Fragile, unstable parts of the world are among the most difficult for people to freely express their opinions. Governments may have the will to engage their citizens but due to violence or other challenges have no ability to effectively assess the public’s perspective. As even the most fragile states come online, the Internet and cloud-based tools are creating new opportunities for citizen engagement. In 2011, Somalia began to redraft a new constitution. This provided an opportunity to explore how simple online tools might improve the ability for citizens to be engaged and influence their country’s governing principles. Piloting a cloud-based survey tool In partnership with the Somali service, Africa Division of Voice of America (VOA), Google Ideas worked with existing, freely available Google products to pilot a simple, cloud-based surveying tool that would allow VOA to organize the first phone-based constitutional survey in the nation, surveying Somalis on their opinions on key constitutional issues. The surveying tool was built using Google App Engine and Google Apps and provided a dashboard to make phone calls over the Internet. Through this simple technology integration, the surveying was more efficient than what would otherwise have been a manual process. The final results were presented using Google Chart Tools. This surveying tool has been open sourced to enable any other organization to repurpose it for similar efforts. Influencing Somalia’s constitution Using this relatively simple combination of products, the VOA was able to survey more than 3,000 Somalis on a range of issues, from the roles of Sharia law to the responsibility to include women in government, to the the right level of state centralization. The results were broadcast and discussed on a VOA radio program in Somalia dedicated to the project, published online for the diaspora community, and shared with the drafters of the constitution. The constitution was successfully ratified in August 2012, and included several edits influenced by the survey results. This project proved that relatively simple, existing technologies can be leveraged to increase political engagement, without putting citizens at increased risk. In this case, the results also gave Somalis a snapshot of how they see themselves as a nation in the twenty-first century. For example, 87 percent strongly agreed that Sharia law should be the basis of the civil and criminal code. Source code The basic code for the project is under an open source license, so can be used or repurposed for virtually any country or context.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Jul 2013 03:46:35 +0000
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