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Closing the Feedback Loop: Can Technology Amplify Citizen Voices?
people don’t view official sources of information as reliable.” Any similar environment of secrecy, lack of trust, and apathy needs to be understood before the Bank implements an initiative. Civil society cultures also need to be taken into account. These intermediaries may have their own agenda, or governments may compromise their potential. For example, governments may “play ‘tricks’ on civil society in order to further confound their attempts to substantively engage, such as not providing advance agendas or opportunities to provide feedback. … Contributions [can be] primarily constrained to engaging in pro forma consultations with government on policies and programs” (Andre). ICT-enabled feedback mechanisms do not operate in isolation. The purpose, process, people involved, and enabling environment are critical. The questions are, What have we learned so far, and what recommendations can we provide for ICT-enabled mechanisms? We offer some answers in the final section.
Moving Forward: Recommendations to Maximize the Impact of Technology-Enabled Feedback Reflecting on the literature, survey, and interview analysis, we provide recommendations that are broadly applicable for future technology-enabled citizen feedback initiatives.
Why? First, establish and articulate for all stakeholders the purpose and development objective(s) that feedback is intended to serve. The first step in any citizen feedback initiative should be to make explicit the purpose of feedback for a given project as well as the project’s ultimate development objective for all relevant stakeholders. It is crucial to clarify the underlying reasons for collecting citizen feedback before designing the mechanism and engaging with stakeholders. Providing clarity of purpose will help to shape expectations, measure progress toward achieving broader goals, and inform the design of the feedback mechanism so as to facilitate those objectives. Second, broaden the objective of collecting feedback beyond enhancing project results. While citizen feedback is instrumental to project success, it has a value in and of itself as part of a broader effort to transform how citizens engage with civil society, government, and international donors. These initiatives should therefore include long-term policy reform that aims to build citizen capacity to engage and government capacity to provide effective services that meet citizens’ needs. In this way, citizen feedback initiatives should not only aim to enhance project performance, but also strive to transform feedback into citizen empowerment and to reform how projects are implemented in the future. At the same time, it is critical for all initiatives to support, rather than replace, the role of government and other stakeholders in engaging citizens to ensure local ownership of feedback mechanisms.
Closing the Feedback Loop • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-0191-4