16 Policy Brief No. 93 Toda Peace Institute 8. Digital Governance Governance is a process for making decisions involving governments, civil society and the private sector. Ideally, coordination between these three elements of society work together. Too often governments make decisions that affect people’s lives without actively consulting and involving civil society. Digital technologies allow service providers in government, businesses or civil society groups to hear from the public about their needs, their concerns, and their feelings toward service provision or intervention. Open Government Partnership (OGP) includes government leaders from 78 countries and thousands of civil society advocates who work together to promote accountable, responsive and inclusive governance. OGP explores technology options that enable policymakers to listen and consult directly with their community members, and to be accountable to them.59 Digital governance or “GovTech” can enable “citizen-centric” public service provision where citizens evaluate government performance.60 In 2019, the World Bank launched “GovTech” to provide technical solutions to enable simple, accessible, and efficient government by improving the government’s ability to respond to citizen needs, and increasing the efficiency, transparency, and accountability of governance provision. GovTech, for example, can enable anonymous public reports to community police or reporting of abuses by the security sector.61 The stated aim of AI for Peace is to find ways to use artificial intelligence to aid in governance related to civil liberties and human rights, particularly decisions regarding the highly contested elements of criminal justice, law enforcement, housing, hiring, and education that often result in unintended consequences. 62 Omdena also uses AI and machine learning to address governance challenges. One Omdena project used machine learning to match land conflict events to government policies with the goal of understanding how to improve land restoration by minimising land conflicts.63 9. Digital Monitoring and Evaluation Governments and peacebuilding organisations can monitor and evaluate the public perceptions of their programmes and services through digital methods of data collection using mobile technology, social media, computation of big data sets, and tools to better visualize data. 64 Mobile surveys, for example, can elicit public input on “everyday peace For more information on Open Government Partnership see the website at https://www.opengovpartnership.org/about/ 60 For more information on GovTech see the website at https://www.govtech.com/The-2020-GovTech-100-Investors-Bet-Big-on-Gov-Tech.html 61 For more information on the World Bank’s GovTech see their webpage at https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/governance/brief/govtech-putting-people-first 62 For more information on AI for Peace see their website at https://www.aiforpeace.org/human-rights-anddemocracy 63 For more information on Omdena see their website at https://omdena.com/blog/land-degradation/ 64 Vanessa Corlazzoli. “ICTs for Monitoring & Evaluation of Peacebuilding Programmes. London: Department for International Development, UKAid, and Search for Common Ground. May 2014. 59