Tiago Piexoto with the World Bank and Jonathan Fox at American University collaborated on a background paper released in January 2016 alongside the World Bank's major Digital Dividend report. It reviews 23 ICT projects designed to raise citizen voices in governance/improve public service delivery. When Does ICT-Enabled Citizen Voice Lead to Government Responsiveness?
From the abstract:
This meta-analysis focuses on empirical studies of initiatives in the global South, highlighting both citizen uptake (‘yelp’) and the degree to which public service providers respond to expressions of citizen voice (‘teeth’).
The conceptual framework further distinguishes between two trajectories for ICT-enabled citizen voice: Upwards accountability occurs when users provide feedback directly to decision-makers in real time, allowing policy-makers and program managers to identify and address service delivery problems – but at their discretion.
Downwards accountability, in contrast, occurs either through real time user feedback or less immediate forms of collective civic action that publicly call on service providers to become more accountable and depends less exclusively on decision-makers’ discretion about whether or not to act on the information provided.
This distinction between the ways in which ICT platforms mediate the relationship between citizens and service providers allows for a precise analytical focus on how different dimensions of such platforms contribute to public sector responsiveness.
These cases suggest that while ICT platforms have been relevant in increasing policymakers’ and senior managers’ capacity to respond, most of them have yet to influence their willingness to do so.
For the larger Digital Dividends report, see:
http://po.st/worldbankdigitaldividendsreport