The Techno-Centric Gaze: Incorporating Citizen Participation Technologies into Participatory Governance Processes in the Philippines

"By avoiding the techno-centric gaze and adopting the standpoint of non-users, we were able to better understand the barriers to technology access, explaining non-use as well as the power relationships embedded in these non-actions."

Digital governance refers to the use of digital information and communication technologies (ICTs) to create or enhance the communication channels that facilitate the interaction between citizens, government, and the private sector. Part of the wider Making All Voices Count programme, this research is concerned with the use of citizen participation technologies in digital governance initiatives in the Philippines. Examples of such technologies include interactive government websites, open data portals, online participatory budgeting platforms, and text and instant messaging tools. Much of the existing research on citizen participation technologies takes the technology as its starting point, but the authors argue that this techno-centric gaze obscures non-use and the reasons that many citizens remain excluded. Instead, this research adopts a human-centric approach, selecting specific user groups as case studies rather than specific technologies, and identifying the contextual social norms and structural power relations that explain the use and non-use of citizen participation technologies.

The research was conducted over six months in 2017, and involved desk-based research in the United Kingdom (UK) as well as field research (semi-structured interviews and focus groups) in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, and in Palawan province. The authors identified three opportunities to look at citizen groups engaging in governance issues in the areas of: (1) participatory budgeting; (2) participatory school management; and (3) popular oversight of extractive industries. They asked: Which forms of power, operating at what levels, and in what sorts of spaces, affect the use and non-use of citizen participation technologies? From this power-aware perspective, what deficiencies exist in existing theories of change around the use of citizen participation technologies?

Qualitative data are interpreted through two methods:

First, the five A's of technology access, which helped highlight the ways in which different levels of citizen access to digital devices, and different levels of connectivity, reflect and are structured by existing socio-economic class divisions. (Unequal classes of technology access (re)produce pre-existing social inequalities.)

1. Availability - Overall, the field data produced a complex picture of fluid and fragile connectivities, especially among those living in marginalised communities, and availability by itself does not lead to technology use.
2. Affordability - One finding was, for research participants, affordability was not simply about the purchase price of devices and connectivity; for some respondents (e.g., some women), it was time (rather than money) that they could not afford to spend on citizen participation technologies. For this reason, it is important that applications were easy to use and could upload data quickly.
3. Awareness - Insufficient awareness of a particular technology, or of its relevance to the lives of potential users, can explain the non-use of citizen participation technologies.
4. Ability - The research found that to enable the effective use of citizen participation technologies, there is a need for digital literacy training - not only in marginalised communities, but also in some civil society organisations (CSOs) and government departments.
5. Accessibility - To make it possible for blind or visually impaired citizens to use citizen participation technologies, designers will need to incorporate adaptive technologies that make their initiatives accessible to people with special needs - and make them affordable. But communication barriers can be obstacles even when there is a shared language. As one participant pointed out, "Government has its own language and citizens have their own language. There is a disconnect ... when we speak about technology, it's not just about the hardware, it’s also about the interface - whether it is understandable or not."

Second, the conceptual lens of the Power Cube framework (see Figure 2), which is a means of analysing the different spaces, levels, and forms of power that are in play when change processes are attempted.

• Spaces of power: Closed spaces refer to decision-making that takes place behind closed doors by unaccountable individuals using unknown procedures. Invited spaces are those into which citizens are encouraged to access information, input data, and participate in aspects of governance. Other citizen participation technologies are designed and implemented by civil society to create claimed (or created) spaces, from which they were previously excluded, in order to voice demands and expand the space of participatory governance.
• Levels of power: The Power Cube shows three levels - global, national, and local - but the researchers say that it is important to take account of the multiple levels that are relevant within specific contexts, such as provincial or household. One strategy proposed for local initiatives is to join civil society networks. This enables an initiative to retain a local focus but partner with others to engage with government at other levels (global, national, local), while at the same time working horizontally with other CSOs in the media, academia, and faith-based groups.
• Forms of power: Visible power refers to exercising power over the setting and enforcing rules, procedures, and institutional processes such as budget-setting and elections. Hidden power refers to the use of back-room power over who gets a seat at the decision-making table and what issues make it onto the agenda, as well as the use of intimidation, secretive lobbying, bribery, or co-option to influence decision-making. Invisible power refers to the use of power over channels of socialisation in order to control access to information and to favour the propagation of particular ideas, beliefs, and values. This invisible internalised oppression is often described as the most insidious form of power.

The power analysis found that the provision of technology alone (in the form of free phones or mobile apps) was an insufficient condition of citizen participation. Among the findings from the Power Cube framework: Despite the presence of "front stage" policies that actively promote open governance and citizen participation, interviewees and focus groups members had personal experience of "back stage" practices that effectively limited this participation. If hidden power enables government to deny people a seat at the table, then invisible power means that even for those granted a seat, developing the self-efficacy to use power comes more slowly. When it came to coding the field data, there was more evidence related to invisible power than any other category – and the code that emerged was the word "fear". A learned sense of low self-worth and low self-efficacy was raised by several interviewees as a significant obstacle to securing citizen participation.

To put this point differently: One participatory governance activist argued that there is a significant difference between a government opening datasets that it wishes to publicise, and a citizen feeling able to demand access to any data that they wished to see: "Government disclosing data does not take the place of arming citizens with the tools to access what they want to access, because opening data is the call of the government - but wanting data is the call of citizens, the ability to ask further rather than just having access to what is disclosed. That is more telling about whether you are really empowered and whether the government is really open."

In short, the authors conclude: "As long as social and economic inequalities endure in the Philippines, there is good reason to expect them to continue to be reflected materially in inequitable technology access and subjectively in people's internalised sense of privilege or powerlessness. For those concerned with digital development, the question therefore becomes: which classes of users are their citizen participation technologies intended for, and how can they ensure inclusive and equitable participation?"

This research leads to three recommendations to designers of digital development initiatives who wish to be inclusive:

• Prior to implementation, obtain, through access analysis, a clear understanding of which technologies and levels of connectivity are available and affordable to marginalised and excluded groups.
• Through power analysis, obtain a detailed understanding of which forms of (hidden and invisible) power need to be addresses in programme design.
• Based on that analysis, design for equity by building awareness, ability, and accessibility components into the implementation of projects, as well as countering the effects of hidden and invisible power by including elements that raise awareness of governance issues and enhance the political agency of those previously marginalised and excluded. Digital development projects may need to include activities that enhance the self-efficacy and political consciousness of marginalised groups by bringing people outside of the decision-making process into it and leading people to perceive themselves as able and entitled to make decisions.

"By seeing beyond the techno-centric gaze and incorporating these social and political considerations into their theories of change, future digital development initiatives can improve both their levels of inclusion and their overall efficacy."