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Representative dashboard

This guide is for elected representatives who have been approved on CivicOS. Your dashboard is where you see what citizens in your constituency are saying, respond publicly, and track how you're being held to account.

Getting your representative badge​

Representatives don't self-onboard as reps directly. The flow is:

  1. Sign up with account type = Representative (see Create an account).
  2. Fill in your application: full name, title, position, constituency, community, and any proof URLs (ID card, official directory listing, etc.).
  3. A platform admin reviews your application. Outcomes:
    • Approved — your rep profile goes live, citizens can follow you.
    • Needs changes — you get a note explaining what's missing; you can edit and resubmit.
    • Rejected — with a reason. If you disagree, contact platform admins.

While pending, you can still use the platform as a citizen.

Your representative page​

Once approved, you have a public representative page tied to your constituency and community. It shows:

  • Your title, position, party (optional), and photo.
  • Bio — free-form.
  • Contact — official email, phone, and website (all optional but strongly encouraged).
  • Follower count — citizens who chose to follow you.
  • Response rate — how often you post an official response on content you're tagged in. This is a public accountability metric.
  • A comment thread where citizens post publicly on your page.

Keep your bio and contact info fresh — a stale page reads as disengaged. Any admin in your community can also edit your profile.

Reading what citizens are saying​

Three feeds are relevant to you:

  • Your constituency feed — issues and petitions in the community you're tied to. Sort by upvotes to see what's rising.
  • Comments on your page — the public wall citizens post to.
  • Your notifications — new comments, new followers, and issues that admins have specifically flagged for your attention.

Responding officially​

An official response is a comment posted by a representative, government admin, NGO, moderator, or platform admin. The system labels it so citizens can distinguish your voice from another citizen posting on your page.

How to respond:

  1. Open the issue, petition, or your rep page's comment thread.
  2. Write a comment as you normally would.
  3. Post it.

The comment is automatically flagged isOfficialResponse: true because of your role — you don't need to toggle anything.

When you post an official response on your rep page, every follower gets a notification. Ordinary comments from other citizens on your page don't fan out — only official ones do.

Answering issues​

Citizens will file issues in your constituency. You can:

  • Comment to acknowledge, ask for detail, or explain the situation.
  • Change status — if you're also a GOVERNMENT_ADMIN, you can move the issue through the lifecycle (OPEN → UNDER_REVIEW → IN_PROGRESS → RESOLVED / CLOSED).
  • Ping the right org — a platform admin or org admin can assign the issue to the body responsible for handling it.

Answering petitions​

Petitions are structured asks. Your options:

  • Comment publicly to state your position — for, against, needs refinement, etc.
  • Post a milestone response when a petition crosses 25 %, 50 %, or 100 %. Citizens are already getting a milestone notification; your reply is the follow-up they're expecting.

Response rate​

Every representative has a response rate metric visible on their public profile. It's the share of issues (in your community) that received either an official comment from you or a public progress update from an assigned organization.

The rate is calculated automatically — you don't need to do anything special. Post official responses and encourage the orgs in your constituency to post progress updates, and your rate rises.

Citizens use this number when deciding who to follow, back, and vote for. It's the platform's most direct accountability signal.

Etiquette​

  • Answer, don't campaign. Your rep page isn't a campaign channel — it's a public accountability venue. Save the campaigning for elsewhere.
  • Be specific. "We're looking into it" ages badly. "Team dispatched to Junction 4 at 9 AM, ETA 45 minutes" ages well.
  • Never delete a hard question. Comment on it. Deleted questions hurt trust more than any answer ever could.
  • Correct the record publicly. If you were wrong about something, say so in a follow-up comment. The audit trail is public anyway.

Related: Notifications →