Defending democracy defenders: Cybersecurity for civic tech projects
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A this gathering we heard the latest techniques to help civic and pro-democracy tech projects protect their services, data and users.
Speakers were:
Patricia Musomba, The Engine Room
Hui Hui Ooi, Advisor, Technology & Democracy at the International Republican Institute (IRI)
Jocelyn Woolbright, Program Manager at Cloudflare Impact,
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From Digital Public Infrastructure to Democratic Public Infrastructure
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At this TICTeC community gathering, we discussed if DPI can, and should, go beyond better service delivery, to provide opportunities for citizens to fully participate in their democracies.
Speakers: Richard Gevers (Head of Service Design and Delivery at the Digital Services Unit of The Presidency South Africa) and Sanna-Kaisa Saloranta (Specialist in the Democratic Innovations programme at Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund).
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Leveraging content creators for mobilizing voters
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Slides from Ana Arevadze (ForSet, Georgia)’s talk about their work with social media influencers to inform and educate Georgian youth on voting and democratic information.
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Beyond websites: How pro-democracy projects reach their audiences
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At this TICTeC gathering, we heard directly from practitioners running civic and pro-democracy tech initiatives from across the world.
They shared the strategies they’re using to reach people where they are, ensure their services remain accessible and relevant, and find new ways to track impact in this changing digital landscape.
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Keynote address: Reclaiming democratic technology governance for our society
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As a global society, we are navigating a delicate line between the good that tech can do for democracy, and the dangers of letting self-interested tech giants dominate the field. It serves us to examine how authoritarian regimes are using tech, and to ask, can democracies reclaim sovereignty and stand up for the interests of citizens?
Watch Marietje Schaake (Stanford Cyber Policy Center, Institute for Human-Centered AI, Financial Times)’s TICTeC 2025 keynote address.
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Empowering civic engagement: leveraging Ushahidi for transparent and inclusive electoral monitoring and governance
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Hear Rhoda Omenya (Ushahidi) explain how Uchaguzi empowers citizens to report incidents during elections, enabling the monitoring of election-related events in near real-time.
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Lessons from PMOs using videos and written transcripts
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OpenParliament.tv talk about their approach to video and transcripts when monitoring the German parliament.
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The future of tech, the future of TICTeC: Navigating AI in Pro-Democracy Tech
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As the rapid development of AI reshapes how societies function, how should the civic and pro-democracy tech communities respond? Join mySociety’s CEO, Programme Leads, and special guests for a lively and interactive discussion on striking the right balance between automation and human agency in pro-democracy tech—and how TICTeC initiatives might help shape this critical frontier going forwards.
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The current state of open government and digital transparency in the Netherlands
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In this TICTeC 2025 presentation, discover three of Open State Foundation’s most impactful pro-democracy projects in the Netherlands, including a search tool to make documents of all levels of government more findable; research on late responses to Access to Information requests; and open calendars of ministerial meetings that anyone can subscribe to.
MyMzansi: building South Africa’s democratic digital public infrastructure
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In his TICTeC 2025 presentation, Richard Gevers (Open Cities Lab) gives practical insights from South Africa’s groundbreaking Digital Mzansi initiative — a comprehensive programme to transform government service delivery through democratic Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). Hear of the concrete progress that has been made, and plans for building open, inclusive digital systems that reach millions of citizens.
How do you know if your work is making an impact?
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mySociety and OpenUp worked closely with SPOON and the Átlátszónet Foundation, both organisations focus on improving access to government information, to explore a critical but often overlooked question: How do you know if your projects are actually making a difference?
In this insightful TICTeC session, SPOON and the Átlátszónet Foundation share their hands-on experiences, practical methodologies, and key findings from their efforts to —for the first time— track and measure the impact of their projects.
Using civic tech to supercharge lobbying transparency
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Discover Open Access, the tool from Transparency International which makes lobbying data in the UK more accessible to all. Within the area of climate, analysis shows patterns of lobbying by fossil fuel companies.
Learn how the tool uncovered this — and how to conduct a similar analysis around your own interests, in this TICTeC 2025 presentation by Rose Whiffen from Transparency International UK.
Civic tech for investigative impact: how data-driven journalism strengthens transparency and democracy
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Discover the measurable impact of civic tech to enhance transparency, accountability, and environmental protection, and how investigative journalism can utilise data tools to drive democratic outcomes.
As shared by Reinaldo Chaves from the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism in his TICTeC 2025 presentation, case studies involving Brazilian journalists show how by connecting disparate datasets, patterns of corruption, environmental violations, and misuse of public resources can be uncovered.
