Local governments must leverage digital communications on both a horizontal and vertical level to listen to, respond to, and engage more citizens.
FREMONT CA: Digital technologies have revolutionized practically every area of lives, and community members now want their local government to use dynamically linked technology. However, digital transformation encompasses more than meeting immediate processing requirements. It is about transforming how residents connect, relate to one another, and lift one another to create an equal community.
Local governments must emphasize digitally transforming citizen involvement despite heavy pressure, competing agendas, and limited finances. The global pandemic and civic unrest underscored the critical role of local government leaders in establishing relationships with constituents to promote a feeling of trust and transparency within local communities.
Digitally altering citizen engagement: challenges and opportunity
Rapidly evolving technology has altered the way people live, operate as a society, and conduct business. The advent of digital communication and community-building online has become crucial to how they interact with one another, leaving local governments with no choice but to accept these technologies and adapt to the societal shift or risk losing a means of communicating with their residents.
Numerous local government leaders reported greater citizen engagement following the use and implementation of digital tools, with a 51 percent increase in overall constituent participation. Modern digital engagement tools and technology, such as virtual meetings, social media, email, and online payments, enable the creation of environments that simultaneously nurture citizen-to-citizen and citizen-to-state involvement. Over 60 percent of local government leaders questioned stated that digital engagement activities such as virtual meetings and social media communication increased government transparency and accessibility.
Despite the expanding number of opportunities, local governments face specific digital transformation obstacles. Administrative and local government executives cite constituent involvement in virtual events as their top three hurdles to public engagement, followed by difficulty overcoming equality issues and integration issues. Local government leaders continue to place citizen engagement second only to cybersecurity on their list of top IT objectives for the next several years. They recognize the transformative power of digital tools, with 66 percent stating that they increased government transparency and accountability.
