Voices of Citizens

COVID-19 pandemic and its associated physical and social distancing challenge on public gathering weaken local governance and accountability.  To this end, the voices of marginalized, poor and vulnerable are often undermined or overlooked in planning and resources allocation. Also, the inability of the citizenry to interact, undermines accountability, of the governed on the governing. 

Voices of Citizens seeks to develop a virtual platform that will stimulate dialogue between parliamentarians, local government authorities and their constituents. This virtual platform will have features that are location-based, interactive, provide translation to local language and sensitive to literacy and technology gaps mostly in rural areas. 

This platform will provide feedback to decision-makers and allows citizens to make a meaningful impact on significant initiatives which will affect such communities while being assured that the feedback is coming exclusively from residents within their constituencies and not from those living outside.

The human population in urban centres across Ghana such as Kpone Katamanso and Ashaiman Municipalities continue to increase. The population in Kpone Katamanso and Ashiaman stands at 138,529 and 240,841 respectively as of 2020. These concentrated populations have a wide variety of challenges, ranging from people not having access to clean water, a rise in air pollution, inadequate economic opportunities and an increase in pollution‐related health issues.

For most of these people, the local government remains the most accessible level of government closest to the citizenry. It is the most direct way for people to access basic services, participate in public processes, and exercise their rights and obligations in demanding accountability from their elected or appointed officials. 

However, the global COVID-19 pandemic has distracted face-to-face engagement platforms by which these citizens engage their representatives or local government officials to ensure inclusive governance. The disruption of all face-to-face engagement by the COVID-19 pandemic is necessitating an urgent request to adopt virtual platforms to continuously stimulate the inclusive participation of the citizenry in local governance.

The project will create a centre that will host the Voice of Citizens platform. The staff of these centre will mostly work remotely. Their roles will include facilitating dialogue on the platform, receiving phone in and circulating real-time feedbacks amongst stakeholders.

On the Voices of the Citizen virtual platform, there will be features such as a live engagements portal, feedbacks and periodic updates and reports. To ensure inclusiveness without leaving anyone behind, this platform will provide assistance by securing volunteers who will communicate in the local dialect to serve the illiterate community. These features will be present for both live events and programmes afterwards. Also, people can make requests and receive feedback in their dialect. Information will be presented in diverse format namely: audiovisual, text, reports to meet the diverse interests of stakeholders. 

Also, a free toll line will be provided for community members without access to smartphones to ensure no one is left behind.

In the initial phase of the project, the target population includes all franchised inhabitants living in the Kpone Katamanso Municipal Assembly. 

Kpone Katamanso is a predominant peri-urban settlement. As such in collecting data toward the development of this platform, we collected both secondary and primary data. Also, key informants who are explicitly important for the ecosystem have been identified using the sampling technique of snowballing. The following tool was used to collect the primary data: focus group discussion and a surveys

These engagements helped share lesson learnt and best practices from the target MMDAs and stakeholder for continuous improvement of our developing infrastructure.

The COVID-19 pandemic affects peoples ability to participate in large gatherings such as local governance dialogues 

As such, an alternative platform to stimulate virtual engagement was urgently needed. Although there is an existing Whatapp platform to stimulate information sharing. This has its own bottlenecks. To this ends, stakeholders demand a location-based civic engagement platform that empowers inclusive participation of citizens.

A preliminary stakeholder consultative engagement has been organized to solicit the views of some citizens and the local government authorities. We are searching for funds to develop the maiden infrastructure of this kind in Kpone Katamanso in Greater Accra.

To stimulate stakeholder dialogue engagement at the local government level, we have tested our product by using the Whatapp platform in the Kpone Katamanso and Ashaiman Municipalities in the Greater Region of Ghana.

Currently, we have adopted a WhatsApp platform (to stimulate dialogue amongst the citizenry and the local government authorities. It allows users to send text messages and voice messages, makes voice and video calls, and share images, documents, user location etc. However, this platform has its own inherent weakness.

We believe that migrating to a cloud-based platform will better stimulate dialogue.

This project is innovative because our unique geo-verification process connects participants’ digital identity to their physical location. Any local assembly or organization  conducting consultative engagement can be assured that the feedback data is coming from real, relevant people from affected communities

Also, it provides a one-stop-shop platform to stimulate dialogue and exchange of information amongst stakeholders. The project breaks the social distancing protocol and public health concerns posed by COVID-19 pandemic to allow people to meet and discuss development with our virtual platform engagement. 

With the advancement in this technology, we seek to provide both an alternative and a complementary tool for public and private sector organizations to consult with the public on community plans, parks and recreation, public transit, public health, budgets etc.

Lastly, we uphold issues of privacy. To this end, the personal information of users is never sold, exchanged, transferred, or given to any other organization for any reason. This facilitates the collection of legitimate feedback data while ensuring the security and privacy of our users

We are serving close to 500 people on a WhatsApp platform to stimulate consultative engagement. 

With our tool and with this funding, we intend to pilot the maiden technology to cover 123,000 people residing in Kpone Katamanso Municipal Assembly.
Within five years, we want to be in all the 260 Metropolitan, Municipal and Districts Assemblies across Ghana with a target population of 15 million people.

Within 5 years, will envision being adopted by the United Nations for every developed and developing country in the world to adopt as a reliable, safe and accountable tool to provide stimulate civic dialogues.

