Promise Tracker is a tool predicated partly on the idea of participatory citizenship. It requires a group of citizens who have an area of interest that they want to document or poll people about. After creating a survey they must go out into the community and talk to people and collect evidence about their area of interest. After gathering this data they are able to use it to form a narrative that they can use to try to influence various levers of power. In this sense, one possible end goal for people using Promise Tracker is to change or influence existing systems.

As an example, a group of citizens might believe that Boston has allocated insufficient resources to snow removal, and that this insufficient government activity is creating dangerous situations for everyone. Promise Tracker could be used to create a survey that might include questions like “have you been endangered by snow conditions this winter?” and “has the city of Boston done enough to make roads and sidewalks safe this winter?” Teams could then move around the city and start polling people. In addition to the survey, Promise Tracker allows you to upload geotagged photos. If dangerous conditions were encountered while the teams were conducting survey questions, they could be photographed and uploaded to a map. Once the data was collected the group could then analyze the data and start to craft stories that use their new information. With those stories in hand the truly model behavior of participatory citizenship begins. The team would need to decide which institutions to try to influence. They might try to get stories in the press, or start attending city planning meetings to inform planners of their findings. They could also try to work outside of existing institutions, using the data and stories to try to mobile a direct action campaign.

But this participatory citizen model isn’t the only one that works with Promise Tracker’s strengths. If we perhaps stretch the conception of a dutiful citizen slightly to include the idea that being dutiful means holding government accountable or exposing problems, such a person would also find a lot of reasons to use Promise Tracker. A dutiful citizen might feel it is their civic responsibility to participate in the volunteer group described above. That person might feel that the city of Boston is not aware of the dangers posed by uncleared snow, and they have a duty to inform the relevant agencies. Or this person might feel a sense of duty to their fellow citizens. If uncleared snow really is a public hazard, then raising the public’s awareness of this may lessen the risks and harms created by the uncleared snow.

This example hinges on concepts of duty. As a counter-example, we can also imagine a dutiful citizen who feels that being dutiful includes trusting government to do what is right and what is possible based on their financial constraints. In this case, perhaps our hypothetical citizen looks at the snow problem and believes that being dutiful means having faith that the city is doing as much as it can to clear snow, and hazards will be cleared as soon as the hard-working city employees can get to them. “Duty” has shifted to mean dutifully suffering through dangerous conditions while waiting for the government to finish important work. Westheimer and Kahne argue that there is nothing inherently democratic about dutiful citizenship, which is true, but one can imagine two very different versions of the dutiful citizen, and each has a very different relationship to government and institutions: one who believes it is their duty to hold government accountable and inform it when then are problems, and one who believes it is their duty to trust government institutions and processes. In general, the ability to have faith in government seems to be waning in the US, and perhaps globally, but I do think there are still people who hold the later belief.