Can citizen data improve accountability in Lebanon?

A pothole can be a passing frustration, reported in a phone call or message and quickly forgotten. Once it is photographed, geolocated, entered into a public database and tracked over time, however, it becomes part of a public record of how government performs and, crucially, whether it responds.

Around the world, a growing field of civic technology is seeking to make those everyday interactions with government measurable. Yet giving citizens a digital channel does not necessarily give them meaningful influence. Across countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), only 38% of people were confident that public services would respond to users’ needs, according to its Government at a Glance 2025 report. Its 2026 Digital Government Outlook found that just 17 of 36 countries required digital participation tools to be used when policies were being designed.

The challenge is particularly relevant in Lebanon, where channels between citizens and local government remain limited.

“There’s no medium for us to talk directly to our municipalities,” Roy Bou Nassif, founder of the citizen-reporting platform Baladi Map, told The Beiruter.

We talk about fixing the country, but it starts with local government. If you want to build a country, you’ve got to build your own neighborhood first.

From complaints to public data

Digital civic tools have transformed individual complaints into data that can be aggregated and used to track how cities respond to everyday public-service failures. The practice has become significant enough that the World Bank’s 2025 GovTech Maturity Index, covering 198 economies, now treats digital citizen engagement as one of four central dimensions of government digital transformation.

In New York City, millions of interactions with public services are channeled through a centralized reporting system. Residents can dial 311, use its website or mobile app to report problems ranging from missed garbage collection to illegal parking. Requests are routed to the responsible agencies, while the resulting data tracks complaints by type, location and agency, as well as how they are resolved.

The model also operates outside government. Britain’s FixMyStreet allows residents to report potholes, broken streetlights, and other problems on a public map. The platform routes reports to the relevant authority while keeping them publicly visible, and its open-source technology has been deployed internationally.

Visibility changes the equation

Citizen-generated data is valuable partly because it creates a record where one might otherwise not exist. Abou Nassif described complaints in Lebanon as often disappearing into informal administrative processes with little way to establish what was reported or how authorities responded.

“There’s currently no proof or transparency in the complaint and response process,” Abou Nassif said.

When it’s online, it’s public. It gives credibility to the issue and to the citizen, while also giving the municipality a public record of what it has actually fixed.

Digitization makes those interactions measurable. Reports can carry a date and location, be grouped to identify recurring problems and track whether authorities acknowledge or resolve them. Government response becomes more visible in the process, revealing both where problems persist and where authorities have acted successfully.

The ability to track those outcomes is becoming a more important part of public-service design. The OECD argues that governments should systematically collect user feedback and measure experiences with administrative services, using that information to identify weaknesses and improve delivery.

The Middle East's digital government experiment

Across the Middle East, governments are investing in digital identities, online portals, open-data systems and other tools intended to move interactions with the state from counters and paper files onto digital platforms.

Lebanon has begun its own push. In 2024, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) launched a $9.2 million public administration reform and digitalization program in partnership with the Lebanese government. Running through 2027, the initiative supports the Prime Minister’s Office, the Office of the Minister of State for Administrative Reform and several ministries in developing more integrated, user-centered public services.

The effort accelerated in 2026. In February, Lebanon’s Office of the Minister of State for Administrative Reform launched BIND-Leb, a government lab designed to help public institutions develop and test services using digital tools, behavioral insights and data. It followed several digitization initiatives introduced in 2025, including an automated registration system used by nearly 30,000 candidates in the municipal elections, an electoral hotline that handled more than 18,000 inquiries, new digital taxation and consumer-protection services, and the archiving of 30,000 asset declarations at the National Anti-Corruption Commission.

Citizen-led tools occupy another part of that ecosystem. Baladi Map, for example, allows users to report local service problems on a public map and gives participating municipalities a mechanism to respond. Such tools add a public layer of citizen-generated data to a government system that is itself becoming more digital.

Data cannot guarantee accountability

Transparency and capacity are not interchangeable. The OECD’s 2026 Digital Government Outlook warns that digital engagement often remains disconnected from the institutions responsible for delivering services. Collecting feedback matters only if governments can act on it.

Citizen data cannot substitute for functioning institutions. It can, however, give residents a clearer view of how those institutions respond and create new ways for them to participate in improving the communities around them.