The democratic potential of civic applications

Abstract

Recently, digital democratic applications have increased in presence and scope. This study clarifies how civic applications – bottom-up technologies that use open data to solve governance and policy challenges – can contribute to democratic governance. While civic applications claim to deepen democracy, systematic frameworks for assessing the democratic potential of civic apps are missing, because apps are often evaluated against technical criteria. This study introduces a framework for evaluating the democratic potential of civic apps, distinguishing six criteria: inclusiveness, deliberation, influence, publicity, mobilization, and knowledge production. The framework is applied to a case study of the Finnish DataDemo competition in 2014 by analyzing the institutional design features of six civic applications. It is argued that in terms of democratic governance, the greatest potential of civic apps lies in enhancing publicity and mobilization, while they should not be expected to increase inclusiveness or direct influence in decisions. Thus, our study contributes to understanding how civic applications can improve democracy in times of open data abundance.

Keywords

Democratic governance democratic innovations civic applications open data contest civic engagement

1. Introduction

Last years have seen a bourgeoning of civic technologies that allows citizens, non-profits and businesses to reinvent government from the outside (McNutt et al., 2016, p. 153). The most concrete outcomes of this trend are civic applications (“civic apps”) that aim to solve public problems by leveraging government-provided and user-generated data (Desouza & Bhagwatwar, 2012). In urban governance, for example, civic apps are used to report problems in public utilities and infrastructure – such as FixMyStreet.com (Sjoberg et al., 2017) – identify cases of political corruption, and discuss salient local issues. Thus, by altering communication between the decision-makers and citizens in fundamental ways, the surge of civic apps raises important questions about their role in democratic governance.

Democratic theorists and political philosophers have engaged actively in conceptualizing and imagining the role of ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) in democratic systems (e.g. Barber, 1984, p. 274; Dryzek, 2010, p. 7; Fung et al., 2013; Rosanvallon, 2008; Smith, 2009, p. 143), but civic apps have received surprisingly little attention in political theory. Empirical scholars have investigated e-voting (Alvarez et al., 2009), online deliberation (Strandberg & Grönlund, 2012), crowdsourcing (Aitamurto & Landemore, 2016; Christensen et al., 2015), as well as online petitions and citizens’ initiatives (Bochel & Bochel, 2017; Christensen et al., 2017; Wright, 2012, 2015), but the field of bottom-up civic technology has been left to the “starry-eyed” technologists (Fung et al. 2013, p. 45).

While technologists are thrilled about endless capabilities, political scientists have warned that technology is not a “quick fix” for all democratic deficits (Dahlgren, 2007, p. 64; Norris, 2004, p. 221). The domain of civic apps, however, is likely to continue growing together with the open data movement. Therefore, both sides of the debate would benefit from conceptualization and common language that would enable us to identify, first, what civic apps actually do, and second, how their features and affordabilities can contribute to democratic governance. For political scientists, understanding of civic apps as part of democratic governance is crucial, because if “our definitions do not follow the structural trends occurring in reality, in the end we will simply be left out, using outdated categories and concepts” (Hooghe, 2014).

This article is an attempt, first, to open the discussion on civic apps to political theorists and scientists, and second, to create a framework for studying and evaluating democratic potential of civic apps. We want to distance ourselves from evaluating the myriad of civic app services; they range from transportation to food security. Similarly, the economic potential of apps has been invoked as part of other types of evaluations. In this article, we investigate particularly the democratic potential of civic apps by zooming into their design features. This approach has recently become popular in political theory, where democratic functions and consequences of different institutional designs are illustrated and compared (Fung, 2003; Warren, 2017). We start with a short background of civic apps and open data contests. We proceed with a summary of democratic values in civic apps. After introducing our cases, we evaluate their democratic potential and discuss their implications.

2. Civic apps: Definitions and history

Civic apps take a starting point in the “Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government” that unleashed the potential of open data for civic engagement. In it, President Obama asked government agencies to make their data available to the public at large. The goal was two-fold. First, the availability of open data aimed to increasing transparency of public agencies and promote citizens’ trust in public institutions. Second, the aim was to inspire a wide array of stakeholders to use open data and build services for citizens.

Civic apps are either mobile or web-based applications that use open data to solve governance and policy challenges of shared civic importance (Desouza & Bhagwatwar, 2012; Johnson & Robinson, 2014). In this article, we further elaborate this definition and detail that the apps are produced in conjunction with government open data and identify the civic app developers as savvy technology users. Our definition is confined to service development with open data and excludes auxiliary services, such as open data discoverability, standards, and harmonization.

Civic apps position themselves at the intersection of innovation, procurement and engagement (Johnson & Robinson, 2014): they provide new services to citizens; unlock business potential – through the outsourcing of government procurement partly from citizens; and engage the public to partner with government agencies. Yet, even in this case, little attention is given to their role in democratic decision-making (Smith, 2009; Geissel & Joas, 2013). Civic apps such as FixMyStreet or SeeClickFix are excellent examples of bottom-up initiatives which build on open data and its integration into the public administration’s back-end office. These apps were built to allow citizens to report small code violations like graffiti, potholes and broken streetlights to their local governments. The apps use online maps and GPS sensors in mobile phones to position the report, offer possibilities to detail it by adding pictures, and track the submission through the city administration until completed. Users can follow who handles their request throughout the process. The simplicity of the concept has led to a series of replicating applications for different cities and countries around the world.

3. Open data and contests

Since the 2008 Apps4Democracy contest in Washington DC, governments and non-profits alike have hosted competitions in which the members of the civil society were invited to submit applications made with open data. With growing citizen apathy around the world, citizen involvement in government is seen as means to enhance transparency and trust, which are essentially democratic values. The name of the contest spoke volumes about the goals and aims of the expectations of open data.

Public agencies and governments have joined the open data surge making data available at record speeds. The European Union Open Data Portal (EUODP) is a one-stop-shop for 13 000 available datasets (https://data.europa.eu/euodp/en/data). Besides the institutional imperative to release data in order to increase transparency and trust, there is also a growing need to capitalize on this – previously under-utilized – resource.

