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Public Outreach |
civic-engagment/public-outreach |
The smart city can promote civic engagement by reaching out to members of the public to encourage participation in civic decision-making. Examples of common municipal public outreach initiatives include public hearings, surveys, and advertising. However, if there is insufficient public outreach, residents may not hear about the types of services that a municipality offers. This may lead to consequences such as a municipality only serving the interests of select members of a community. Smart city tools can resolve these problems by making municipal services and information more accessible to residents unreachable via regular channels.
We'll look at two public outreach applications:
- Outreach to the disability community, and
- Educating neighbourhoods on safe street practices
##(a) Application: Outreach to the disability community
Persons with disabilities face multiple layers of marginalization and require specific services to participate in civic decision-making. Municipalities often offer such services within departmental silos—social workers operate separately from legal professionals, who are far removed from healthcare.
Smart city tools can bridge access to the disability community by making municipal services accessible. Access to services remotely will encourage and facilitate participation by citizens who previously faced barriers in accessing municipal services. This will allow the municipality to consider the multi-layered issues faced by the disability community and improve the entire community’s access to municipal services.
###Technologies
- Free municipal WIFI. Municipalities cannot use smart city tools to reach the disability community if residents lack access to the internet. Adding WIFI routers to public areas that are accessible to the disability community will improve online access to services.
- Digital accessibility maps. Municipal maps driven by resident-contributed data can rate the accessibility of different areas in the municipality. Residents will have access to information on accessibility such as whether a particular location has a ramp, braille text, and automatic doors.
- Service delivery telephone systems. Residents may dial in for information on municipal services such as transportation, request accommodations for public events, and be updated on changes to municipal disability policies.
- Customer Service Applications. Designing applications that combine multidisciplinary professional services (legal, medical, or social) can resolve the multi-layered issues people with disability face without having to redirect the resident to a variety of services. The application can screen an issue and identify what type of professional the resident needs. These applications can also assist the wider resident community as anyone can utilize this service.
###Managing Liabilities
Privacy
- Issues.
- Using public WIFI provided by the municipality to complete personal tasks may risk breach of an individual’s personal information.
- Some provinces have passed provincial health privacy legislation, such as Ontario’s Personal Health Information Act, 2004, to protect sensitive health information. Such data should only be accessible to certain types of professionals. Legal professionals, healthcare professionals, and social workers have different ethical obligations towards their clients that must be taken into account when integrating services. If confidential information relating to a person’s health is disclosed to third parties, it may lead to discrimination.
- Managing Issues
- Inform users of privacy issues pertaining to public WIFI. Include a disclaimer so residents are aware of the risks they take when they use public WIFI.
- Use VPNs. Include access to a free VPN to assist residents with tasks involving personally identifying information.
- Don’t track. Civic engagement tools don’t necessarily need to track identities. Employ tools that don’t associate individuals with content.
- De-identify at the source. Many tools allow for engagement without collecting personal information. Doing so at the source helps prevent privacy issues from cropping up later.
- De-identify as soon as possible. If personal information absolutely must be collected, it should be stripped away as soon as possible.
- Limit data collection to only that which is needed. Data collection strategies aggregate engagement numbers and location-less data collection rather than individual-specific engagement locales avoid engaging more serious privacy concerns.
- Ensure that individual professionals (legal, medical, or social) are following their ethical and regulatory obligations. When integrating multidisciplinary services, ensure that each professional is upholding their privacy obligations under relevant legislation. Only provide necessary personal information on the resident to each professional.
- Follow good privacy practices.
##(b) Application: Educating neighbourhoods on safe street practices
Municipalities struggle to regulate proper parking practices in residential areas resulting in increased risk of motor vehicle accidents, large ticket fines, and road blockages. Mistakes in parking and large fines can be avoided by providing residents information on what parking regulations apply to specific areas in a municipality. Smart city solutions allow municipalities to track an individual and provide geolocation specific answers to parking information. Instead of searching for a parking meter an individual can simply check their electronic device to assist them with their parking creating a safer neighbourhood.
###Technologies
- Parking Application. A software application providing access to parking bylaws based on the users location, serving as a virtual parking meter for temporary parking permits, identifying nearby locations with parking space.
- Monitoring. The municipality can use sensors and photographing technology in the neighbourhood to track patterns in traffic, send roadside services to residents requiring assistance, and collect data informing future traffic bylaws.
###Managing Liabilities Privacy
- Issues. Civic engagement tools will encounter privacy issues where they collect personal information of individuals. Since the legal definition of “personal information” in Canada includes information about an identifiable individual – even if the individual is not directly identified – civic engagement tools will run into privacy issues where they record recognizable images of individuals or record routes traceable to individuals.
- Managing Issues.
- Don’t track. Civic engagement tools don’t necessarily need to track identities. Employ tools that don’t associate individuals with content.
- De-identify at the source. Many tools allow for engagement without collecting personal information. Doing so at the source helps prevent privacy issues from cropping up later.
- De-identify as soon as possible. If personal information absolutely must be collected, it should be stripped away as soon as possible.
- Limit data collection to only that which is needed. Data collection strategies aggregate engagement numbers and location-less data collection rather than individual-specific engagement locales avoid engaging more serious privacy concerns.
- Ensure that partners or contractors follow collection restrictions. When purchasing data from private companies, ensure that they are upholding their own privacy obligations under relevant legislation.
- Follow good privacy practices. Security Issues
- Issues. Privacy issues inherent to civic engagement tools will include security issues, as data that does not initially identify individuals can do so in combination with other data.
- Managing Issues.
- Many of the same solutions to privacy issues will address security issues: e.g., de-identify at source if possible, or as soon as possible if otherwise. Where personal information is collected, it should be held in a secure location.
- Access should be limited to those with a need to use the information.
- Follow good security practices.