Governance Futures: GovTech and CivicTech

This research theme evaluates the ongoing modernisation strategies around governance through two approaches – GovTech and Civic Tech. These strategies are imagined as ushering efficiency, ensuring transparency and accountability, improving democratic participation by adopting digital infrastructure and tools.

Globally and locally, public policies and programs have been promoting adoption of platform technologies, setting up of digital public infrastructures and data centres to modernize government functioning. These are labeleld as ‘GovTech’ strategies, promoted by global consultancy firms, IT companies and financers such as the World Bank and the Asia Development Bank. In India, for instance, this has been adopted as a strategy through the ‘India Stack’ and the ‘Digital India’ program. GovTech strategies are top-down planning processes, benefiting from and leading to centralized government control, and contribute to the privatisation of governance services.

Citizens have also strategized around digitalization and data to improve access to the government, deliberated upcoming public policies, worked towards bringing in accountability to governance processes, and created public data sets. ‘Civic Tech’ thus is a more decentralized approach that encourages democratic technological adoptions. Civic organizations also mobilize around technology issues of data centres, citizens surveillance, energy and environment.

This subtheme is grounded in empirically understanding the future of governance through either or both Civic Tech or GovTech. It invites questions around policies of digital governance, people access and interactions with technology, creation of citizens’ platforms, government and public data, and surveillance.

Faculty involved: Khaliq Parkar