities produce a far greater amount of information than would have been seen if governments restricted themselves to old-style, town-hall formats. This was a welcome development, Van Ransbeeck said, but also a mammoth task to manage. 

“There’s an abundance of data,” he explained. “But it’s just so scattered. Information is all over the place, and it comes in via a lot of different channels. We need to turn data into insights. That’s a huge challenge.”

Because of this, one of CitizenLab’s main goals over the next few years was to “get some signal out of the noise.” It needed to be able to draw important conclusions from the many tech platforms that it had on offer, so that when government agencies were using them, they were being fed the right material. Van Ransbeeck described this as the “next important step.”

AI functionality that helped in getting “signal from noise” – like for example text analytics – was important, he said, “but I think the real challenge lies beyond technology.”

“It’s about how the human and computer interact,” he said. “We are investing a lot of time developing that functionality; from thousands of inputs, how do we get to the right conclusions, and how do we make sense of those conclusions?”

He warned that this was an enormous challenge to perfect, but said that ultimately, the benefits would shine through, and be a critical component of participatory decision-making.

Van Ransbeeck also drew attention to the integration of current communication software like WhatsApp into the participation effort.

It would be worthwhile, he said, to see how these channels might ultimately be used by citizens on a day-to-day basis. Not just talk with each other, but to engage with their governments or local public services.

“I think it will be interesting to see how more and more popular channels can contribute,” he said.

Participation in a pandemic

When it came to participatory democracy, COVID-19 provided extra fuel to an already-quickening pace of change.

According to CitizenLab, the firm began its journey in the mid-2010s, at a time when local governance still restricted itself to the traditional “town-hall” style of working, where there was little enthusiasm for more participation. Most government officials had yet to be convinced of the need to change, the firm said.

Attitudes began to shift as the decade wore on, and only accelerated when COVID-19 forced a massive worldwide shutdown.

“In the last few years, we have seen quite a boom in governments going digital,” said Van Ransbeeck.

“Right from the start of the pandemic, they immediately started scratching their heads thinking ‘okay, we depend on public meetings, now we need at-home meetings’. Sometimes, the switch was a legal requirement, sometimes it was out of local initiative.”

He indicated that as the pandemic began, there arose a “huge demand” for the expertise that CitizenLab could provide, in terms of new processes, new workflows, new tools that were needed amid the atmosphere of great change.

“We saw a lot of interest in our online workstations,” he went on. “And as for our online academy, we saw so much enthusiasm for our content and webinars.”

The future

Like many firms in the European GovTech space, CitizenLab is concentrating on the applicability of its solutions across continental borders.

There was a lot more work to be done in using tech to enhance European citizens’ democratic experience, Van Ransbeeck said, and the prospect of government agencies looking beyond their national boundaries, at success in neighbouring states, was exciting for the company.

“We have strong European roots” he said. “We’re based in Brussels, where we’re working on several European projects. What we need is to facilitate that exchange between different countries.”

CitizenLab continues its work in participatory democracy, and for the next few years will also be focusing on platform integration and other processing methods, so that the swathes of data it handles can transform into something with “centralised integrity.”


 

For design, could you put I2 and I3 together around here? Side by side. With the caption “CitizenLab believes that people can engage far more thoroughly with their local democratic institutions through the use of tech.”

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talk@unimedia.ie