Luke Bacon
26 Apr 2017, 12:15 p.m. Room 4
We all know it’s crucial, but if you’re a tiny team of developers building Civic Tech, it’s hard to dedicate resources to study the impact of your work. It’s also not necessarily your expertise.
The OpenAustralia Foundation are trying a new approach to keep the focus on impact. They’ve been running regular ‘Feedback Hackdays’ where they stop other work to build experimental tools that provide ongoing feedback on how their projects are used, and who uses them.
The information then continuously comes through as they continue building and maintaining Civic Tech, and the hackdays give the team a regular chance to consider how impact can be measured.
Luke shares the story of OpenAustralia Foundation’s hackdays, the tools they’ve made, and their ideas for incorporating more kinds of information.
Organisations big and small can use and evolve this practical approach for making feedback about impact an ongoing part of building Civic Tech.
Some examples of Open Australia Foundation’s innovations include a chatbot that updates the team on the overall usage of PlanningAlerts, and charts that highlight the individuals making the most of an Alaveteli instance and contributing to its community, and which help their parliamentary researcher understand what topics get the most attention.
Each tool tests a method for keeping the team focused on the impact of the organisation’s projects.