EUODP provides access to an expanding range of data from the European Union (EU) institutions and other EU bodies. One can use and reuse these data for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

EUODP provides access to data aiming to increase its use and unlock its economic potential. The portal is also designed to make the EU institutions and other bodies more open and accountable. Some 70 applications have been produced using EUODP datasets.

At national and local level, incentives to use the open data available are structured through contests, which spur innovation (Boudreau et al., 2011; Lee et al., 2016). In a typical app contest, several data sets are available and criteria established, against which resulting apps are judged. Winning apps are rewarded prizes, monetary or mentorship. Contests resemble crowd- or citizen-sourcing mechanisms (Nam, 2012; Brabham, 2013). Contrary to crowdsourcing initiatives, however, open-data competitions rarely define a problem to be solved, but rather give app developers the freedom to come up with creative uses of the data available. Like Sarasvathy’s (2001) entrepreneurs, the citizens who participate in app contests look at the data and imagine creative ways of working with what is available.

Citizens participate in open data contests creating valuable repositories of new services, software code or visualizations. In co-creating public services, governments also look at the roles and capacities of their citizens and investigate ways in which they can cooperate. This also signals a move towards more inclusive, open innovation governance structures. On the purpose-outcome continuum, when the goal is to increase transparency with open data (Lee et al., 2016), an important question becomes a matter of institutional design: how do the cutting-edge apps produced with open-data contribute to achieving these goals through open data contests? The literature on contest design offers entire lists of requirements, among which items of contestant motivation, personas as intermediaries for user needs, assurance and provision of user value, use and reuse of the code (see Hjalmarsson & Rudmark, 2012).

Civic app competitions attract software developers and other creative minds either individually or in teams. The motivation to participate is a subject of continued debate: citizens participate because it is fun and they enjoy it or because they are interested in a particular topic (Juell-Skielse et al., 2014; Lee et al., 2016), yet that constitutes hardly a lasting ground for long-term commitment. App contest organizers do struggle with keeping citizens engaged throughout the process, particularly towards the implementation phase of policy (idem). Notwithstanding these shortcomings, the crowdsourcing initiatives employed by public agencies add “two new virtues (from the people and with the people) to the three classical cornerstone principles of democracy (of the people, by the people, and for the people).” (Nam, 2012). Recent studies have contrasted between “developers”, who are technologically savvy and “citizens” or “civic innovators” referring to non-developer citizens who take part in open data contests (Almirall et al., 2014, p. 395).

A distinction has been made between first- and second-generation civic apps (Lee et al., 2016). In the first contests, app developers exploited certain data sets over others, the prize money was symbolic, and limited app adoption and support by governments; from their perspective, their involvement ended at data publication (ibid., p. 85). The second generation of civic app contests took a much stronger governance approach and implemented a series of changes, among which formulating specific problem statements to direct developer attention, embedded the developers into the city administration to understand the workflow, encouraged bottom-up sources of data in addition to the available ones and open-source coding. In terms of commitments to adopting of the apps, the task was still left to developers, who struggled to advertise their apps to other cities and standardize data found in different cities’ repositories (Lee et al., 2016).

Valuable as they are, citizens are not the discrete stakeholder category of public open innovation. The idea of a community of practice is hardly new (Lave & Wenger, 1991), but the interest they receive as part of the civic apps is (Eyler-Werve, 2012). This is an informal network of stakeholders, including non-profits and for-profits, developers and public agencies who use the data available. Eyler-Werve (2012, p. 8) argues that the benefits of civic apps are hard to quantify, yet they do achieve goals such as accountability, government efficiency, and economic development.

Next, we introduce normative criteria against which, we argue, the democratic potential of apps can be judged. As we consider apps a specific instance of “technology”, the next section also discusses the role of technology in democratic theory. After that, we discuss the theoretical underpinnings of democratic criteria in our framework, and identify design features that are important for their realization.

4. Democratic potential of civic apps

It is well known that ICTs have some democratic potential. The concept of e-democracy is defined as attempts to enhance democratic processes with the use of ICTs (Vedel, 2006, p. 226), bearing thus a clearly positive connotation. In general, technology can change the landscape of two archetypes of political action: communication and participation (e.g. Hoffman et al., 2013; Verba et al., 1995), the former referring to dissemination of information between parties (Hoffman, 2012) and the latter referring to activities that aim at influencing government action (Verba et al., 1995, p. 38).

According to Benjamin Barber (1998, p. 584), the promises of ICTs include facilitating deliberation and participation across physical distances that used to make large-scale direct democracy impossible. In terms of participation, Barber visions (1984, p. 274) that telecommunications technology could be used to facilitate town hall meetings on a regional and national scale. In theory, ICTs could allow people to vote directly on issues in online referendums, creating thus a “digital direct democracy” (Fung et al., 2013). They could improve participation also by allowing citizens to come together to accomplish common goals like traditional associations do, and to produce public goods complementing the work of government (ibid.).

In terms of communication, ICTs are a double-edged sword for political theorists. Barber (1998, p. 584) places high hopes for ICTs’ potential to enhance lateral communication among the citizens and open access to information. According to him, it is both harder and easier to provide and access information about political and economic issues in an information society (Barber, 1984, p. 278). On one hand, the challenge is that there is more data and they are more specific. On the other hand, it is easier because the access to these data does not require a specific location (279). More recently, Fung et al. (2013) have argued that by accelerating the flow and lowering the costs of communication, ICTs have the potential to create a more “muscular public sphere”, especially in non-democratic countries.

