Or rather, it’s added a lot of technology on top of bulletin boards and town hall meetings.
In fact, use of technology for citizen engagement appears to be very widespread. When Governing magazine* and Living Cities partnered to survey 61 municipalities last year — including 43 of the 100 largest in the nation — 97 percent of respondents said they used social media for citizen engagement.
Social media, being mostly free to use and widely adopted by the body politic, was the most common technology tool cities participating in the survey used. Just behind that was project and initiative-focused websites at 95 percent.
Other commonly-used tech tools included 311 call centers, mobile apps and public input systems used during city hall meetings.
*Governing is a publication of e.Republic, Government Technology's parent company.
