Civic application
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Civic application is an application software designed to encourage users to participate in and learn more about government.
Civic applications are often social networking services, but what distinguishes them is the civic goal–the mission funding their existence. Additionally, the mutual interaction between the user and the application is what differentiates civic applications from any IT service (i.e. a website or portal). With the latter, interaction between the user and the application is not necessary and often takes the form of commenting under articles.
In civil societies, civic applications are created to enhance public works, civic engagement, and general social capital. Civic applications can aim at:
- development of engaged citizenship
- strengthening of local communities
- growth of democracy
- supporting entrepreneurship
- protection of nature and common living space
Civic applications can be accessed online from a server using a web browser, using mobile devices such as mobile phones or tablets, and offline from the user's local drive.
On January 20, 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama signed the "Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government",[1] requesting that government agencies make their data–such as real-time crime feeds and air-quality metrics–open and available to the public.[2] This memorandum marked a pivotal legislative moment, as the government improved the distribution of public services through new technologies characterized by civic open data. The "Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government" also provided companies seeking to join the civic technology world with a framework to build their civic applications.
However, the history of civic applications can be traced back years earlier, with the creation of various civic technology platforms such as Ushahidi,[3] which supports election monitoring and crisis reporting, as well as TheyWorkForYou, which simplifies complex political information into layman's terms for voters. Environment-focused civic applications also exist, such as Accela's Civic Application for Environmental Health.[4]
Today, many civic applications have been established, with civic technology leaders such as Jennifer Palka (Code for America) and Colin Megill (Pol.is) paving the way for future innovation.
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