The problem we address is that Governments are not enough responsive to issues because they don’t have enough information or due to lack of resources. That creates lack of trust, inefficient governance and wasted billions in wrong projects.. Among those who are interested in improving democracy worldwide, a question that often comes up is how to engage the unengaged. To support the broader ecosystem of individuals and institutions working hard to make our civic life more inclusive and meaningful, we carry out a detailed study on the attitudes and behaviour of average citizens. In particular, we were interested in engaging that portion of the population that is paying attention to the world around them, but not regularly voicing their opinions or taking action. We call them, Interested Bystanders.
Why is this important? Half of the United States adult population could be considered “Interested Bystanders” – 48.9% of people are paying attention to issues around them, but not actively voicing their opinions or taking action on those issues. There is a misalignment between how Interested Bystanders think they should engage civically, and the ways they do engage. While Interested Bystanders associate the political aspects of civic life with conflict, shame, and negative experiences, they are attracted to the aspects that are about community involvement and social relationships. Although Interested Bystanders say that power comes from having a voice, they are disinclined to share their own opinions. Interested Bystanders believe they have the most power at the local level — either because they have greater ability to influence others in their immediate circles, or because they feel proportionally more important in a smaller population — yet most participants reported voting only at the national level, indicating a tension between their voting choices and their own sense of efficacy.
Our overall objectives are to scale Social Coin’s technology and gain knowledge to engage citizens on solving their community issues and to give governments real time and actionable information about civic needs and concerts to build better policies. To get there, we will create a platform to analyze any language based data sources to dimension the issues in a city and prioritize solutions, rewarding citizens who gets engaged in them through the blockchain to promote a more responsive, transparent and inclusive governance giving governments accurate situational analysis and prioritization of the solutions in a city, unlocking the power of bystanding citizens, to better serve in their mandates. The challenges we are facing are about technology are (1) To create a technology based on Machine Learning to help understand and give a dimension to the issues concerning the citizens. (2) To create interfaces enough attractive for citizens to participate, with mechanics to engage them in a sustainable way and (3) To create a powerful API to help any civic engagement platform to have a civic rewarding system.
