Addressing failure in ICT-enabled ‘citizen voice – government responsiveness’ interventions: unpacking core assumptions and essential components

Abstract

Within the governance arena, many ICT-enabled interventions focus on raising citizens’ voices with government. They aim to make it easier for citizens to feed in their views, needs, ideas or complaints by giving them the digital means to do so. This programme learning report presents and discusses findings from Making All Voices Count, a grant-making programme that has supported tech for accountable governance initiatives and research. It focuses on ICT-enabled ‘citizen voice–government responsiveness interventions’, especially feedback platforms in the global south. However, Making All Voices Count highlights that many such interventions do not deliver on expectations. In order to assist in planning effective future interventions – or determining why different interventions are more or less successful - this paper draws on three comparative studies of a range of ‘citizen voice–government responsiveness interventions’ from the MAVC portfolio. The report highlights the need to: distinguish between 'individual citizen' and 'collective civic' voice: to unpack the 'black box' of different entities and actors within government: to distinguish between the willingness versus the capacity of all the key actors, (of citizens and government at a minimum, and often also intermediaries and donors); to address how these will fluctuate over time. It also presents a summary table of core components to assist with such planning and analysis.