The pace of technological innovation means that Barber’s (1984) scenarios of electronic town hall meetings and platforms for vital civic information are now not only possible but actually exist. Civic apps that this article studies are one example of new technical tools that are claimed to improve democracy. Civic apps can possess features that enhance communication and participation (c.f. Hoffman et al., 2013). All civic apps leverage some sort of data (Desouza et al., 2012, p. 110), but these data can either be made open by the government or other organizations, or produced by the users themselves, or a combination of the two. For example, the globally spread FixMyStreet.com and its variants build on open geographic data (i.e. city maps) but allow users to create their own data on top of that (i.e. reports on broken street lamps etc.). This feature for users to report their observations and channel them to the responsible authorities makes these types of apps examples of participation. If civic apps would, however, focus on making government information more accessible and readable, spreading information on political issues among the citizenry, or revealing malpractices in government, they should be considered primarily as communication. We should thus understand civic apps as fundamentally communicative instruments that may or may not have participatory qualities.

In this article, we take an institutional design approach and acknowledge that individual civic apps can realize different combinations of “democratic goods” to different extents (c.f. Smith 2009, p. 162), depending on their institutional design features (Fung, 2004, p. 232). Here we follow the wider research agenda of democratic innovations, as part of which empirical political researchers have become interested in testing whether real-life examples of e-democracy and ICTs live up to normative standards associated with other democratic institutions. Earlier studies have laid out a number of normative criteria or ‘goods’ for evaluating new democratic instruments (Fung, 2015; Geissel & Joas, 2013; Newton, 2012). Building on this literature, we conceptualize a framework for evaluating civic apps from the democratic perspective. Next we discuss six criteria1

¹
Names of these criteria vary in the democratic innovations literature, as pointed out by Geissel (2012, 210). For example, influence is called effectiveness (Geissel 2012) or popular control (Smith, 2009) in other instances.

that are included in our framework: inclusiveness, deliberation, influence, publicity, mobilization and knowledge production. Three first ones of these criteria we draw directly from democratic innovations literature, as they appear in most previous evaluations of new participatory mechanisms (e.g. Fung, 2015; Geissel, 2012, 2010). The nature and purpose of civic apps, however, calls attention to three other types of democratic goods that have received less attention in evaluations of democratic innovations: publicity, mobilization and knowledge production. In the following, we will discuss how they may be realized through civic apps.

4.1 Inclusiveness

Inclusion is a core democratic value and it entails that those affected by collective decisions should be included in the process of making these decisions (Warren, 2017). In theory, civic apps can be accessible to large masses of citizens regardless of their physical location, thus increasing inclusiveness. Democratic theorists, however, distinguish two types if inclusiveness (Young, 2000): external inclusion refers to equal possibilities to participate, whereas internal inclusion refers to actual equality of voice within the participatory process. Civic apps could be designed to serve both types of inclusiveness. By being open to anyone by design, civic apps allow equal use possibilities. The ‘anyone’ in this case is, however, are those people who have physical access to the Internet and devices. Digital divide entails that not all people are included in this population (Norris, 2001).

Second, civic apps can be designed to ensure that among those who use the app, all groups and voices of the society are actually present to some extent. Their potential to enhance inclusiveness therefore depends on the extent to which they target groups that are in the risk of marginalization. This could mean, for example, moderation of discussions, or data on the socio-demographic and attitudinal characteristics of the users. Empirical evidence has found that tools for e-participation often attract citizens who are already politically alert, active and skilled, providing thus no new channels for expressing minority opinions or other more silent voices in the society (Bengtsson & Christensen, 2009; Karlsson, 2012). We must therefore assume that civic apps may mobilize previously passive groups of citizens but at the same time create new inequalities in participation (Lidén, 2013, p. 244). As Liston and colleagues (Liston et al., 2013, p. 470) sum up the empirical evidence, “inclusiveness and the distribution of access to technology are the Achilles heels of efforts to use the Internet to support deeper democracy”. Digital divides may also show signs of closure. For instance, May and Ross’ (2018) case-study of the FixMyTransport application showed that participation in the app was democratic: it attracted a representative sample of the UK population.

4.2 Deliberation

Deliberation means giving and listening to reasons of collective decisions prior to the moment of decision-making (Warren, 2017). Deliberation helps people to recognize their preferences and reduce cognitive biases, and increases empathy and mutual understanding through perspective-taking (Dryzek, 2009). The deliberative potential of ICT-assisted participatory instruments lies in that they can provide easy and equal access to information and different opinions, as well as enable discussion across physical borders. It seems, however, that democratic innovations based on ICTs have not yet succeeded in democratizing political participation to the extent to which democracy theorists have hoped. For example, they perform poorly in promoting considered judgment and genuine dialogue (Smith, 2009, p. 161). In the particular case of apps, their two-way communication functions need to be further developed as evidence has showed they mostly tend to communicate information one-way (Ertiö, 2015). Furthermore, applications that enable discussion among the citizens are often dominated by discussions with like-minded people, where no exchange of viewpoints exists (Sunstein, 2009). Thus, if civic apps were to enhance deliberation, they would have to include features that allow discussion among the app users, and ideally, these discussions would be facilitated. Apps could also have deliberative potential if they were specifically designed to feed into public debate in different media.

4.3 Influence

Participatory democrats have stressed that citizens should be able to participate in the making of collective decisions in a meaningful and influential way (Pateman, 1970). These ideas stem from responsiveness as a core democratic value, which implies that policies should reflect the views and preferences of those who are bound by them (Warren, 2009). Influence in the content of policies can, however, take different forms. At one extreme, we may talk about popular control when citizens have direct authority over political or administrative decisions, such as in binding referendums. At the other end of the continuum, we find informal uptake of citizens’ proposals, when respective authorities provide a response to citizens’ inputs. Forms of collaborative governance, where citizens and government officials solve problems together, lie somewhere in between the two extremes. ICTs have disappointed the most enthusiastic participatory democrats, because they rarely directly authorize citizens (Smith, 2009, p. 161). Not many apps in the Desouza et al. (2012, p. 127) study had features of actual influence, either. The extent to which civic apps contribute to influence in democratic governance depends on whether they have built-in linkages to actual decision-making bodies. Desouza et al. (2012) emphasize that apps should have possibilities for tracking the steps taken by governments to resolve the identified problems. Another way to design influence in civic apps could be to establish a feedback feature that requests and publishes feedback from relevant authorities. Only few of the apps discussed by Ertiö (2015) enable strategic empowerment. When empowerment is coupled with information flow, e.g. sustaining dialogue, examples were rare (Ertiö, 2015).

