Reimagining Government, Part 3: Multiplying Engagement

Reimagining government is far from a question just of innovation in how its structures and processes operate. It also has as much or more to do with reimagining how citizens engage with the structures and processes of government, and with the public servants who work on their behalf. With reimagining the power governments give to citizens to decide what they want those processes and structures to look like. With reimagining the idea of public servants working “on citizens’ behalf,” creating a future where public servants and citizens do the work of governing together in new ways as authentic partners.

What if the future of how Americans participate in government had many additional different forms beyond the forms it has today?

The idea of agile government has been gaining ground for a decade, championed by many including the Agile Government Center (AGC), established in 2019 by NAPA and IBM’s Center for the Business of Government. A core principle of agile government, like the agile software development approach that inspired it, is customer involvement that’s continuous and collaborative, with customers acting as partners rather than stakeholders. In a future taking this principle to new levels, “customer-driven” doesn’t start at the design of government programs and services. It starts even earlier, with citizens meaningfully engaged in defining what challenges and opportunities to design programs and services for in the first place. It’s a future where government starts not by telling customers the policy options to choose from but by asking them what the options should be or could be.

Already-available technologies and newly emerging ones will enable citizens to go beyond being engaged “with” their governments (every level) to being materially engaged in new ways in governing. Some of that could look like the innovations imagined above through the “fifth estate,” like real-time online citizens assemblies on social media platforms, or weighing in on issues with the Internet influencers they follow who have seats at future policy-making tables. It could take the form of pulse checks with citizens through their phones, shaping representatives’ votes in real-time on issues under debate in Congress, in the statehouse, in city council meetings. Rather than a pull model, perhaps a push model, where citizens use their phone to send inputs to their representatives without waiting to be asked. Analogues already exist in other parts of our lives – think of these as the government versions of in-app bug reporting, or live chats with retail websites. Most brands do continuous social media listening, and a recent survey showed 76% of American consumers expect a response to their feedback in the first 24 hours within the hour (and 13% in the first hour). What could the outcomes look like when the government brand meets or exceeds those standards?

Like agile government, participatory governing is also already emerging. A participatory budgeting process in New York City allows residents to be the decision-makers in allocating part of their Council district’s capital discretionary funds. And there are more than 3,000 participatory budgeting processes around the world, mostly at the municipal level. A digital deliberation platform called vTaiwan uses a mix of online and offline processes to shape legislation through open discussion among citizens, subject matter experts, and public officials. Uruguay is operating under its fifth five-year Open Government Plan employing a process that includes participatory problem diagnosis, policy proposals, feasibility analysis, and final draft approval, and carries citizen participation beyond policy design to implementation and monitoring. In 2015 Wales became the first country in the world to pass a Wellbeing of Future Generations Act requiring public bodies to consult people of all ages and backgrounds when developing and enacting policies. A commissioner holds officials accountable for the impacts of those policies on citizens not even alive yet to feel them.

In a variety of different futures we can imagine a great widening of the functions where such citizen participation becomes the norm. What if Federal Register comment periods gave way to open-source platforms where citizens propose regulatory clauses, annotate text, and track amendments? What if community juries helped choose contractors for social service provision or digital infrastructure projects, or co-developed participatory zoning maps with government experts using digital mapping tools to provide to lawmakers for approval? What if the public hearings of today became the Citizen Infrastructure Panels of tomorrow, empowered to co-design transit lines or other public-space developments? What if community organizations instead of government officials ran new program pilots or Citizen Experience Improvement agencies?

The most fundamental form of citizen participation in governing – our electoral process – will see continued reimagining as well. Election security and legitimacy is an issue of vital importance that’s seen considerable and valuable attention over many years. That dialogue will continue with a backdrop of ongoing technology and process innovation. What we can do online and our phones already rivals the number of things we can’t do – including engaging in government functions, like filling out the census. Cybersecurity and other factors make mobile voting today a concern. In an alternative future it could be a default. In a participatory budgeting initiative in Portugal’s city of Cascais, the voting age is twelve, with measures in place to ensure children vote independently from their parents. In an alternative future, we could see young people at American ballot boxes (or filling out mail-in ballots, or voting on their phone) – even universal voting. There is still comparatively limited use of ranked-choice voting today in the United States (fifty-one jurisdictions, including two states), but in an alternative future it could be much more widespread.

Some discussions of future differences in the ways citizens engage in government and governing consider the idea of mandatory public service. More than 70 countries have it in some form – with the exception of jury duty, the U.S. does not. If we imagine alternative futures, consider a different idea: what if the options for participating were so many, so attractive and fulfilling, so easy to access, public service didn’t need to be mandated?

Tomorrow: We don't await the future, we create it.