The project will measure its impacts by identifying the number and frequency of public participation on the platform in a period. This will measure the usability of the developed project virtual platform. In addition, because the project envisions, open and transparent engagement by connecting people to local issues, the project will identify the number of salient issues raised for discussion and track the progress by which such interventions are addressed. A brief report and audiovisual will be used to provide feedback to stakeholders. This indicator will measure the functionality of the project platform

The project is being run by a 4 member project team. Currently, the entire team work on this initiative works as a part-time staff each dedicating 20 hours a week.  The team will seek to become full employees on the project once we secure funding.

A summary of professional experiences of my team and I includes:

• Supporting carrying out project planning, management, implementation and monitoring in the assigned Metropolitan Assembly in collaboration with the Metropolitan Authority.
• Executing project coordination and implementation of activities with partners with the highest quality standards required in assigned catchment Metropolis.
• Monitoring day to day activities, and reporting progress of projects in close cooperation with the Metropolitan Assembly, to ensure that logistics, equipment and materials provided are distributed fairly and in line with plans and relevant associated documentation is completed accordingly.
• Coordinating with supply chain, finance and administration for complete and accurate reporting and delivery.
• Coordinating and monitoring the use of financial and material resources relevant to program needs. Through planning and oversight and ensure efficient use of project resources and assets. 

The platform is a civic platform for everyone living at the local assembly level. Special capacity training will be provided for all stakeholders. Participants will be segmented to ensure the full inclusion of all stakeholders including the marginalized and vulnerable groups. 

The platform is developed in a way that addresses the technological challenges for those who might not use smartphones. To this end, a voice call-in session and text message features will be integrated into the platform.

In addition, to break the language barrier, the platform will have translators whose mandate will be to provide diverse language suitable options for participants to freely express themselves in any language they best understand and can communicate in.

My team and I, look forward to receiving grant support from the MIT Solve project to invest into the set-up of the virtual infrastructure. We also, look forward to receiving technical assistance to contact seasoned IT firms and professional with the requisite insight to develop these platforms.

Lastly, we look forward to a continued mentorship and a platform to learn and share our results with the global community to help in scaling up our solutions, peer-reviewing our approaches and methodologies and guarantee accountability. 

In the design and implementation phase of the infrastructure in Ghan, my team and I will require human capital well equipped in technology (e.g. software or hardware, web development/design, data analysis, etc.). They will be instrumental in formulating, designing and building the virtual platform form. 

Once the virtual platform is developed and tested in Ghana, my team and I will require from MIT Solve, any legal or regulatory assistance to scale up our solutions to other regions and countries. With the help of MIT-Solve, we can undertake an extensive public relations campaign to market and promote civic dialogue through (e.g. branding/marketing strategy, social and global media) of The Voice of Citizens platform.

MIT Solve can help target prospective clients with our product and service. 

My team and I look forward to working with the World Bank Parliamentarian Network, embassies of developed and developing countries, and telecommunication companies We also look forward to working with MIT faculty and Solve Members who are interested in promoting civic education, accountability and through technologies.

Civic engagement spans beyond the citizenry of a country, It includes the voices of refugee. As such our virtual platform will ensure inclusive participation of all marginalized people to help connect them to duty bearers as a means to address their economic, financial, and political issues affecting refugees. We seek $25,000 to build the capacities of refugees to understand the usability and functionality of the virtual civic engagement platform

To stimulate virtual civic education, considerable efforts will be taken to build the capacities of stakeholders of the use and functionality of the Voice of Citizens platform. As such, my team and I request for $25,000 grant funding to advance stakeholder education on traditional media (television and radio) to help people develop the capacity to fully utilize the virtual platform in order to stimulate inclusion, digital literacy, and economic opportunity at the local government level.

In most civic engagement fora, women are mostly excluded. The reason being during the time's allocation of such dialogue, most women who are predominantly traders will be in the market selling. Those present in such engagement mostly forgo productive hours to sell their goods and services. 

The reality is women are the direct burden bears of poor economic mismanagement at the local government levels as they bear the impacts of taxes and levies by such assemblies.

This platform will therefore empower women to have a voice in local governance administration without necessarily losing productive hours in the market. To this end, the voices of women can be captured virtually to make direct inputs on local governance issues affecting their everyday lives.

My team and I request $25,000 grant funding to build the capacities of target productive women groups in the market, to be able to utilize the full functionality of our digital platform.

The Voices of Citizens will seek to overlay each participant with a unique geo-reference link. To this end, my team and I will need this grant to develop a robust AI system that can detect citizens connecting on the platform by any means and detecting their goe-reference points. 

Also, the assistance of AI will be required to code and analyze discussion to identify trends and patterns for easy reporting. My team and I request for $50,000 in funding  to invest in the development of a suitable AI algorithm for the Voices of Citizens

My team and I are optimistic that the Voices of Citizen is the 21st-century cutting edge platform that will revolutionize civic education and engagement. 

Our platform provides both an innovative and sustainable approach to complement or compete with the traditional approach of face-to-face civic engagement dialogue. We believe that this platform will form the basics to tackling the most pressing issues of their local communities such as revenue mobilization for the assemblies, spatiotemporal planning, and boost productivity.