Warner Robins locals aim to make politics easier to understand with CivicDuty website

WARNER ROBINS — A group of four Warner Robins natives have created a website dedicated to informing their community. 

CivicDuty is a one-stop shop for people to see the who, what, why and how of government. It provides information like who their elected representatives are, what they are doing in government, effects on issues the user cares about and how they can get involved, explained CEO and founder of CivicDuty, Saif Aslam.

How does CivicDuty work?

The process is simple: website visitors type in their address. From there, they will see their local and federal representatives. It includes information about the Houston County Commissioners to Warner Robins City Council members. Right now, users can use the request feature to learn more about Perry and Centerville councilmembers.

They can also dive deeper into laws being passed and what their representatives voted on. The website uses AI assistance but draws its information from a reliable source. If anyone distrusts the AI summary, a link will be provided to fact-check the information. 

Aslam encourages anyone who catches a mistake to notify them immediately via their report feature. The website consolidates publicly available information and simplifies it using AI. Aslam said this is to make it easier to understand, anyone can grasp what it means. 

He said they take their use of AI very seriously. Aslam has seen the tool evolve and learned its weaknesses. He said ensuring the information is pulled from official sources, rather than third-party websites, has guaranteed that their summaries are as accurate as possible. 

“In the long term as we scale upward and we have more resources, the majority of that is really going to be dedicated to seeing how we can improve our base system even more to really strengthen and ensure that accuracy and truthfulness as much as possible. It [is] a core value of what we do,” he said. 

The website also categorizes different issues, like education. It can be tedious for people to look through numerous pages of bills and policies. On CivicDuty, users can find and understand the information in under five minutes, according to Aslam. 

Those interested in education can filter by education to see all bills related to it and how their representatives voted. 

Aslam said they try to make the website as user-friendly as possible. 

“Even if you don’t know anything about government, you can naturally learn how it works through that user-friendly design, having explanatory tool tips everywhere, anything we can do to make it so that even a fifth grader could go on the website and understand how it is actually working,” he said. 

Aslam said they are self-funded and the website costs $150 to make. He said as of now, only 100 people have visited the website, but they hope that number keeps growing.

The people behind the website

Aslam is a rising senior at the Georgia Institute of Technology studying Computer Science with a minor in business. He graduated from Houston County High School back in 2023. 

Creating a website from scratch takes a lot of trial and error, Aslam said. It took him and the website’s co-Founder, Luciano De Fieno, two years to get it up and running. Fieno is also a Warner Robins native and is currently attending Georgia Tech. 

In the last couple of years, the team has expanded. This summer, they added William Rankine, who studies Public Policy at Grove City College. He is also a Houston County native and Aslam has known him since middle school. 

After a year of launching the website, they added Shiva Soundappan, who attends Carnegie Mellon University, along with Vedanth Ramanathan, who joined the team last fall. Aslam explained that Ramanathan was very politically engaged, which he believed would be a valuable asset. 

The beginning stages of an idea

From the website’s beginning, Aslam and De Fieno started talking to people of all ages. Aslam said they interviewed 50 people. They asked them about their political concerns and gathered feedback on what they would like to see on the website. 

Additional questions they asked were if they think their representatives cared about what their constituents believed. Aslam said a majority of them answered no. 

National surveys show the same trend. According to a study done by the PEW Research Center, 85% of Americans believe most elected officials don’t care about them. 

Aslam said they noticed their interviewees felt powerless. He thought it was helpful to listen to their experiences and confirm that it is a problem they aim to solve. 

“We were able to hit all of that which was really lovely, and it helped us to get the confidence we needed to say, ‘okay, this is a real problem,’” he said. 

In their research, they found that it takes a lot of time to navigate government processes, such as passing bills. They noticed that understanding those processes and how it interconnects is also difficult. 

He said the original version of the site was basic and fundamental compared to how it is now. Aslam said being able to workshop over time was valuable.

“Since then, being able to continually stick with the idea, having the ability to do that has really been wonderful because it led us to talk to so many people we’ve never been able to talk to and also see [the website] develop further,” he said. 

Aslam said it has not been easy putting together a website while also being a college student. But this summer, he has seen the site grow. At first, it only provided information on the Georgia State Legislature, but now it covers most of Houston County. The group is currently working to expand its coverage and add more cities to the website. 

“[It] has been nothing short of an incredibly rewarding and exciting experience because every day, we’re always coming up with new ideas, new thoughts on how we can make this better,” he said. “The best part about all of it is that the end goal is to help people…what can we do that could actually help any person with understanding how their government works.”

Aslam has a genetic disorder called congenital muscular dystrophy, which primarily affects voluntary muscles. This makes him wheelchair bound. 

Aslam said due to his disability, he has to interact with a lot of government systems like social security, Medicare and Medicaid. He said there are a lot of policies that directly govern his life, like the ADA. Aslam said that navigating it has been a significant burden, especially since he has dealt with it from a young age. 

As Aslam got older, he learned more about politics. 

“It sort of stuck in my head that this is meant to help me and this was made by representatives who were passing all this stuff to specifically create programs to help me, but why does it feel like this is all existing just to squeeze me out of the system?” he said. 

The idea of CivicDuty came to Aslam while visiting Pine Needle Park in Perry with his parents. He began to think about why he doesn’t understand the political process, if it was meant to help him. Aslam also mentioned that when he went to vote the first time, he did not recognize any of the names or the positions on the ballot. 

While walking on the trail, they saw an elderly couple picking up trash. Aslam’s father commented on them carrying out their civic duty. The word caused a lightbulb to go off in his head. This inspired him to start the website and create a hub he wished he had growing up. Fieno was the first person he called when he came up with the idea. 

Tackling the future of CivicDuty

Aslam believes there is a lack of engagement from people within the political process. He cited voting statistics, noting lower engagement at the local level. 

According to the Houston County Board of Elections, in the most recent primary runoff election on June 16, only 15,348 people voted. According to Georgia Votes, at least 125,181 residents are registered to vote in the county.

He believes the rise in distrust is because local politicians and the government are having difficulty connecting with their constituents. He said CivicDuty can be the bridge for simplification between them. 

“It’s just meant to make things easier so that everyone is able to understand what’s going on both sides, whether you are a representative or a regular voter,” he said. 

Aslam hopes that in three years, they will be able to expand their reach. He said they really depend on feedback and want to build something people want to use. 

“Our goal with this is to make something that can help people. That is the end goal. The ultimate core ethos of this site is having something that can really help dispel the barriers between government and make government accessible,” he said. 

To stay updated on CivicDuty, visit their website.