In a new piece or the PS: Political Science & Politics, Hollie Russon-Gilman provides insight on “Civic Tech for Urban Collaborative Governance.” With the piece, Russon-Gilman seeks to “initiate a research agenda to understand how policy makers can leverage civic tech to enable new channels for citizens to participate in the decision making process.”
From the abstract:
“This article aims to contribute to a burgeoning field of ‘civic technology’ to identify precise pathways through which multi-stakeholder partnerships can foster, embed, and encourage more collaborative governance, outlining a research agenda to guide next steps. Instead of looking at technology as a civic panacea or, at the other extreme, as an irrelevant force, this article takes seriously both the democratic potential and the political constraints of the use of technology for more collaborative governance. The article begins by delineating contours of a civic definition of technology focused on generating public good, provides case study examples of civic tech deployed in America’s cities, raises research questions to inform future multi-stakeholder partnerships, and concludes with implications for the public sector workforce and ecosystem.”
