In my opinion, civic technology can be split up into two sections. The first of these categories would essentially be a partnership between the government and the people. To begin, the government would put up issues that they would like for citizens to offer their input on. With the government overseeing the discussion, people can offer their ideas and show their support or their disapproval for a certain idea. In order to prevent a frenzy of ideas, the government should offer separate sections for coming up with ideas and another for showing support or disapproval. With the help of the people, the government could take the best course of action for solving a certain issue.

The second category involves monitorial citizenship. Even though the people wouldn’t offer their opinion, citizens could still help their government by monitoring it. Throughout the course of a campaign, a government official may make promises or seek to elected on a certain platform. Once they are elected, civic technology can ask citizens to analyze the official’s actions and whether or not they are in accordance with the platform taken during their campaign. Civic technology, when partnered with monitorial citizenship, can also get citizens to monitor the current state of their neighborhoods and suggest ways the government can improve them.

One website that I found that did a tremendous job of implementing the second example of civic technology was http://morsimeter.com/en. On this website, people were able to evaluate the actions taken by Egypt’s president in 2012, Mohamed Morsi. Prior to his election, Morsi made promises that he would change Egyptian policies regarding security, fuel, cleanliness, bread and traffic. With the help of http://zabatak.com/, a website that looks to inform Egyptian people about nearby crimes through having Egyptians create crime reports, Morsimeter was able to analyze Morsi’s action. By asking other Egyptians about their opinion on Morsi’s action, Morsimeter was able to determine whether or not Morsi fulfilled his promises by the end of his first 100 days in office. At the conclusion of his first 100 days, Morsimeter published their results. Their results showed that Morsi did not even complete a quarter of the promises he had made. To be fair, some of these promises were still in the process of being accomplished. Still, the majority of the Egyptian population that helped Morsimeter did not recognize any significant changes.

I consider Morsimeter to be an ideal example of what civic technology can do not only because of the goals it had but also by the way they achieved. They managed to get the Egyptian people to offer their opinion and they also used social media to expand the arguments that were being brought up on the website. Civic technology is a great tool that the people and government can use to improve society. Nevertheless, civic technology is still a tool and a tool is only as good as the people use it. Analysis means nothing unless some change can follow it.