Q&A for ‘Democratic transparency and parliamentary monitoring’ TICTeC 2025 session
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Question and answer session for the presenters of the following TICTeC 2025 presentations:
– The impact of the Promise Tracker tool – Gitungo Wamere and Caroline Gaita (Mzalendo Trust, Kenya)
– Impacts of parliamentary monitoring in Spain – Celia Zafra and Pablo Martín (Political Watch, Spain)
– Tainan City Council Watchbot: empowering informed citizens through AI – Billy Zhe-Wei Lin (Tainan Sprout, Taiwan)
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Tainan City Council Watchbot: empowering informed citizens through AI
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The Tainan City Council WatchBot uses the proceedings released by Tainan City Council to train its AI-powered system to analyse and respond to questions about the council’s proceedings. It provides a user-friendly interface that guides citizens to quickly find answers, accompanied by relevant meeting sources to support traceability — and is all open source.
Billy Zhe-Wei Lin from Tainan Sprout explains more in this TICTeC 2025 presentation.
What MPs really do: turning data into democratic power in Spain
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‘Qué Hacen Los Diputados’ (What MPs Do) addresses gaps in parliamentary transparency and accountability, addressing a persistent reality: public institutions often lag in transparency and accountability without citizen pressure. The project organises parliamentary data in an accessible, user-friendly format — invaluable for citizens, journalists, researchers, and civil society, and fostering informed participation.
Hear more in this TICTeC 2025 presentation by Celia Zafra and
Pablo Martín from Political Watch, Spain.
The impact of the Promise Tracker tool
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The Promise Tracker from Mzalendo Trust, launched in 2023, tracks government and opposition promises to enhance accountability and foster participatory democracy.
Hear more about its impact in this TICTeC 2025 presentation by Mzalendo Trust’s Gitungo Wamere and Caroline Gaita.
Q&A for ‘Tech for deliberation and participation’ TICTeC 2025 session
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Question and answer session for the presenters of the following TICTeC 2025 presentations:
– Waves: trialling a new AI-powered digital deliberation process to strengthen trust in local government – Miriam Levin (Demos, UK)
– Why consultation matters: the impact of 10 million voices – Louise Cato and Jessie Ashmore (Delib, UK)
– Polis: Updates and impacts – Colin Megill (Polis / The Computational Democracy Project, US)
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Pol.is 2.0 sneak preview
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Polis is a real-time system for gathering, analyzing and understanding what large groups of people think in their own words, enabled by advanced statistics and machine learning. Polis has been used all over the world by governments, academics, independent media and citizens.
Co-founder Colin Megill chose TICTeC 2025 to launch Polis 2.0 – find out more in this presentation.
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Why consultation matters: the impact of 10 million voices
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Public consultation is often seen as a bureaucratic exercise: a checkbox for government departments and public sector organisations to tick — but the reality is far more profound. Through Delib’s decades of experience of powering some of the biggest national conversations, they’ve seen how meaningful consultation fundamentally changes policy outcomes and strengthens democratic decision-making.
Hear more in this TICTeC 2025 presentation from Louise Cato and
Jessie Ashmore (Delib, UK).
Waves: trialling a new AI-powered digital deliberation process to strengthen trust in local government
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Demos is leading the largest trial of digital democracy in the UK. Waves is a €1 million project trialling new technology in local democracy to bring people together to tackle contentious local issues and strengthen trust in local government.
Hear more in this TICTeC 2025 presentation by Miriam Levin.
Growing the Open Society: Tech and democratic innovation
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Can tech strengthen democracy by making new approaches possible? This TICTeC 2025 panel explores the constructive possibilities of tech and democracy, to build the capacity of the engine of democratic progress, increase democratic trust and resilience, and strengthen the heartbeat of civic and democratic life.
Panellists:
– Louise Crow (mySociety)
– Colin Megill (Polis / The Computational Democracy Project)
– Fernanda Campagnucci (InternetLab & University of Muenster)
– Lula Chen (MIT GOV/LAB)
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Keynote TICTeC 2025: A stronger democracy – through data, information and technology
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What is made possible by new forms of technology — especially in the civic participation space — and what needs to happen to make those possibilities a reality? Tech innovations are making political participation easier and more accessible across the globe, while open data and access to information continue to play a vital part in strengthening our democracies. In her TICTeC 2025 keynote address, Fernanda Campagnucci (InternetLab & University of Muenster) will draw on her latest research as lead of the State Capacity in Smart Cities for Online Participation (SCOPE) project.
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Welcome to TICTeC day two
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mySociety’s Chief Executive Louise Crow opens day two of TICTeC 2025 by asking, “what is the work we are called upon to engage in now?”
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Localised agenda alerts create engaged, informed citizens
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Public meetings are an important part of democracy, but they are not always well-attended. Creating localised and real-time agenda alerts allows people to be engaged, informed citizens.
In this TICTeC 2025 presentation by Julia McKenna (Northwestern University, US) and Alex Cabral (Georgia Tech, US), learn how one Indigenous nation is employing natural language processing to uphold sovereignty and rights in the 21st century.
