Civic participation for a more resilient, cohesive democracy.

Jurisdiction: Australia

#Civic Participation

How can we help more people to understand their democracy, have an opportunity to participate in civic life, contribute to their community, and/or feel a sense of belonging and responsibility?

Democracies around the world are facing new and evolving challenges that will drive democratic backsliding unless we take action. One way to build democratic resilience is to increase civic participation and that is where we need your help!

Democracy relies on peoples’ ability and willingness to participate in a shared democratic society. Participation is about mobilising people to take an active interest in shaping their community.

Australians’ experience of community life and connectedness is deteriorating. Levels of social isolation and loneliness have increased in recent years. The proportion of Australians participating in social, community and political groups has declined over time, and they are less likely to volunteer, play team sports, attend religious services, join political parties, or become union members, compared to a decade ago. How people engage with physical and digital civic infrastructure is also changing, in response to new digital platforms and the evolving nature of community organisations. Civic engagement and participation also evolve over one’s lifetime. Formal civics education occurs at school but rarely beyond it. Civic participation as an adult may involve membership in community, sporting, artistic, union, political, online and religious groups. Active civic participation can result in social inclusion, tolerance and diversity by building community connection.

This GovHack topic challenges you to use evidence to create initiatives that address one or more of the following:

Create new approaches to civics and citizenship education.
Help build people’s trust in government services.
Increase people’s understanding of government and democratic processes to increase civic participation.
Increase people’s use of civic infrastructure (both physical spaces and digital spaces).
Support people to become more active in community discussions, deliberation and community decisions.
Create opportunities for community connection and improve people’s sense of belonging.

Participants are invited to put forward ideas for how to invigorate civic engagement (civic literacy, civic participation and civic connection). Your submission could suggest ways to improve existing programs or outline new initiatives, and the design needs to be easily introduced into the participant’s own digital or local community within 6 to 12 months.

Ideas should be presented as a prototype and include some evidence based analysis. Both the prototype and analysis should show how data is or could be used.

All submissions will be required to use at least one government dataset.

The key features of the deliverable might include:

identifying practical ideas that can be rolled out in the community;
presenting the initial design of the idea supported by data analysis and evidence to reinforce where and why the idea might work or is needed;
identification of what matters to keep people engaged at different ages and in different communities.
list of data sets that would be needed to advance the design or implementation of the solution.
suggestions on how impact of the idea could be measured on its ability to increase:
- trust in institutions,
- social cohesion,
- sense of belonging,
- civic awareness,
- civic participation, and
- community connections.

Democratic Resilience, Social Cohesion, Strengthening Democracy, Democratic Innovation, Stewardship, Innovation, Inclusion.

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