25 BOX H BOX I Digitization and Digitalization in Magway DAOs Crowdsourcing Community Feedback In 2018, Development Affairs Organizations in Magway began a move to digital collection processes to streamline tax collection and provide data for decision-makers. Crowdsourcing is the practice of engaging a “crowd,” or group, for a common goal, powered by digital technologies. In Myanmar, crowdsourcing is being used to help municipalities better understand and respond to resident’s needs. The seven most-populated townships opted for a digitalization model and introduced tablets for tax collectors. Information entered at the start of the process, such as household addresses and demographic characteristics, was preserved for subsequent tax collection periods. Tax collectors no longer had to reenter this information every six months. As tax collectors went about their collections, the information was instantly available to more senior officials, who could track collection progress in real time. Digitization was chosen by the remaining nineteen townships. Paper records were collected and then manually entered into the Myankhon revenue-management system. The data from all 26 townships was then available to senior officials for analysis and decision-making. But to keep the data in the system up to date, it must be manually entered for each collection period. Technology provides new methods and tools to collect data directly from local populations. Almost every adult in Myanmar now has access to a mobile phone, and the social media applications Facebook and Viber connect the majority of adults. This provides an immediate opportunity for township officials to interact directly with the people they represent—sharing information, announcing policies, soliciting public opinion, and giving people an easy way to do things like paying taxes (see box I).48 An official Facebook page, for example, might introduce local officials to the public and solicit suggestions from voices they otherwise would not hear. But officials should think carefully about whether comments on social media are really representative of the public at large. A deluge of social-media data could also be a curse. Communities can easily capture data in the form of a message or a picture and send it to officials, but masses of unstructured data from local populations could overwhelm officials and create unrealistic expectations of their ability to respond. And social media has its own peculiar forms of abuse, including misinformation (“fake news”), anonymous hate speech, bullying, and threats. The process began with residents leaving posts on the Facebook pages of municipal staff, informing them of the improvements they’d like to see in their city. Many DAOs now have their own, dedicated government Facebook pages, which have grown so much in popularity that officials now feel overwhelmed by suggestions. With so many suggestions, and limited budgets, officials have struggled to prioritize reported issues and respond to all the messages received. To address this, Yangon, Taunggyi, and Mawlamyine have turned to mobile applications that allow issues to be reported without the expectation of a conversation with an official. The Digital Yangon app, for example, allows residents to report abandoned vehicles, water leaks, or waste disposal problems in six downtown areas of Yangon. The MyoTaw platform has taken this a step further and introduced a Facebook chat bot, embedded in the Taunggyi DAO Facebook page. Instead of having to download an app, which is not yet a common practice in Myanmar, residents can use their preinstalled Facebook Messenger to swiftly report issues. The information gets uploaded in real time to a map-based casemanagement system enabling the municipality to better prioritize their responses. TECHNOLOGY PROVIDES NEW METHODS AND TOOLS TO COLLECT DATA DIRECTLY FROM LOCAL POPULATIONS.