Citizen Development & Governance

This unit traces the evolution of programming, governance models, and the maker movement to explain how citizen development and broad automation adoption emerged. Students examine current no-code/AI platforms, governance approaches, and collaboration strategies to prepare for designing and governing citizen-led solutions in the workplace.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze the historical evolution of programming languages, forks, and governance models (e.g., centralization vs. federation) to identify the social, technical, and organizational factors that enabled citizen development and automation adoption
• Evaluate current citizen tools and platform options — including generative AI as no-code solutions — by comparing capabilities, limitations, risks, and appropriate workplace use cases to justify platform selection decisions
• Apply governance principles to design a preliminary ‘governance of citizen technologies’ plan that balances central oversight, federated autonomy, security/compliance, and change management
• Demonstrate collaboration strategies by producing a stakeholder and fusion-team engagement plan that specifies roles, communication practices, training, and social adoption tactics to enable successful citizen-professional collaboration