4.4 Publicity

Access to information concerning government activities and decisions is necessary for citizens to hold politicians and other decision-makers accountable. In recent years it has become common to demand for more transparency, and the open data movement described in the beginning of this article has been a primus motor in this development. The transparency enthusiasts argue that “disclosure of information about government institutions, policies, and programs empowers citizens to hold officials responsible for their spending and performance, thereby reducing corruption and mismanagement of public resources” (Kosack & Fung, 2014, p. 66). Transparency can be defined as the extent to which there is information available on government activities, but we can also distinguish it from publicity that refers to the way these information are actually made accessible to the public (Lindstedt & Naurin, 2010). Political theorists have emphasized the potential of ICTs for exercising democratic surveillance (Rosanvallon, 2008) and “truth-based advocacy” (Fung et al., 2013). Civic apps can be used to reveal salient and surprising facts to the public, which helps people to form an opinion on the trustworthiness and truthfulness of government officials. These fact releases – such as Wikileaks – shape public opinion and exert pressure on the decision-makers to change actual policies. Civic technology can thus open up a new channel to supervise government officials (Amichai-Hamburger et al., 2008), which eventually contributes to maintaining democratic accountability. Previous studies on civic apps have found that they can also work as effective whistle-blowers and tools of counter-democracy in corrupted political systems (Ermoshina, 2014). In their analysis of 20 civic applications in US cities, Desouza et al. (2012) find that all of them have improving information access as one of their goals. “While it might or might not be the primary goal of every application, it certainly emphasizes the fact that citizen apps are developed because people feel that accessing government data is a difficult task.” (ibid., p. 126). Therefore, if civic applications reveal new facts to the public, or visualize government or other open data into a more comprehensible format, they can enhance publicity in democratic governance.

4.5 Mobilization

By joining associations and social movements, people can form new “demoi around common issues and causes” in order to achieve collective goals (Warren, 2017). There is, however, a long tradition of political theory describing the different challenges of motivating citizens to join collective action (Olson, 1971). Lowering different costs related to mobilization is one approach to solve the challenge of collective action. ICTs have played an important role in this question, by reducing the costs of communication and costs of searching like-minded individuals, as well as lowering transaction costs of political donations (Fung et al., 2013, p. 40). Therefore, civic apps can be an important tool for political parties and advocacy groups to mobilize their constituents. Research has found that new media channels such as Facebook are powerful in mobilizing people to vote in elections (Jones et al., 2017). Cases from the Middle East and Latin America show that new media can play a significant role in mobilization for protests or even revolutions (Fung et al., 2013, p. 41). Civic apps can also be designed with this goal in mind, i.e. to mobilize masses to participate in demonstrations and protests (Amichai-Hamburger et al., 2008). Therefore, if civic apps have features that allow people to learn about or organize collective action, or invite others to join groups, movements or protests, they can contribute to mobilization. Further, the seamless combination of online and offline opportunities strengthens civic participation (e.g. Gil De Zúñiga & Valenzuela, 2011).

4.6 Knowledge production

Different forms of political participation share the fact that they produce knew knowledge to decision-making process. This epistemic approach to democratic processes has recently gained attention especially in democratic theory (Estlund, 2009; Landemore, 2017). Understanding of the term ‘knowledge’ varies from collective demands and preferences in the traditional Eastonian sense (Easton, 1965) to local knowledge (Fischer, 2000), i.e. citizens’ observations of their life and environment. Local knowledge, for example, is produced when citizens detect instances where policy implementation does not work, such as reporting of a dangerous crossing in their neighborhood. This is what Fung et al. (2013, p. 42) call the ‘social monitoring model’, where public agencies have harnessed citizens to spot public problems and bring those problems to the attention of relevant bodies by means of crowdsourcing. Recent studies on civic apps have found that their goals are indeed often related to knowledge production. Desouza et al. (2012) find that citizens’ opinion seeking and problem identification are the second most common goals of civic apps in their sample. Opinion seeking refers to features in applications that allow citizens to voice their opinions, whereas problem identification aims to make administration and government aware of problems in communities by giving citizens the tool to report about them (Desouza et al., 2012, p. 127). Drawing on previous work, Ertiö (2015) distinguishes between two types of data collected through apps: people-centric (citizens’ ideas and opinions) and environment-centric (characteristics of the environment). Thus, civic apps that either allow people to articulate their individual or collective wills, or report their observations on the implementation of policies, have potential for democratic knowledge production. In technical terms, user-generated data as a feature of apps may serve as an indicator of this potential.

The theoretical and empirical literature reviewed above suggests that while civic apps may perform poorly in promoting deliberation and direct decision-making by the citizens, and their relationship with inclusiveness is at best two-fold, they can have potential for other democratic tasks, such as publicity, mobilization, and knowledge production. In Table 1. we summarize the different democratic criteria and institutional design features in one framework that serves as a tool against which civic app designs can be evaluated.