Making Pakistan’s constitution accessible through AI
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What if anyone could understand their constitutional rights by simply asking questions in their own language? Numainda, Code for Pakistan’s AI-powered legislative bot, turns this possibility into reality by breaking down the country’s constitution and legislation into clear, actionable information in both Urdu and English.
Find out more in Ali Raza’s TICTeC 2025 presentation.
Q&A for ‘Fostering usage of pro-democracy technology’ TICTeC 2025 session
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Question and answer session for the presenters of the following TICTeC 2025 presentations:
– Changing the argument for using civic technology – Rodney Schwartz (Delib, UK)
– Solving climate data deserts on the municipal level: Climate Diaries– Giulio Carvalho (Diários do Clima, Brazil)
– Dream Con: how civic tech puts citizens at the centre of constitutional reform – Thanisara Ruangdej (GG) (WeVis, Thailand)
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Dream Con: how civic tech puts citizens at the centre of constitutional reform
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Thailand has experienced 13 coups in 90 years, leading to 20 versions of constitutions, each tailored to the power-holders of the time. In response, the WeVis team — directly affected by the latest constitution — aimed to shift the dynamic by empowering citizens to actively participate in redesigning the constitution.
Find out more in Thanisara Ruangdej’s TICTeC 2025 presentation.
Changing the argument for using civic technology
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The moral and ethical case for Pro-Democracy Technology has been made for many years. Despite decades of effort, little has changed. The argument that politicians must “do this because it’s the right thing to do” has not been successful. The rise of far-right populist parties across the world implores us to consider a different approach.
In this TICTeC 2025 presentation by Rodney Schwartz, discover the outcomes of his research and interviews with 80 European P/PPs and PDT suppliers — the first time such a large group had been surveyed.
Infrastructure for democracy: how Abrimos.info is transforming governance in Latin America
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Abrimos.info is a newly established organisation with a mission to strengthen democracy across Latin America by building and scaling digital infrastructures that promote transparency, accountability, and public participation. Discover how they are driving measurable impact in transparency around public officials’ disclosures, contracting information and Access to Information, in Martín Szyszlican’s TICTeC 2025 presentation.
Q&A for ‘Defending democracy, internet freedom and digital security’ TICTeC 2025 session
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Question and answer session for the presenters of the following TICTeC 2025presentations:
– What digital security solutions [don’t] work for civil society organisations – Mykola Kostynyan (RESIDENT.ngo, Lithuania)
– Six months of African pro-democracy innovating: what have we learned? – Carl Jacobs (OpenUp, South Africa)
– New Belarus: showcasing digital innovation to strengthen democracy, transparency, and civic participation – Pavel Liber (Nation – Digital Society Platform, Lithuania)
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New Belarus: showcasing digital innovation to strengthen democracy, transparency, and civic participation
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In response to the 2020 Belarusian election crisis, New Belarus emerged as a digital ecosystem (mobile app + web platform), uniting Belarusians worldwide. Its mission transcends technology by building a resilient global Belarusian community committed to freedom and democracy, through an array of digital and civic tech initiatives.
Find out more in Pavel Liber’s presentation at TICTeC 2025.
Anti-Corruption, Collaboration, and Capacity: How African Civil Society is advancing Pro-Democracy Innovation
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There is a growing global democratic crisis, whilst civic actors in Africa have decreased access to funding and resources, and suffer significantly from massive digital inequalities. What does it take to build sustainable civic tech capacity in Sub-Saharan Africa and how can past innovations inform scalable support for digital democracy?
Hear from Carl Jacobs from OpenUp in this TICTeC 2025 presentation.
What digital security solutions [don’t] work for civil society organisations
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Civil society organisations combat dictatorships, corruption, election falsifications, etc — and so are natural enemies to actors with huge amount of resources and motivation to fight back.
In this TICTeC 2025 presentation, hear RESIDENT.ngo’s experience with recent sophisticated attacks in Eastern Europe, and learn what measures actually work for small to medium civil society organisations.
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Empowering young voters through Voting Aid Applications
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In times of increasing misinformation and declining voter turnout, particularly among younger generations, well-designed Voting Aid Applications (VAAs) can play a pivotal role in revitalising democratic engagement.
In this TICTeC 2025 presentation by Sofie Marien (Tree Company), gain insights into best practices for creating high-quality VAAs that increase (informed) voting and strengthen the electoral process and institutions, plus the latest research on the impact of such tools.
Countering information disorder in Nigerian elections
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Tasked to identify trends and actors fuelling information disorder ahead of the elections, the CDD West Africa team launched a social media chatbot, allowing users to directly report claims from their own social media channels. The submitted claims enabled the team to upload verified fact-checks, granting users real-time access to accurate information.
Hear more about this project in Aluko Ahmad (CDD West Africa)’s TICTeC 2025 presentation.
Defending democracy with/from tech
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What is the role of tech in a global pro democracy movement? This TICTeC 2025 panel discusses the challenges posed by tech, and the potential to repurpose technology in democratic defence.
