Citizen Engagement is about governments, federal, local and state authorities and agencies using the opportunity that online digital channels provide to create a dialogue between themselves and their citizens.
Your website is on the front line of that engagement, as is understanding your audience - as we discuss in
Customer Engagement and the Engagement Cycle.
This is a challenge being faced by the public sector across the globe, according to the
UK Cabinet Office blog digital citizen engagement has four main purposes, to provide the citizen with:
- Open information - To have an effective voice, people need to be able to understand what is going on in their public services; government will publish information about public services in ways that are easy to find, use, and re-use.
- Open feedback - The public should have a fair say about their services.
- Open conversation - We will promote greater engagement through more interactive online consultation and collaboration.
- Open innovation - We will promote innovation in online public services to respond to changing expectations.
In the US, it has been widely reported that the Obama election embraced social media and this has continued through to the new administration embracing digital enagement. The White House has created communities on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr and established the Open Government blog for public engagement.
In Europe this has been recognised by the European Journal of ePractice:
...it is clear that many have disengaged from formal politics, voter turnout is falling, membership of political parties is declining, and there is a widespread sense of a loss of trust in government and politicians. On the other hand, there is a surge of grass-root, often single issue engagement in policy making, people generally are more aware of public policy issues, and there are more outlets and channels enabling participation. Much of this is supported, and in fact driven forward, by new ICT tools. These range from the more traditional emails and electronic forums, to the Web 2.0 phenomenon of social networking, and applications which enable users to upload their own content and manipulate the content of others, as well as facilitate deliberation and debate.
Australian Senator Kate Lundy,
in her blog describes the three pillars of open government; citizen-centric services, open and transparent government and innovation facilitation.
All of which agree that the deliver of information, services and connecting with the digital citizen is a priority. Read more about how our customers are using Alterian to do that: