Me and the homies did a new paper in the ACM Interactions magazine and its a topic I am very excited about - what do we leave behind when we do research projects in civic arenas (or any other arenas for that matter)?
Paper Summary
Our new feature article in ACM Interactions Magazine tackles a crucial but often avoided topic in civic technology: discontinuation and “failure.” Rather than treating these as taboo subjects, we argue that civic tech discontinuation should be seen as productive learning opportunities that can inform future projects and improve the field.
Civic tech initiatives—efforts to use technology to bring citizens and governments closer together—frequently discontinue despite significant investment and energy. This leads to considerable loss of public resources and contributes to a sense of failure among participants. However, events and conferences tend to showcase only success stories, missing opportunities for collective learning about long-term sustainability.
Key Findings
Our analysis reveals three critical insights about civic tech discontinuation:
- A lens on failure allows us to identify and reflect on reasons and contexts leading to discontinuation: Moving beyond obvious technical or funding issues to understand deeper structural problems
- Observing cycles of civic tech reveals conflicts between research projects and long-term civic tech sustainability: Research timelines (3-5 years) often misalign with the ongoing needs of civic communities
- Civic tech must be seen as sociotechnical infrastructure requiring better integration: Many projects fail because they cannot be functionally integrated into governmental structures or receive stable public funding
Abstract
Civic tech initiatives are often discontinued, leading to considerable loss of public investment and energy. Yet there are few opportunities to openly discuss discontinuation because events and academic conferences often foreground short-term success stories. We argue that failure and discontinuation should be seen as productive learning opportunities that can inform future civic tech work in HCI and related disciplines.
Our reflection draws on discussions from the CHI 2023 workshop “Failed Yet Successful—Learning from Discontinued Civic Tech Initiatives” and ongoing work across multiple international research groups. We explore why speaking about discontinuation is important for HCI research and practice, what insights we’ve gained from adopting this perspective, and what actions can be pursued by reflecting on civic tech failure.
Key themes include the need to understand civic tech as sociotechnical infrastructuring, awareness of conflicts between research logics and long-term civic tech management, and recognition that civic tech operates in diverse contexts including non-democratic countries where discontinuation may result from government censorship.
Links
- Paper: ACM Interactions Magazine
- Workshop: Failed Yet Successful - CHI 2023
Citation
Andrea Hamm, Yuya Shibuya, Teresa Cerratto Pargman, Roy Bendor, Christoph Raetzsch, Mennatullah Hendawy, Rainer Rehak, Gwen Klerks, Ben Schouten, and Nicolai Brodersen Hansen.
- What Does ‘Failure’ Mean in Civic Tech? We Need Continued Conversations About Discontinuation. Interactions 31, 2 (March-April 2024), 34–38. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3641815
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