“Speech balloon” shared on Flickr by Marc Wathieu (CC-BY-NC)On any given Tuesday night in America, a local government is hosting a meeting in a high school gymnasium to engage the public in something – from a new development, to traffic calming measures, to a master plan. There is lively discussion, notes scribbled, and dots placed on maps. There are online surveys and interactive tools.Local governments reliably solicit people’s voices and collect data. For nearly two decades, I have worked with them to design creative tactics to bring people to the table. I have developed games, art, even theater to get people to show up and speak their minds. I am proud of this work. The problem is, in my experience, once governments assemble people and collect their data, they are not inclined to do anything with it. There is political power in holding a meeting, but very little in analyzing the data they collect. This is simply not sustainable. Governments are sitting on mountains of digital data. But because of a growing anti-AI sentiment, and the fear that listening to constituents will lead to unsustainable accountability, institutions are not eager to change their tactics.This is exacerbating one of the most significant problems in democratic governance: people don’t trust government information or its messengers. A recent poll from the Partnership for Public Service showed that only 27% of Americans trust the federal government; that’s down from 33% in 2025. The newest logic is…

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