Panellists:
-Alex Parsons (mySociety)
-Mike Bracken (Public Digital)
-Silvana Fumega (Global Data Barometer)
-Ya-wei Chou (Global Innovation Hub, Friedrich Naumann Foundation)
– Felix Sieker (Bertelsmann Stiftung)
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Welcome to TICTeC 2025
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mySociety’s CEO Louise Crow’s opening address on Day 1 of TICTeC 2025.
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Q&A for ‘AI and governance’ TICTeC session
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Question and answer session for the presenters of the following TICTeC 2025 presentations:
– Breaking AI monopolies: building public AI as an alternative infrastructure – Felix Sieker (Bertelsmann Stiftung, Germany)
– Putting the humans back in: Manchester People’s Panel for AI – Sherelle Fairweather and Becky McMillan (Manchester City Council, UK)
– Community-led AI audits: why they matter and how to start one – Matt Stempeck, Eloise Gabadou, Yung-Shuan Wu (Civic Tech Field Guide)
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Community-led AI audits: why they matter and how to start one
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Audits of AI systems looked at predictive algorithms in the criminal justice system; discrimination by ride-hailing platforms; and city-level social services — and had real impact. You too can lead audits of AI systems affecting your own communities. Together we can hold these systems accountable for equitable outcomes in the real world.
This TICTeC 2025 presentation by the team at the Civic Tech Field Guide, provides details of these audits of real-world AI systems.
Putting the humans back in: Manchester People’s Panel for AI
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The Manchester People’s Panel for AI (PPfAI), a collaborative project led by Manchester’s Digital Strategy team in partnership with Manchester Metropolitan University, aims to enable citizens to influence the development of new AI initiatives.
Through educational roadshows, training sessions, and panels with local service leads, the PPfAI provides opportunities for residents to learn about the ethical and technical aspects of AI and shape its use in frontline service delivery.
Find out mroe in this TICTeC 2025 presentation by
Becky McMillan and Sherelle Fairweather (Manchester City Council).
Breaking AI monopolies: building public AI as an alternative infrastructure
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As AI systems become fundamental to civic participation, their concentration in the hands of a few tech giants poses critical challenges to digital sovereignty and civic empowerment. Public AI could serve as a democratic counterweight to commercial AI systems, enabling civic tech organisations to maintain independence while harnessing AI’s potential.
In this TICTeC 2025 presentation by Felix Sieker (Bertelsmann Stiftung), find out about strategies for developing Public AI alternatives that prioritise democratic values over commercial interests.
Q&A for ‘Democratic literacy and participation’ TICTeC 2025 session
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Question and answer session for the presenters of the following TICTeC 2025 presentations:
– Making Pakistan’s constitution accessible through AI – Ali Raza (Code for Pakistan, Pakistan)
– Localised agenda alerts create engaged, informed citizens – Julia McKenna (Northwestern University, US) and Alex Cabral (Georgia Tech, US)
Machine Learning, AI and Parliamentary Monitoring
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A conversation about Machine Learning and AI initiatives in parliamentary monitoring.
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Monitoring Sub-National Parliaments
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A PMO community of practice meeting discussing the challenges of monitoring parliaments at the subnational level
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Common civic tech needs across global contexts
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In a year-long series of pro bono clinics, the Civic Tech Field Guide team met with democracy activists working in countries whose democracies are under active threat.
The surprising finding from the consultations was the shared overlap in what these groups reported they needed.
From cybersecurity resources, to self-hosted messaging tech, to warm relationships at big tech platforms, their needs are as specific as they are shared.
Learn about the identified commonalities and resources that begin to address these needs, and what more we, as a field, might be able to do to help.
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Common civic tech needs across global contexts
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In a year-long series of pro bono clinics, the Civic Tech Field Guide team met with democracy activists working in countries whose democracies are under active threat.
The surprising finding from the consultations was the shared overlap in what these groups reported they needed.
From cybersecurity resources, to self-hosted messaging tech, to warm relationships at big tech platforms, their needs are as specific as they are shared.
Learn about the identified commonalities and resources that begin to address these needs, and what more we, as a field, might be able to do to help.
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From data to democracy: the role of DCinbox in shaping informed citizenship and government accountability
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Lindsey Cormack (Stevens Institute of Technology) presents DCinbox, an archive of every official e-newsletter sent from members of the United States Congress, with nearly 200,000 missives spanning more than 15 years. This data allows findings on political representation, public health information dissemination, propensities for legislators to emulate the style of the President, gendered communication, and more.
Redefined civic tech: community-centric impact stories from Georgia
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AskGov in Georgia, based on mySociety’s Alaveteli platform, hosts 1,118 datasets. What sets it apart is that the data does not remain confined to the platform: through contests, fellowship programmes and datathons, storytelling and data visualisation projects are distributed to a mass audience, with topics such as the environment, corruption, transparency, gender and occupation.
This TICTeC 2024 presentation by Vero Melua from ForSet shares more.
Can robots lobby? AI, democracy and political persuasion
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Lobbying is a negative influence often connected to corruption, secrecy and poor behaviour. But can AI change things for the better, improving the abilities of those who monitor lobbying, or helping raise awareness of problems? Conversely, will AI bring increased powers for political persuaders, perhaps even introducing the robot lobbyist?
At TICTeC 2024, Ben Worthy from Birkbeck College presented a paper asking how AI can change lobbying for better or worse. It looks in turn at how AI can allow different groups to do the same things but better; and do new things. It draws on examples from the UK and US, as well as wider academic studies, to predict what may happen, and offer a framework.
Reflections on the challenges of practising digital democratic innovation
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Critical discussion of digital innovation in democracy typically points to gaps between aspirations and realities. Despite initial optimism about the potential of new technologies, research has tended to be much more pessimistic. At TICTeC 2024, Matt Ryan from the University of Southampton presented research exploring the space between naïve optimism and cynical pessimism by asking us to reflect on digital tools’ ability to enhance democracy in practice.
Data for democracy: a Canadian perspective on how governments can leverage civil society to hold big tech accountable
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The SAMbot project uses machine learning to evaluate abusive content sent to Canadian political candidates during elections. Bill-63, a new draft bill from Canada’s federal government which incorporates an Online Harms Act, may be the key to supporting research into how digital technologies are affecting our social fabric.
This TICTeC 2024 presentation from Sabreena Delhon and
Alex MacIsaac explores Canada’s recent data transparency efforts from the position of researchers at the Samara Centre for Democracy, and considers the potential for the new legislation to make a meaningful contribution to safeguarding Canadian and global democratic norms.
Empowering communities: Budeshi’s impact on transparency and accountability in Nigerian government projects
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Hear from Nnenna Eze (Public and Private Development Centre, Nigeria)’s TICTeC 2024 presentation on Budeshi, the open-contracting tool, which has emerged as a pivotal platform facilitating transparency and accountability in public procurement. Data from Freedom of Information requests is published on the platform to allow thorough monitoring exercises across various Nigerian states. Journalists have been trained and communities empowered to independently investigate and report on discrepancies.
How civic tech is unveiling corruption and championing democracy and environmental protection in Brazil
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Hear from Maria Vitória Ramos (Fiquem Sabendo, Brazil) about two award-winning initiatives that address the power imbalance between society and the state, using Freedom of Information and a multidisciplinary approach integrating journalism, advocacy, training, and civic technology to monitor governmental spending and provide oversight of lobbying. The results? Pivotal public reports and significant legislative reforms.
Fragmented climate data in the UK
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Fragmented data is frustrating for everyone – it reduces the economic value of data, wastes taxpayers’ money, and prevents innovative, collaborative solutions to the climate crisis. In this short TICTeC 2024 talk, mySociety’s Julia Cushion shares some findings from mySociety’s product and policy work on improving data sharing between civil society, local/national government, and citizens.
Scoring councils on their climate action
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What difference can a small organisation make? With the right data — a lot. Climate Emergency UK first assessed every local council’s Climate Action Plan, and then moved onto marking actual climate action, publishing the results as a set of in-depth Scorecards. The real-life impacts of these scores have been notable. Find out more from this TICTeC 2024 presentation from Don von Rohland.
What is the role of civic tech in enabling the effective and democratic change needed to meet the challenge of climate change?
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At this TICTeC 2024 panel discussion, Genevieve Maitland Hudson (Social Investment Business / mySociety)
Maddy Carroll (Director, UK Programme, European Climate Foundation), Dr. Michal Nachmany (Founder and CEO, Climate Policy Radar) and Aleks Berditchevskaia (Principal Researcher, Nesta Centre for Collective Intelligence Design) discuss the opportunities and challenges that civic technology presents, when it comes to democratic climate action.
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TICTeC 2024 keynote address: Putting Democracy back into Climate Action
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Nick Mabey from E3G (Third Generation Environmentalism)’s TICTeC 2024 keynote speech. Nick emphasised the need to put democratic values, institutional strengthening, and governance innovation back at the heart of climate action if we are serious about protecting everyone from catastrophic climate damage.
Welcome to TICTeC 2024 Day 2
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mySociety’s CEO Louise Crow’s opening address during the second day of TICTeC 2024.
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Empowering civic engagement: leveraging Ushahidi for transparent and inclusive electoral monitoring and governance
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Hear Rhoda Omenya (Ushahidi) explain how Uchaguzi empowers citizens to report incidents during elections, enabling the monitoring of election-related events in near real-time.
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Moving from digital tools to digital public spaces: building infrastructures for digital citizen participation
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When thinking about digital technologies for participation as public spaces, the narrative can shift to promote a stronger role for public authorities in developing, deploying and monitoring such technologies. The Getting Civic Tech Right for Democracy work from the OECD helps suggest first recommendations towards a more holistic perspective for digital participation. Mauricio Mejia Galvan (OECD) presents these recommendations.