Table 1
Framework for evaluating the democratic potential of civic apps

Democratic potential (sources)	Relevant institutional design features
Inclusiveness (Warren, 2017; Young, 2000)	Ensures equal participation of different groups within the app, pays attention to the representativeness of users, makes special efforts to enhance inclusion of marginal groups
Deliberation (Dryzek, 2009; Sunstein, 2009; Warren, 2017)	Allows discussion and dialogue among users or between users and authorities, ensures deliberative quality through in-app moderation
Influence (Pateman, 1970; Warren, 2009)	Links app activity to administrative or political processes, provides evidence of the uptake of the app’s outputs, provides feedback from administrative or political authorities
Publicity (Fung et al., 2013; Kosack & Fung, 2014; Rosanvallon, 2008)	Shares or affords easy access to information on government processes and policies, or the political rights of citizens
Mobilization (Fung et al., 2013; Olson, 1971; Warren, 2017)	Helps citizens to organize themselves for collective action, information about rights concerning collective action
Knowledge production (Estlund, 2009; Landemore, 2017)	Allows users to voice their opinions or observations, produces an expression of “collective will” to policy-makers

In reality, however, the framework criteria are linked to each other. The extent to which some democratic potential is realized, depends on how well the app serves other democratic tasks. For example, apps that contribute to mobilization and publicity may serve as incentives for citizens to participate in decision-making processes. Thus, they may contribute to the tasks of inclusiveness, deliberation and knowledge production indirectly. Publicity as the availability of information on government, also contributes to deliberation and knowledge production by allowing people to make more informed judgments and policy proposals (c.f. Kosack & Fung, 2014, p. 86). Inclusiveness, on the other hand, should also be seen as a starting point on which depends the quality of both deliberation and knowledge production. Political discussions online often take place among like-minded people, resulting in an echo-chamber instead of a venue for democratic deliberation. If individual users’ opinions are aggregated into a majority opinion, this can hardly be regarded as a “public opinion” if the group of participants is extremely biased. The last one of our criteria – influence – is also causally linked to the others, but in more unpredictable ways. The fact that civic apps are most often bottom-up instruments suggests their chances of influencing decisions are low by default, because participation tends to have most impact when the agenda is set by authorities themselves. The type of knowledge civic apps produce may, however, matter for their influence: more concrete proposals on technical details usually have better “success rates” than larger-scale policy proposals that for example deliberative forums often produce. Finally, in the era of new media and open data, truth based advocacy may have fast and dramatic impact on policy, such as in the case of Wikileaks. Thus, publicity enhanced by single civic apps may change policy directly, without the active involvement of citizens in large masses.

In the next section, we demonstrate how this framework can be applied to empirical analysis by conducting a qualitative case study of six civic app designs.

5. Embedded case study: DataDemo 2014

In order to illustrate the application of our theoretical framework, we conducted a case study of the Finnish DataDemo competition in 2014.2

²
Website http://datademo.fi/index.html%3Fp=317.html.

We chose six applications as our sub-cases, and analyzed the institutional design features of these applications with data from official documentation of the DataDemo contest. In this article, we follow an embedded case study research design and study multiple sub-units of analysis (Yin, 2003). In detail, our cases have been selected among the apps (embedded sub-units of analysis) listed in the DataDemo 2014 open data contest (case study). By focusing on one country we can keep the regulatory framework for open data constant. This gave us the possibility to make comparisons between different apps.

This competition had a specific focus on democracy development, thus the apps analyzed can be seen as typical examples of civic apps and analyzed against their democratic potential. All apps included in the competition were thematically relevant, but the sample size was too small to select the sub-units randomly. Our selection criteria included heterogeneity among the apps and opportunities to learn about the case (i.e. sufficient information about the institutional design features and functions). For these purposes, we selected apps with solid descriptions. Another criterion for case selection was the design stage of the apps, as we only included complete apps. The selection process yielded six apps, which we describe next. Our analysis consists of secondary data sampled from the contest webpage and its co-creation platform.3

Trello-board https://trello.com/b/Fsd9pHis/datademo-2-2014-ehdotukset.

5.1 ‘Indicator of Deliberative Democracy’ (Deliberatiivinen demokratiaindikaattori)

Do MPs live up to the promises made in the campaign? Even when citizens elect the candidates closest to their values, following up on what they do when in office is too tedious. Therefore, the purpose of this app is to help constituents re-engage with their representatives in an easy manner. The app uses data of past votes and forthcoming votes in plenary sessions of the Finnish Parliament (Eduskunta). In addition to the ability to follow, which MPs vote and discuss on issues that are of most importance to the user, the app invites users to vote on same issues that are on the parliamentary agenda. This way, the users can identify MPs that promote their views in practice, and not just at the level of political rhetoric. Shared affinities and controversies with MPs are also easier to comprehend. The app displays the actual votes of the MPs and opens the discussion on those decisions considered controversial.

5.2 ‘Rally app’ (Mielenosoitussovellus)

The Rally app aims to activate citizens by facilitating the organization of rallies and other public events. It enables users to create a rally, raise awareness of upcoming rallies and invite people to attend the rally. The app also serves as a platform to submit applications to public authorities in order to receive the official permit for organizing a demonstration. The app would also contain a discursive feature that would allow users to launch discussions on the topics of rallies. Links to official documents in the app would make it possible for users to familiarize themselves with the Finnish legislation concerning demonstrations and public meetings.

5.3 ‘Today in the Parliament’ website (Tänään eduskunnassa-sivusto)

The workings of the Finnish Parliament are made more user-friendly and simplified on the website of ‘Today in the Parliament’. The app that operates as a web page proposes three subpages that display different information contents: 1) A general part outlining the processes and activities of the Parliament by means of text and graphics, 2) Display of the current composition of the Parliament, and 3) Library of interlinked official documents.

5.4 ‘Visualization of Finnish MP’s Asset Declaration’ (Kansanedustajien sidonnaisuuksien visualisointi)

While MPs’ assets and contributions to their political campaigns are public information by Finnish law, the links between them and MPs’ political activities are invisible to the eye. This app addresses corruption by creating a visualization of the data available. By visualizing the data, the information is presented in a format that is easy to understand for the public at large. The app aims to make the data on campaign donations easily understandable by means of graphics, and later on link other types of financial data to individual MPs. These “hard data” could be complemented with newspaper articles from traditional media, categorized into three groups based on their orientation toward the MPs: positive, negative, and neutral. In the app developer’s words, the basic idea is to give citizens the tools to detect existing and potential cronyism.

5.5 ‘Where does our money go?’ (Minne meidän rahat katoavat?)

