Understanding the Design and Implementation of Civic Technologies in Resource-Limited Public Organizations

Abstract

With advances in computing and open data, more and more public organizations have collaborated with volunteer technologists – people with information technology (IT) skills who voluntarily help public organizations with their IT needs – to create or adopt civic technologies to solve public issues, and to support civic engagement in local communities. This dissertation aims to inform the design and implementation of future civic technologies in public organizations, by presenting three studies that investigate public organizations’ practices when designing and implementing civic technologies. In particular, we focus on the implementation of social media in nonprofit organizations (NPOs), the design process of civic hacking projects, and civic data hack-a-thons in several resource-limited public organizations and communities.

We first investigate how 26 small environmental NPOs leverage social media for various public engagement activities to identify challenges that public organizations encounter when implementing civic technologies. Next, we study two ways that volunteer technologists and public organizations collaboratively create civic technologies. In Study 2, we examine the factors that influence the sustainability of 16 civic hacking projects during which volunteer technologists and public organizations collaborate on designing technologies to solve community issues, both through observations and through 19 interviews. In Study 3, we investigate how to generate actionable data analytics products for NPOs during civic data hackathons, and explore the roles of brokers to support the collaborations between civic technologists and public organizations.

Based on findings from these studies, we argue that evaluating the engagement outcomes through civic technologies, solving the internal organizational challenges that prohibit engagement, and reconciling the needs of various stakeholders, are all crucial for public organizations to better engage with communities through civic technologies. In addition, taking into account various public organizations’ constraints and facilitating data literacy is essential for the sustainability of civic technologies in public organizations. Last, building good relationships between various stakeholders and leveraging brokering activities (translation, coordination, alignment, and contact brokering) to bridge different community of practices are all critical for collaborations during the design and implementation of civic technologies. Informed by findings and insights from the studies, we identify design implications and practical guidelines for civic-minded volunteer technologists and public organizations, to foster the design and implementation of civic technologies and the associated collaborative work.