Combining online mass-consultation with a citizens’ assembly for effective participation
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Learn from Dr. Dominik Hierlemann and Stefan Roch from Bertelsmann Stiftung about the “Forum against Fakes”, a nationwide debate on the topic, run by Bertelsmann Stiftung with the German Ministry of the Interior. A multistep process combined online consultation with a citizens’ assembly, with the deliberate aim of combining the strengths of both.
The critical role of civic technology and cybersecurity in sustaining Russian anti-war civil society in exile
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Learn from Denis Yagodin (Teplitsa) about the strategies and cybersecurity practices of Russian anti-war civil society in exile, including the use of social media, chatbots, and encrypted communication to safely mobilise, share information, and support democratic values. There is a crucial role for cybersecurity in protecting these activities from state surveillance and interference — and upholding democracy.
Q&A for ‘Citizen engagement and parliamentary monitoring’ TICTeC 2024 session
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Q&A session for these TICTeC 2024 presentations:
– From data to democracy: the role of DCinbox in shaping informed citizenship and government accountability – Lindsey Cormack (Stevens Institute of Technology, US)
– Thailand’s first parliamentary monitoring tool – Thanisara Ruangdej (GG) (Punch Up & WeVis, Thailand)
– Empowering citizens: how Querido Diário is making Brazilian city policies accessible – Giulio Carvalho (Open Knowledge Brasil, Brazil) and Renne Rocha (Querido Diário, Brazil)
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TICTeC 2024 keynote address: Joining the dots on civic tech and anti-corruption
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At TICTeC 2024 María Baron from Directorio Legislativo shared insights drawn from a rich career working from different angles to support and defend democracy across Latin America and globally. She shared insights into Directorio Legislativo’s digital anti-corruption solution, and approach to consensus building across polarised stakeholders, the latest milestone in their work to strengthen democracies across Latin America and beyond.
Thailand’s first parliamentary monitoring tool
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Discover WeVis’ path to launching Parliament Watch, an open-source comprehensive platform that serves as a one-stop solution for monitoring Thailand’s parliament — and the challenges they faced along the way. Inspired by platforms like TheyWorkForYou and GovTrack, but adapting them to Thailand’s own political landscape, the initiative aims to increase political transparency.
Challenges of implementing civic tech projects in adverse environments
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Hear from Courteney Mukoyi (Justice Code Foundation) on the challenges of implementing civic technology in Zimbabwe. Difficulties include poor internet infrastructure, competing platforms for users’ attention — and a hostile dictatorship that will clamp down on anything perceived as anti-government.
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Democracy under threat – how does civic tech have to shift to adapt to the problems of the current era?
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Louise Crow (mySociety),
Enrique Bravo-Escobar (National Endowment for Democracy NED), Helena Puig Larrauri (Build Up), Vakau J.S. (Access Now), Claire Foulquier-Gazagnes (Google) and
María Baron (Directorio Legislativo)
discuss the urgency of the democratic crisis, and how civic technology might need to evolve to enable true democratic governance.
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How to build a country-led election coalitions and combat misinformation online
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Megan Babakar (Google) shares the key findings from a six month research project involving interviews with fifteen global experts which culminated in the development of an election coalitions playbook. The research provides insights and identifies best practices from some of the most successful election coalitions from the past decade.The findings show there is no one-size-fits-all approach to creating an election coalition to combat misinformation during an election. But there are some common themes, questions, approaches, and ideas that all successful coalitions share.
Long Running PMO Sites
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A discussion about the challenges of running PMO sites for a long time
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The FOI Clearing House: an openDemocracy investigation into Freedom of Information at the heart of government
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The Clearing House is a unit within the UK Cabinet Office that “advises on” and “coordinates” FOI requests referred by government departments.
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It takes two: when citizens and Congress Members deliberate online
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Researchers invited 150 constituents that were representative of the district to a week-long, single topic, online forum with their Member of Congress.
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Leave no-one behind: overcoming hurdles to online citizen assemblies
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FutureGov was commissioned by Blackpool Council to deliver a neighbourhood assembly on climate change. But Blackpool’s population is in the top 10% most deprived in England, and they had to recognise that there were significant barriers to online participation.
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Technology and public participation in constitution making
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An overview of efforts to deploy technological tools in bottom-up constitution making initiatives.
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Changing a constitution
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Constitutional revision has been a long running theme for Iceland in recent years. Now they’ve been through a wide-ranging public consultation on changes to the nation’s constitution.
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Lessons learned from building democracy’s database
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Hear about ten years of successes and failures in gathering local legislative district and elected official data for the Cicero database project, as well as details about the impacts this data has had on hundreds of users.