This app visualizes the costs of programs of the entire city of Helsinki – the capital of Finland – using pictures and graphs. This can be anything from the procurement of ambulances to larger infrastructure projects and culture facilities. The app uses data retrieved from the city’s economic facts-sheets in particular investments, incomes and expenses. The user can look for information either by units in city administration, types of programs, or the amount of money used. By visualizing financial data at the city level the app also aims to serve as a handbook into municipal finance.

5.6 ‘Whose city – master plan consultation’ (Kenen kaupunki-yleiskaavakyselyn aineistoa)

This app uses citizens’ responses gathered by the Department of Urban Planning in the City of Helsinki in preparation of its master plan 2050. The original data consist of a map-based survey among Helsinki residents that inquires about the development of the city as a whole, and has questions targeted to respondent’s neighborhood in particular. The data have been opened for reuse as part of the city’s commitment to transparency and open-data strategy. The aim of the application is two-fold: to uncover new dimensions in urban residents’ opinions, and on the other hand, to deepen the collaboration between urban planners and citizens. Users – both urban planners and citizens – can filter the answers by neighborhood or by topic, and obtain a clear visualization of the distribution of opinions and preferences in their neighborhood. In the future, new data would be collected with a second wave of the urban planning survey for the residents.

6. Results: Democratic potential of civic apps

6.1 ‘Indicator of Deliberative Democracy’ (Deliberatiivinen demokratiaindikaattori)

By being open to anyone, the app does not seem to contribute to inclusiveness. It has no obvious potential in enhancing direct influence in government, either, because the votes and discussions of its users are not systematically communicated to the Parliament. As the app takes the parliamentary agenda as a starting point for communication, it does not enable identification of new social problems, or production of new knowledge, either. As its name indicates, the app, however, aims to foster deliberation on controversial issues and issues “that are potentially harmful for the future of Finland”. The app would contain possibilities for users to discuss the topics parliamentary votes, thus contributing to reason giving and listening to different views. But as long as these discussions are not moderated, the quality of deliberations within the app is likely to be low. The basic idea of making individual MPs’ votes and parliamentary actions more visible and easily understandable is, however, a clear contribution to transparency and publicity of the decision-making. Knowledge on the votes of elected representatives facilitates individual judgments on representatives’ performance, and thus helps people to make more informed choices in the next elections.

6.2 ‘Rally app’ (Mielenosoitussovellus)

Demonstrations and rallies are a typical form of non-institutional participation (Brady et al., 1995), and thus they aim at influencing political decision-making. Depending on the formulation of the demand of protesters, demonstrations may even have direct impact in the decisions, if they succeed in changing government action in the demanded direction. Thus, the Rally app has potential to influence government, by helping to articulate protesters’ demands. While the app encourages and facilitates anyone to join rallies, it has potential to increase inclusiveness in democratic governance. The target users of the app are those who support the causes identified by other individuals. Demonstrations and other bottom-up activity such as citizens’ initiatives can be seen as a way for minorities to bring issues to the political agenda. Therefore, by giving voice to views that are not represented by ruling political parties, they enhance democratic inclusiveness in decision-making.4

⁴
Assuming that the cause of the rally is democratic and inclusive, and not, for example, aimed at restricting the rights of other minorities.

Second, the basic principle of creating a rally and inviting people to attend enables the identification and articulation of public problems or collective goals. By communicating the ideas of rallies and upcoming demonstrations to potentially thousands of people, the app will increase the number of people in these events, and thus the power of the political message these events send to decision-makers. Integrating the creation of a rally within the app with attending rallies offline increases citizens’ opportunities to participate and strengthens their long-term commitment. Third, the app has a discursive feature built into it, for the purpose of creating discussions on rally topics. Deliberation is not, however, facilitated in order to ensure considered judgment. In the case of social movements and demonstrations, deliberation that we may see is likely to take place within opinion enclaves, because the app specifically aims to engage people who think the same way about the goal or problem at hand. Making legislation and official documents concerning the rights to protest easily available – as the app promises – would also contribute to publicity of the democratic process. Although the app does not aim to reveal cases of corruption or backgrounds of substantive policies, it could create awareness of basic democratic rights. Finally, and most obviously, the app would make its main contribution to mobilization into collective action.

6.3 ‘Today in the Parliament’ website (Tänään eduskunnassa-sivusto)

The communication in this app would consist of one-way flow of information from the Parliament’s website to any interested citizen. It is thus quite evident that it would not serve the tasks of inclusiveness or influence. It would not contribute to knowledge production or deliberation, either, because the app does not contain any feature for citizens to voice their opinions or observations, or reflect on those given by others. The sole contribution of the app is, therefore, to enhance publicity, by educating citizens and especially those that are not well aware of the basic processes of parliamentary decision-making. By providing information on both the work of the Parliament and the persons who use parliamentary power, the app aims to increase political knowledge on democratic institutions and incumbents, which are also two common objects of political trust.

6.4 ‘Visualization of Finnish MP’s Asset Declaration’ (Kansanedustajien sidonnaisuuksien visualisointi)

Based on its design principles, this app visualizing MPs’ asset declarations and campaign donations would be very similar to the Today in the Parliament described above. As it does not have features that allow discussion on the revealed facts, it cannot contribute to deliberation. It has some potential for knowledge production by allowing the users to share knowledge and link news material concerning politicians’ assets and donations. Its main contribution is, however, in increasing publicity of democratic governance by revealing new information on the connections between money and political power. This helps citizens to make judgments on the accountability and trustworthiness of MPs, and sanction those politicians whose networks point towards cronyism. Although the app does not allow citizens to act on the basis on this new information for (example organizing rallies to raise awareness of cases of corruption), these types of surveillance applications are still open calls for anyone in the public – citizens, media or politicians – to take action on the basis of the revealed facts. Thus, they may serve as incentives for mobilization and collective action.

6.5 ‘Where does our money go?’ (Minne meidän rahat katoavat?)

