Empowering citizens to report crime via SMS... what else can they do with mobiles?

We should not be concerned about the cultural and organizational barriers that restrict governments from collaborating with citizens or civil society organizations. These barriers are crumbling.

Governments are realizing that there is a dividend in collaborating with citizens: improved results at lower cost. Increasing political and economic stability in the long run. Transparency and collaboration through accessible and inexpensive social networking tools is slowly transforming government around the world.

There is an inevitability that SMS, Twitter, Facebook et al will enable governments to achieve the unmet potential of “e-government”.

Governments are adopting performance management techniques and multi-year budgets. Output and outcome performance measurements can be too narrow to catch unintended impacts of any government policy. Citizens providing feedback provides the wisdom of crowds to improve measurements. It also enables tracking perception. There is recognition in many governments that visibly improving results supports political and economic stability.

In the current era of vast technology revolution and advancement in mobile technology, its welcoming to use SMS to report the crime effectively.This SMS crime reporting would be highly beneficial to the citizens if the authorities respond quickly. Also, citizens shouldn't have any inhibitions to report the crime immediately provided the identity of the witnesses of the crime is kept secret. Besides people should use this system seriously only when absolutely its required rather than sending fake SMS. Also enough people should be deployed to tackle SMS reports instantly and take the necessary subsequent actions. Very informative blog. Good going.

In Mexico, president Calderon’s war on drugs could definitely take advantage of this idea. Statistics vary widely from source to source, but one can identify a certain trend in the numbers: in this war casualties are increasing. Admittedly, this government has imprisoned many big shots, many more perhaps than any of its predecessors. Even the quantity of seized narcotics is spectacular. Street-level drug consumption and commerce, however, persists. In Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, for example, while marijuana street-prices soar and quality falls (or so I am told by users), drugs have not ceased to be an everyday phenomenon in many neighborhoods. Military presence certainly makes the headlines; arrests surely influence public opinion and gain support. And both do weaken organized crime. But specialists –such as Edgardo Buscaglia- have insisted: force has to be supplemented by intelligence –and it makes sense.

Civil society engagement, via sms denunciation, could be considered the ultimate source of intelligence data. The public is in a privileged position to identify criminal networks. Drug deals are made around the corner, their very corner, outside their windows. Intelligence agencies, in contrast, can only attain such a position after several months of hard work. Efficiency obliges. An sms is the easiest way to gather data promptly so as to dismember organized crime from the grassroots level up, whilst major arrests are covered on the weekly evening news. Moreover, the impersonality of a text message is a fine remedy to the usual distrust of official emergency and denunciation telephone numbers, which people show in Mexico. The sms appears to be an efficient solution to a cultural obstacle in the war against drugs, and thus, favor governance.

Nevertheless, impact evaluation is a must. The greatest danger of a fully fledged success of this policy, ironically, could be the erosion of social capital. Denunciation creates enemies. Otherwise, there would be no one to denounce. But criminals are part of a society. They are a “cancer” if you may, but also subjects of a polity. Let us call them: “entitled bad subjects”, “misbehaved citizens” –“citizens” being the part that concerns me here. Denunciation has to be presented as a means to aid fellow citizens and not as a civil scalpel.

In any case, President Calderon is in urgent need of new advisers, creative people such as that team working in Caracas.

Cheers,
Jorge Campos