What Does 'Failure' Mean in Civic Tech?

Abstract

Civic tech, also referred to as digital civics in HCI, designates efforts to use technology to bring together citizens, bring governments closer to citizens, or improve public service infrastructure. Such sociotechnical encounters are meant to address public needs and increase interactions and information flows between citizens and/or authorities. In this sense, they represent efforts to bolster democratic participation and oversight. Yet, despite the importance of these goals and due to their inherent complexity, civic tech initiatives are often discontinued, leading to a considerable loss of public investment and energy and contributing to a sense of failure. To be sure, this is a global phenomenon: While civic tech initiatives emerge at different places in the world, they are often confronted with the same or very similar impediments. But because of the sense of failure felt by those involved, there are few opportunities to openly discuss discontinuation. Events and academic conferences dedicated to civic tech often foreground short-term success stories and published research papers, and so HCI practitioners and researchers miss opportunities to consider long-term perspectives and slower, ongoing (democratic) transformation processes. What we suggest here, therefore, is that failure and discontinuation should also be seen as productive learning opportunities.