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Future of tech and democracy at the city of Reykjavík
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Sigurlaug Anna Jóhannsdóttir is a Democracy advisor at the City of Reykjavik Council in Iceland.
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Fireside chat: Hollie Russon Gilman
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Hollie Russon Gilman is particularly interested in revitalising American democracy, local innovation, and the opportunities and challenges of digital technologies to enhance governance and public policy.
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How we failed to build an online deliberation tool: experience from Taiwan
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g0v began as a hacktivist group, and went on to shape Taiwan’s digital policy. One project sought to increase online civic participation. Who could be better positioned to do this work? But things didn’t go as smoothly as anticipated.
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What does the African feminist future of civic technology look like?
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Women and sexual minorities are frequent victims of online gender-based violence. But we are yet to fully understand the impact that this has on women across Africa, and on how they access civic technology.
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Accountability through petitions: elections 2019
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Could a shift to digital accountability happen, if candidates are exposed to local and national petitions?
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Pledge trackers as catalysts for accountability
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Transparency International UK’s Promise to Practice project tracks and advocates for the implementation of governments’ anti-corruption commitments made at the 2016 London Anti-Corruption Summit.
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From citizens to data points: the datafication of citizen engagement
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Technologies such as constituent databases are helpful for collecting, storing, and analysing constituent communication, but they promote the datafication of citizen information.
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Digitising parliaments: it took a pandemic
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Things that once were deemed by governments as impossible or not important enough – like remote voting – have become a reality in parliaments across the world since the emergence of COVID-19.
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What role for Civic Tech (and data) in mitigating the climate crisis?
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We know that civic technology can do things such as help citizens hold their representatives to account; present data and information about policy and decision making in more accessible ways; and get information to the right people. The next crucial step is to understand how this wealth of skills, experience and tools can be used in the most beneficial way to mitigate the climate crisis.
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Digital tools for democracy: what’s been built and where are the spaces?
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Alex Parsons, the Research Associate at mySociety, gives an overview of tools for democracy as things stood in 2020.
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Inclusive governance: bringing all voices on board for the design and delivery of policies and public services
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Technology has brought many opportunities to change the way that governments and citizens can interact – but it has also brought challenges.
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Learning from setbacks: Civocracy and citizen consultations
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During development of Civocracy, expectations were high: however, at launch, the anticipated impact was found to be disappointingly lacking.
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Participatory budgeting in Paris
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Every year, the city of Paris puts aside 100 million Euros to fund projects chosen by its own inhabitants.
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Digital democracy as a response to the gilets jaunes
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French MP Paula Forteza joins the dots between the discontent shown by the gilets jaunes demonstrators, and the increased empowerment fostered by participatory democracy tools.
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The state of civic tech and gov tech in France
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The influences and tensions that shape the civic tech ecosystem, using local governments as a case study to see how tools are used and perceived by public institutions.
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Not all promises are equal: towards better promise trackers
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Typically, parties make hundreds of campaign promises. Some are hugely significant to the result of elections; others hardly mentioned. Despite this, Promise Trackers currently treat all promises equally.
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Participatory budgeting: the opportunities and limitations of what civic tech can do
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A deep dive into whether, and how, technologies can enhance the unique value proposition of participatory budgeting initiatives.
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Same process, different outcomes: mapping participatory budgeting in France
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What’s the difference between Brazil and France? The degree to which participatory budgeting has changed citizen engagement.
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Decidim and the Municipal Action Plan in Barcelona: co-producing and auditing public policy through a political network
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Decidim.barcelona enabled an online/offline process for the Municipal Action Plan of Barcelona, the roadmap for the government’s public policies.
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Preventing abuse on Facebook during the 2018 US midterm elections
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A behind-the-scenes look at how Facebook attempted to identify and combat coordinated attempts at manipulation and voter suppression on their platform.
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mySociety research: evidence and impact
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TICTEC Local 2019 was kicked off with an overarching look at the meaning, evidence and impact of local digital. Slide deck.
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What role can digital technologies play in citizen participation?
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Panelists from the UK’s Department for Digital, Culture Media & Sport, FutureGov, Westminster University and Involve discuss how civic tech can foster citizen engagement. Notes document.
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Civic tech to empower democracy and increase civic engagement: local examples from the US
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Learn how US civic tech organisations are deploying a variety of means to get citizens engaged.
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The impacts of civic tech for elections in the UK
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An overview of the work of Democracy Club, which leads a huge effort in crowdsourcing data every time there’s a UK election. A slide deck.
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The political construction of accountability keywords: lessons from action-research
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Reflections on the political origins and implications of terms in the accountability field, addressing their invention, translation, appropriation and circulation in different contexts.
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Impacts of anti-corruption pledge trackers
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Learn about a tool that had a simple research question at its heart: “What progress has the UK government made in delivering on the anti-corruption commitments made at the 2016 Anti-Corruption Summit?”
