Digital democracy: Episode IV—A new hope: How a Corporation for Public Software could transform digital engagement for government and civil society

<jats:p>Although successive generations of digital technology have become increasingly powerful in the past 20 years, digital democracy has yet to realize its potential for deliberative transformation. The undemocratic exploitation of massive social media systems continued this trend, but it only worsened an existing problem of modern democracies, which were already struggling to develop deliberative infrastructure independent of digital technologies. There have been many creative conceptions of civic tech, but implementation has lagged behind innovation. This article argues for implementing one such vision of digital democracy through the establishment of a public corporation. Modeled on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the United States, this entity would foster the creation of new digital technology by providing a stable source of funding to nonprofit technologists, interest groups, civic organizations, government, researchers, private companies, and the public. Funded entities would produce and maintain software infrastructure for public benefit. The concluding sections identify what circumstances might create and sustain such an entity./jats:p

© Gastil 2020. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in 'Digital Government: Research and Practice', https://dx.doi.org/10.1145/10.1145/3342194.

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Work Title Digital democracy: Episode IV—A new hope: How a Corporation for Public Software could transform digital engagement for government and civil society
Access
Open Access
Creators
  1. John Gastil
  2. Todd Davies
License In Copyright (Rights Reserved)
Work Type Article
Publisher
  1. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Publication Date January 31, 2020
Publisher Identifier (DOI)
  1. 10.1145/3342194
Source
  1. Digital Government: Research and Practice
Deposited January 13, 2022

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