The main purpose of this app is to increase awareness on where the municipal money goes, and uncover potential weaknesses in financial accounting of the city. Thus, it contributes to publicity in democratic governance. The visualization as such can help people to understand the complexity and scale of municipal decision-making and finances, but the feature of revealing programs that are poorly or suspiciously accounted allows citizens to call politicians’, fellow citizens’ or media’s attention on these cases. ‘Where does our money go’ and similar apps therefore have potential to motivate mobilization, although the organization of collective action has to be done elsewhere. Like many other visualization apps, it does not contain features that would enhance inclusiveness, knowledge production by the users, direct influence in government, or deliberation among the users.

6.6 ‘Whose city – master plan consultation’ (Kenen kaupunki-yleiskaavakyselyn aineistoa)

First of all, this app clearly has a participatory purpose because it collects citizens’ opinions on their living environment. It thus seems to contribute to knowledge production and influence, because the survey responses are supposed to feed directly into the work of urban planning department. Although participation in the map-based surveys is open to all residents, the possibility to filter it at the neighborhood level allows city officials to place special emphasis on the needs of the less well-off neighborhoods. While the app does not contain discursive features that could contribute to deliberation, it aims to create public awareness of what other citizens think about issues in local government and politics. This way, it can contribute to understanding of different and conflicting views in the public sphere, which is a prerequisite for democratic deliberation. The second main contribution of this app is the publicity of one

Table 2
Democratic potential of six civic apps in the DataDemo contest 2014

Civic app Democratic potential	Indicator of delibera- tive democracy	Rally app	Today in the Parliament	Visualization of Finnish MP’s Asset Declaration	Where does our money go?	Whose city – master plan consultation
Inclusiveness	• Open to all	• Open to all • Additionally, enables sustained effort to the voice of marginalized or underrepresented social groups	• Open to all	• Open to all	• Open to all	• Open to all residents • Attention to the needs of less well-off neighborhoods
Deliberation	• Helps identify shared affinities and controversies with MPs • Allows discussion on issues on the parliamentary agenda • At times, discussion quality may be low because of the lack of moderation	• Discursive feature to discuss rally topics • Lacks in-app moderation	NA	NA	NA	• Visualizes others ideas about their urban environment • Helps citizens under- stand different and conflicting views
Influence	• No contact between the app and decision-making bodies	• Aims to influence political decision- making • Influence is conting- ent on the number of participants and issue salience	• Does not aim to influence political decision- making	• Does not aim to influence political decision- making	• Does not aim to influence political decision- making	• Deepen collaboration between urban planners and citizens • Survey responses feed directly into the work of the planning department

Civic app Democratic potential

Indicator of delibera- tive democracy

Rally app

Today in the Parliament

Visualization of Finnish MP’s Asset Declaration

Where does our money go?

Whose city – master plan consultation

Inclusiveness

•

Open to all

•

Open to all

•

Additionally,

enables sustained

effort to the voice

of marginalized or

underrepresented

social groups

•

Open to all

•

Open to all

•

Open to all

•

Open to all residents

•

Attention to the

needs of less well-off

neighborhoods

Deliberation

•

Helps identify shared affinities and controversies with MPs

•

Allows discussion on issues on the parliamentary agenda

•

At times, discussion quality may be low because of the lack of moderation

•

Discursive feature

to discuss rally

topics

•

Lacks in-app

moderation

•

Visualizes others

ideas about their

urban environment

•

Helps citizens under-

stand different and

conflicting views

Influence

•

No contact between the app and decision-making bodies

•

Aims to influence

political decision-

making

•

Influence is conting-

ent on the number

of participants and

issue salience

•

Does not aim

to influence

political decision-

making

•

Does not aim

to influence

political decision-

making

•

Does not aim

to influence

political decision-

making

•

Deepen collaboration between urban planners and citizens

•

Survey responses feed directly into the work of the planning department

Table 2, continued
Civic app Democratic potential	Indicator of delibera- tive democracy	Rally app	Today in the parliament	Visualization of Finnish MP’s Asset Declaration	Where does our money go?	Whose city – master plan consultation
Publicity	• Displays individual MPs’ plenary session votes on laws and bills • Makes politicians’ performance public	• Links to official documents • Information on basic democratic rights • Raises public awareness of the issue	• Visualizes parliamentary activities, composition, and official documents • Raises public awareness on democratic institutions and incumbents	• Visualization of MP’s assets and campaign dona- tions • Easy to underst- and for the general public	• Visualization of municipal budget flows • Reveals progra- ms that are poor- ly accounted • Calls politici- ans’, fellow citizens’ and media attention	• Survey data opened for re-use • Publicity of citizen feedback
Mobilization	NA	• Formally applying for a permit to organize a rally • Inviting people to join collective action • Allows users to express interest in joining rallies	NA	• Open call for collective action and media atten- tion by ‘sham- ing’ politicians whose networks point towards cronyism	• Open call for collective action and media attention by putting suspicious prog- rams into spotlight	NA
Knowledge production	• Parliamentary agenda as a starting point • No ‘public opinion’ articulated to decision-makers	• Produces a clear political message	NA	NA	NA	• Aggregates opinions for the whole population and sub-populations • Opinions also by respondent group and topic area

type of background information for urban planning – namely citizens’ feedback. Participatory instruments are used widely particularly in the area of urban planning, but the opinions and ideas that citizens communicate to public officials are not always made public nor easily accessible to other citizens.

In Table 2, we summarize the democratic potential of these six apps.

7. Discussion and conclusions

In this article, we have assessed the different ways in which civic applications may contribute to democratic governance. The article offers a framework for evaluating the democratic potential of other civic apps. The framework builds on the following normative standards of democratic institutions: inclusiveness, deliberation, influence, publicity, mobilization and knowledge production. In the empirical section, we show how zooming into the institutional design features of civic apps can shed light on their potential contribution to democratic governance. More specifically, we analyzed apps registered in an open data contest (final prototype) rather than their real-life deployment (finished product or service). The data used in the contest came from public, official records, which we therefore consider legitimate in the Finnish case.

