TICTeC is our annual conference on the impacts of civic technologies.

This year, we’ll be in Barcelona, Spain, with a diverse programme of speakers from all over the world.

Guy Grossman, assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s political science department, will deliver one of two keynotes. See details of our other keynote speaker, Helen Milner OBE, here.

Guy has had a long history in civic tech research, with a special focus on Uganda and Sub-Saharan Africa, and we are delighted that he will be sharing his insights to our audience of practitioners and researchers.

Hi Guy! Tell us what you’ll be covering in your TICTeC keynote.

The state of academic knowledge about the promises and pitfalls of ICT applications designed to increase voice and accountability in low-income countries. Specifically:

• Under what conditions are citizens more likely to communicate with government officials using mobile-platforms? If we “build them – will they come”?
• Do mobile platforms exacerbate inequalities in political access, privileging groups (men, urban, better-off) that are heavier users of ICTs?
• What can be done to help increase the participation rates of marginalised populations (such as women and the poor)?

Low-income countries have leapfrogged past the landline era and directly into the mobile era. Citizens can now connect with each other and with their public officials in unprecedented ways.

Even though mobile technology is so pervasive, our collective understanding of many first-order questions in this area is surprisingly limited.

The massive penetration of mobile technology, even to remote areas of the least developed countries, has great potential to reshape both the social and political landscapes.

Even though mobile technology is so pervasive, our collective understanding of many first-order questions in this area is surprisingly limited. My goal at TICTeC is to help take stock of what we know and don’t know in this emerging field.

What are you hoping to get out of TICTeC?

I’m hoping to interact with practitioners, policy makers, technologists and fellow academics to figure out where the overlap is between practical needs and academic research.

I’m also hoping to get exposed to promising and innovative applications that I am unaware of.

Your civic tech research focuses especially on Uganda and Sub-Saharan Africa. What led you down this path?

I found very few applications and platforms, if any, designed to improve governance and accountability in low-income countries.

I care deeply about poverty and social and gender inequality, so working and studying in Africa has been a natural choice.

How did I get involved with civic tech? In the past decade I have witnessed an increasing number of mobile-based applications designed to enhance such things as agriculture productivity and financial transactions or match between buyers and sellers.

On the other hand, I found very few applications and platforms, if any, designed to improve governance and accountability in low-income countries. I came to believe that this was a great void that needed to be filled.

In fact, unfortunately, we are still quite far from saturation in the development of governance-related ICT applications.

What do you think are the big unanswered questions when it comes to civic tech?

Does participation in mobile communication spill into more traditional forms of political participation?

Here’s a very partial list of some of the answered questions when it comes to civic tech in the global south:

Can simple innovations in mobile technology be used to facilitate new meaningful forms of political participation?

If so, what types of mobile-based political communication are most likely to be adopted by voters?

What is the potential of ICTs to flatten political access to marginalised populations?

What are some of the ways to increase the usage of mobile-based political communication in the face of clear collective action problems?

How can ICT be used to overcome political economy constraints to growth (e.g. by resolving monitoring challenges in government bureaucracies, reducing the cost for citizens of tracking bureaucratic performance, or making it easier to detect corrupt practices in public-sector salary distribution)?

And, does participation in mobile communication spill into more traditional forms of political participation?

If you could make one recommendation to those developing new civic tech, and wanting to see real impact from it, what would it be?

Adopt a user perspective — make sure that the suggested application/platform addresses a real need that could not be addressed using a low-tech solution.

You won’t want to miss what Guy has to say at TICTeC, so make sure you book your tickets now.