Sustaining Participation for Rediscovering the Citizenship: Technology for public value

Technology helps public organizations sustain democracy, restore public trust and promote public interest as responsive institutions fostering citizenship and upholding citizens’ participation as to promote collaboration... [ view full abstract ]

Technology helps public organizations sustain democracy, restore public trust and promote public interest as responsive institutions fostering citizenship and upholding citizens’ participation as to promote collaboration with citizens feeling unheard and disenchanted by traditional representative and democratic institutions. Technology is driving public institutions and citizens to build and sustain dialogue and partnership and act as active co-producers of social, democratic and public value(Moore, 1995). Rediscovering citizenship by fostering and encouraging e-participation helps contribute to democratic development of society leading public organizations and citizens to proceed to build participatory, open and inclusive communities creating social and public value. Public organizations have to pay attention to causes of the decline of public trust by embracing new technologies to connect and communicate with citizens enhancing participation of citizens for creating and maintaining public value by making participatory and democratic government agencies and public administration. Technology is leading public organizations to sustain public trust and promote public interest as responsive institutions encouraging active citizenship and collaboration enhancing the interaction between citizens and government, fostering democratic participation (Denhardt & Denhardt, 2003, Vigoda, 2002). The aim of this paper is to elucidate how technology opens up to new opportunities for increasing access to information and rediscovering the participation of citizens as attribute of citizenship. Rediscovering citizenship by e-participation helps the democratic development of society leading public organizations and citizens to build participatory, open and inclusive communities creating social and public value. Technology is leading public organizations as responsive and collaborative institutions proceeding seeking a sustainable path encouraging citizens to participate by engaging them in contribution to public policies choices ranging from information to active participation. E-democracy as the use of ICTs to support the democratic decision-making processes relates to e-participation as knowledge, interactive and collaborative process (Sæbø, Rose & Flak, 2008). Technology helps restyle democracy opening up to a renewal of public participation within a ‘mixed polity’ comprising elements of representative and direct democracy (Raab & Bellamy, 2004). The concept of citizenship is normally related to a broad set of social and civic responsibilities that also refer to the right of participation in decision-making about social, economic and cultural life. Citizenship as participation tends to express the human agency in the political arena enabling people to act as agents (Lister, 1998). Gaventa and Valderrama (1999) elucidate a shift in quality and characteristics of participation moving towards citizen, policy, decision-making and implementation. Citizenship as enabler of participation, influence and exercise control in governance and inclusion requires to design new modes of building the relationship between civil society and the State. Sustaining participation can contribute to contrast with a growing apathy of citizens feeling unheard or abandoned by politics.Participation serves to support important democratic values: legitimacy, justice and the effectiveness of public action (Fung, 2006). «Participation should be seen as a multi-way interaction in which citizens and other players work and talk in formal and informal ways to influence action in the public arena before it is virtually a foregone conclusion» (Innes & Booher, 2004, p. 429).