This article was written by Pablo Bicego, founder of Yecas, and Former Secretary of Public Communication.

In the dystopian sci-fi vision from the book Disco Sour, data from citizen’s social interactions is used to automatically cast their vote for them in the government election.

There are already projects in place such as this in China where the government rates its citizens. But what would happen if the tables were turned?

What would happen if all of us, as citizens, could create a way to watch our governments? What would occur if we developed an excellent scoring system that could rate government based on how well they have lived up to their electoral promises?

And what would happen if this score also made it possible for financial entities to make decisions, or national governments to evaluate where funds are best allocated, an urbanisation company is able to decide where to build a square and a citizen received data to help them choose his or her Mayor?

A citizen scoring platform

Latin America has more than 16,000 municipalities and more than 600 million inhabitants. But only one in four citizens say they are satisfied with democracy and their governments. It is the lowest rate since the LatinobarĂłmetro database first began polling this question in 1999.

This dissatisfaction also creates a huge opportunity for those of us who are in the development of civic technologies.

In August 2017, we launched Yecas: a social network that enables citizens to make public complaints and look for support from their neighbours in order to promote a solution. For example, a citizen can open Yecas on his cell phone, take a picture of a pothole and the app then notifies the local municipality.

The municipality can then respond to the problem, and, through the app, gets an opportunity to publish a “before and after” picture once the problem is solved, notifying the citizen who brought it to the attention of the local authorities.

If you ask whether all citizens will commit to controlling their governments, the answer is a resounding "no"

Yecas has already been implemented in eight municipalities in Argentina, resulting in 2,500 complaints that have been answered by the cities, and 90% of these were resolved by the local authorities.

The app provides key data points such as date, local time, the place of the complaint, response time from the municipality to the concern, solution time, the top categories used to complain, average age and gender.

The next step for Yecas is to stop being a technology of complaints and evolve into a technology of participation. We are looking to become a citizen scoring platform that uses input from citizens, turning it into data and generating a rating of public management, which makes it possible to observe — in real time — how well the administration performs. We are also looking to transform the participation of citizens in important data that will impact grading the local government.

Our pivot as a platform is focused on the 10% of the population who are promoters of these issues, the ones who take action. These are the citizens we work for, and for them that we develop the underlying technology so Yecas can become a great tool.

Getting people on board

If you ask whether all citizens will commit to controlling their governments, the answer is a resounding "no".

In Latin American countries like Chile where it’s not mandatory for citizens to vote in elections, only 42% of the electorate vote.

Likewise, on the platform "FixMyStreet", almost 80% of the reports are produced by a mere 10% of their users. And on Wikipedia, 77% of the articles are written by 1% of the editors. The website requests created by The White House had until 2016 only 10% of the total of the population registered in the platform.

On Yecas, 12% of the registered users are active, and they generate nearly 70% of the reports.

As citizens, we only get an opportunity to evaluate government by voting in an election every four years or so. What would happen if we could think of a technology that permits us to evaluate the local authority each time we use its public services, common areas, compliances of their offers and environmental politics?

Why do we have to wait four years to rate our governments if we can do it every four minutes?

From these evaluations, we would be able to generate a public score that would help us to vote better.

What we have learned since launching the platform almost two years ago is that the initial kick-off is given in small communities. We see a huge opportunity for dialogue in the complaints that citizens make to their governments. From that fact, we can start creating an interaction that looks at finding solutions generated from citizens' input.

We also believe that we can add something new to the field of civic technologies, of which there are now more than 3,000 according to the Civic Tech Guide.

From four years to four minutes

The problem is in Latin America. For this reason, it is very likely that Yecas can be applied to other countries in the region, as we have done tests in Chile and PerĂş.

The need that we have as citizens of this region, faced with corrupt governments, bureaucracies that become obstacles and media companies that are allied with political parties, is the need for making our concerns heard and visible. What you do not visualise you cannot measure. And what you do not measure, you cannot manage. And what you do not manage you cannot improve.

This can be as easy as sending a photo to show the status of the concern in the neighbourhood.

Why do we have to wait four years to rate our governments if we can do it every four minutes? Together we can create a score on Yecas that rates public management, giving us an index that will help choose our governments. It is a way to improve our democracies.

Intelligent cities do not exist but there are committed intelligent communities. — Pablo Bicego

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