Digital Democracy: Episode IV—A New Hope, How a Corporation for Public Software Could Transform Digital Engagement for Government and Civil Society

Abstract

Though successive generations of digital technology have become increasingly powerful in the past twenty years, digital democracy has yet to realize its potential for deliberative transformation. The undemocratic exploitation of massive social media systems continued this trend, but it only worsened an existing problem of modern democracies, which were already struggling to develop deliberative infrastructure independent of digital technologies. There have been many creative conceptions of civic tech, but implementation has lagged behind innovation. This essay argues for implementing one such vision of digital democracy through the establishment of a public corporation. Modeled on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the U.S., this entity would foster the creation of new digital technology by providing a stable source of funding to nonprofit technologists, interest groups, civic organizations, government, researchers, private companies, and the public. Funded entities would produce and maintain software infrastructure for public benefit. The concluding sections identify what circumstances might create and sustain such an entity.

Inovações Tecnológicas E Os Seus Impactos Na Transformação Do Governo Digital

“…As Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação (TICs), enquanto ferramentas tecnológicas também apontam tendências, ao passo que a prestação de serviços públicos vai expandindo e consolidando com os usuários, além disso, maiores investimentos vão sendo exigidos na implementação de "data center", "segurança digital", "tecnologias 5G", "accountability", entre outros (Gastil;Davies, 2020).…”

To Play Is the Thing: How Game Design Principles Can Make Online Deliberation Compelling

“…Making an online process open to the general public requires translating the code into comprehensible language and having a credible oversight process in place. Again a Corporation for Public Software (Gastil & Davies, 2020) may be the right approach to ensuring a transparent process for developing civic tech in the public interest.…”

“…This notion of bringing play back to democracy builds most directly on Lerner’s (2014) landmark work, Making Democracy Fun . Inspired by that book’s fusion of democratic theory and game studies, I have proposed a macro-level system of public consultation (Gastil & Richards, 2017) supported by a Corporation for Public Software (Gastil & Davies, 2020). Theoretically, such a system could yield long-term boosts in the public’s political efficacy and the government’s public legitimacy (Gastil, 2021), and I developed an example of such a system for participatory budgeting (Gastil & Broghammer, 2021).…”

“…The other useful analogy is the public funding of media, common in many countries but less so within the U.S. (Pickard, 2014). For online engagement, there could exist a parallel Corporation for Public Software (Gastil & Davies, 2020). A cross-national study of such entities has found that public media have the best chance of balancing independence and accountability when they have four features (Benson et al, 2017), all of which fit the deliberative system I propose.…”

Regional unevenness in the construction of digital villages: A case study of China

“…From a global perspective, the construction of a digital countryside has yielded phased achievements; however, this initiative has faced unprecedented practical obstacles. For example, the theoretical plans that characterize the digital villages have not been tightly integrated with the actual scenario [ 5 ], and the infrastructure [ 6 ] and technological innovation are insufficient [ 7 ]. Therefore, with respect to digital rural construction, which is crucial in the contemporary era, it is imperative that researchers capitalize on the major historical opportunities that have been afforded by information technology, focus on solving the problems pertaining to digital rural construction, and promote the digital transformation and enhancement of agricultural and rural areas.…”