Civic Technology

Civic technology, or civic tech for short, is technology that enables engagement, participation or enhances the relationship between the people and government by enhancing citizen communications and public decision, improving government delivery of service, and infrastructure. It encompasses mainly information technology and includes civic applications, platforms supporting government bodies, institutions and other software that enables those goals. Civic technology has had increasing promise and importance with time. In the Information Age, digital communications have become the foundation for political and economic exchanges. As advanced technologies have become commonplace in society and available throughout the population, many local governments and officials have begun utilizing them for public outreach and feedback. Specifically, the Internet is being used more for communication between governing officials and citizens.

Civic technology is contested to a certain extent, especially with regards to companies engaged in the sharing economy, such as Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb. For example, Airbnb's ability to provide New York residents with housing during the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy could be considered a form of civic technology. However, Nathaniel Heller, Managing Director of the Research for Development Institute's Governance Program contends that for-profit platforms definitively fall outside of the scope of civic technology: Heller has said that "while citizen-to-citizen sharing is indeed involved, the mission of these companies is focused on maximizing profit for their investors, not any sort of experiment in building social capital." From a goal perspective, civic technology can be understood as “the use of technology for the public good”.

Citizens are also now given access to their representatives through social media. They are able to express their concerns directly to government officials through sites like Twitter and Facebook. There have even been past cases of online voting being a polling option for local elections, which have seen vastly increased turnouts, such as in an Arizona election in 2000 which saw a turnout double that of the previous election. It is asserted though that civic technology in government provides for a good management technique but lacks in providing fair democratic representation. Social media is also becoming a growing aspect of government, towards furthering the communication between the government and its citizenry and towards greater transparency within the governmental sectors.