Our preliminary mapping of democratic potential of civic applications supports earlier evidence suggesting that they do not necessarily deepen inclusive or influential citizen participation in policy-making. Civic apps are open to all citizens, and in most cases require no registration or identification. Therefore, they are prone to the problems of self-selection and participation by the most interested and active citizens. The bottom-up nature of civic apps also means that they are not linked to formal decision-making arenas. We should not, therefore, expect that civic apps solve the problems of democratic inclusiveness and influence.

Second, civic apps developed on open data have vast potential to enhance transparency and publicity of democratic governance, and enable mobilization into collective action. While these democracy aspects have been previously undertaken through traditional media and campaign recruitment strategies, our study shows how ordinary citizens can use a suit of ICT tools to accomplish them, including visualizations, linking dispersed data sets or holding authorities accountable online. These accounts show the potential of apps as specific instances of technology to serve as means to specific ends, which together enhance democratic potential. Our contribution in this study has been to tease these democracy-enabling design features apart and analyze their contribution to an overarching goal.

Third, our results are mixed in terms of the deliberative potential of civic apps, as well as their role in producing new knowledge for decision-making. Apps may be well suited to raise public awareness and shape public debate through different media. Their potential in fostering considered judgment among individual users is, however, very limited. Some apps may provide features that allow discussion among the users, but the quality of deliberation remains low if these discussions are not moderated. Therefore, the deliberative capacity of civic applications seems to be related to deliberation in the public sphere, by feeding into discussions in traditional and social media. As previous research has shown, not all apps support two-way communication, either. In many cases, there is no possibility for citizens to voice their opinions or observations – in other words, they do not support knowledge production within the app. If these features existed, however, civic apps may produce useful information for agenda-setting, policy formulation as well as policy evaluation stage, by aggregating individual opinions into public opinion, or harnessing citizens’ local knowledge.

Our results on the democratic potential of civic apps open new research avenues too. An underlying dilemma of the availability of open data relates to the agency-structure dichotomy. Given the open data app developers had access to, they could have created different apps (agency); the available data may have only enabled e.g. awareness raising rather than deliberation (structure). Second, the fact that the app contest had rules that structured participation and led to expected behavior (citizens developing open data applications) opens the discussion on civic apps as institutions for participation. From an institutional perspective, the change over time civic app types undergo can be charted in a systematic way, which could increase understanding of whether a shift from democracy development with open data as initially envisioned occurred. Furthermore, although we have investigated the specific case of bottom-up civic applications, we are confident that our framework lends itself well for evaluating the potential of participatory technologies developed by other organizations, such as startups with their e-participation applications, or national government with their online participation platforms.5

⁵

Such as the Finnish examples of www.otakantaa.fi or www.kansalaisaloite.fi.

To conclude, we have merely scratched the surface in understanding how civic apps may or may not contribute to democratic governance. Based on our study, application developers can now begin to think about ways to enhance inclusiveness of civic apps, support deliberation among the users, and embed civic apps into actual democratic decision-making processes. Political scientists, on the other hand, can begin to better understand what possibilities civic technologies have to offer for political action in democratic governance.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland (project ‘Democratic Reasoning’, decision number 274305) and Strategic Research Council at the Academy of Finland projects ‘Participation in Long-Term Decision-Making’ (decision numbers 312671 & 312676) and ‘Digital Disruption of Industry’ (decision number 314171). The authors wish to thank two anonymous referees, and the participants of the workshop ”Political trust and engagement” convened at the Annual Conference of FPSA 2017, and participants of the Political Science research seminar at the University of Turku, for their comments and remarks during the early stages of this manuscript.

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The democratic potential of civic applications

Abstract

Keywords

1. Introduction

2. Civic apps: Definitions and history

3. Open data and contests

4. Democratic potential of civic apps

1 Names of these criteria vary in the democratic innovations literature, as pointed out by Geissel (2012, 210). For example, influence is called effectiveness (Geissel 2012) or popular control (Smith, 2009) in other instances.

4.2 Deliberation

4.3 Influence

4.4 Publicity

4.5 Mobilization

4.6 Knowledge production

Table 1 Framework for evaluating the democratic potential of civic apps

2 Website http://datademo.fi/index.html%3Fp=317.html.

5.2 ‘Rally app’ (Mielenosoitussovellus)

5.3 ‘Today in the Parliament’ website (Tänään eduskunnassa-sivusto)

5.4 ‘Visualization of Finnish MP’s Asset Declaration’ (Kansanedustajien sidonnaisuuksien visualisointi)

5.5 ‘Where does our money go?’ (Minne meidän rahat katoavat?)

5.6 ‘Whose city – master plan consultation’ (Kenen kaupunki-yleiskaavakyselyn aineistoa)

6. Results: Democratic potential of civic apps

6.1 ‘Indicator of Deliberative Democracy’ (Deliberatiivinen demokratiaindikaattori)

6.2 ‘Rally app’ (Mielenosoitussovellus)

4 Assuming that the cause of the rally is democratic and inclusive, and not, for example, aimed at restricting the rights of other minorities.

6.4 ‘Visualization of Finnish MP’s Asset Declaration’ (Kansanedustajien sidonnaisuuksien visualisointi)

6.5 ‘Where does our money go?’ (Minne meidän rahat katoavat?)

6.6 ‘Whose city – master plan consultation’ (Kenen kaupunki-yleiskaavakyselyn aineistoa)

Table 2 Democratic potential of six civic apps in the DataDemo contest 2014

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

References

¹
Names of these criteria vary in the democratic innovations literature, as pointed out by Geissel (2012, 210). For example, influence is called effectiveness (Geissel 2012) or popular control (Smith, 2009) in other instances.

Table 1
Framework for evaluating the democratic potential of civic apps

²
Website http://datademo.fi/index.html%3Fp=317.html.

⁴
Assuming that the cause of the rally is democratic and inclusive, and not, for example, aimed at restricting the rights of other minorities.

Table 2
Democratic potential of six civic apps in the DataDemo contest 2014