Digital citizen engagement

THE age of digital has transformed the way many of us engage. For example, what used to be a manual back and forth exercise of letter sending ― i.e., a letter sender, armed with a pen and paper, writes and sends to a recipient, and recipient receives in a matter of days, to which recipient sends a response as well for the letter sender to receive ― has now been condensed, thanks to technology, to minutes, with no limitation on geography and time. Because engagement has become real-time, information can be exchanged more efficiently, thus making the engagement richer and more alive.

The shift of information access to digital has also enabled the citizenry to be empowered as far as decision making is concerned, given that information can be obtained at our fingertips with just a few clicks away. We are able to decide more quickly and move on with other things. This empowerment similarly forms the kind of conversations and dialogues we can engage in, especially in matters that are important such as health, government policies, education, weather and many others.