The Insentif Pemberdayaan Masyarakat community service reported in this paper was based on the problems faced by the marginalized groups in accessing public information related to the public service. The target group of this activity was Masyarakat Peduli Pelayanan Publik (MP3 or Public Service Concerned Community) in the City of Surakarta. The MP3 is advocated by a non government organization (NGO) called PATTIRO-Solo.

The goal of the community service activity is to increase the capacity of the grass-root level community in the process of monitoring the public service issues and in publishing their experiences and observations via the mass media. The publication is hoped to become an alternative information source about public policy issues for the community--along with other mainstream mass media and government’s reports—which can be utilized by the stakeholders in evaluating the policy agenda of the City of Surakarta concerning public services.

Two methods were used in the the activity: (1) community education was used to empower the citizenship awareness, explaining the concepts, principles, and forms of public service; (2) technology transfer was used to help the group in the application of information technology, in the form of workshop in citizen journalism writing and citizen photojournalism about public service issues.

Keywords: citizen journalism, public service