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Bridging the gap between parliament and the people
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How the Centre for Policy Analysis are using technology and multimedia tools to make information on Parliament more accessible for mainstream online audiences.
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WriteToThem: an analysis
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This paper argues that mySociety’s contact-your-representative service seems not to generate high levels of interactivity between citizens and the elected; and is often used for purposes not intended by its makers nor necessarily appreciated by the elected.
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Civic tech in Nigeria: what works?
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Before you build internet-dependent civic tech, makes sure your intended audience has good data coverage – and other learnings from Nigeria.
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Diverting hate speech with simple online tools
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A modified version of iHub Kenya’s Umati project monitored and countered hate speech during the country’s elections of 2015. Learn about the link between events offline and hate speech online, that allow triggers to be identified.
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Civic tech for governmental change
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The appropriation by the government of civic tech tools created a dynamic of change inside government which was largely unexpected.
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Social media vs traditional media in electoral coverage
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Polarisation in social media has become a major concern, with these platforms spreading misinformation, fostering confirmation bias and increasing segregation. But social media can also have a positive effect on democracy.
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Words from Google: supporting the civic tech ecosystem
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Google’s commitment to the civic tech field, outlining why the search engine giant believes it to be of such critical importance in the current age.
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Five years of Citizen Budget: an impact assessment
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With over 120 Citizen Budgets implemented across North America, Open North have undertaken research on the impact of the tool in different cities.
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Media coverage and elections: tracking news stories on politicians
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First findings from a project to bolster trust in the political system and mainstream media, through the use of transparency.
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Political matchmaking online: changing the electorate?
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Research into the impact of voting advice applications, which help citizens choose which candidate to opt for, by offering an explicit ranking of viable options.
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Big data platforms for a better politics
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How citizens and campaigns have used the Crowdpac platform in the US, the UK and France, with particular emphasis on the French elections.
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If you build it, will they come?
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Anna Ścisłowska argues that data is not enough to engage citizens — they need stories, crafted by journalists and analysts.
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Increasing voter knowledge of the ballot with Facebook
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Members of Facebook’s Civic Engagement team run through their democratic bolt-on to the social media site, Voting Plan. A slide deck.
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Look who’s talking
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The Open Government Partnership is perhaps the most prominent international effort to connect citizens and governments through the use of technology.
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A democracy of feelings: revolutionising government through digital
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Audrey Tang, Minister for Digital, oversaw Taiwan’s transformation into one of the most open and participatory administrations in the world.
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Designing for monitorial citizenship
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A qualitative meta-analysis of the existing literature and additional original case studies, organising monitorial citizenship tools into thematic groups.
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Discussions and decisions on Decidim: data analysis of Barcelona’s participatory democracy
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Using Decidim Barcelona’s Open Data API to analyse the political process of participatory democracy in the city.
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Designing for digital democracy
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EngageTech, not just online engagement, is critical for representative democracy. How are governments now designing for digital democracy? Slide deck.
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WhatsApp for better public service delivery
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Governments seeking to harness existing communication trends also must grapple with the additional constraints that come with adapting to these rather inflexible platforms.
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The interested bystander, in context
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The interested bystander is an individual who is civically aware, but not civically active.
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Examples of civic technologies and their impacts
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Now that the Civic Technology sector has matured, we can take a step back and assess its worth.
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Fireside chat: Stephen King, Omidyar Network
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The Omidyar Network is one of the most significant benefactors for those working in Civic Tech. Through the Governance & Citizen Engagement initiative, it supports a broad range of organisations working in the US and around the world.
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Impacts of budeshi.ng on Nigerian public procurement
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With Budeshi it was possible to demonstrate to public institutions the benefits of using unique identifiers to link budget and procurement data to public services.
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The impacts of open contracting reforms in Ukraine and Slovakia
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Open Contracting Partnership presents evidence of the impact of open contracting reforms from Ukraine, Slovakia and beyond. What do they measure, how and why? What lessons have been learned — and what mistakes were made along the way?
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Findings of the Taiwan Open Government Report
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Open Culture Foundation finds that there are significant structural issues at stake which, if left unfixed, will leave the concept of Open Government as little more than a beautiful slogan for Taiwan.
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The impacts of PopVote in Hong Kong
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Sharing the outcomes of a project that experimented with blockchain technologies to make an election process in Taiwan more secure from cyber attacks.
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Digital skills training for better citizen participation in France
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Video footage of TICTeC@Taipei conference session by French Digital Agency, a governmental agency overseen by the Ministry for the Economy.
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Taiwan Open Government report release forum
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This discussion, in Chinese, was livestreamed and can now be watched as a video.
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Struggling democracy: how can civic tech fight against openwashing
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Video footage of TICTeC@Taipei conference session featuring panellists from Open Culture Foundation (Taiwan), Code for Pakistan, Sinar Project (Malaysia), Thai Netizen Network and Code for Japan.
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Q&A for “Technology for civic participation/engagement”
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Audience questions for the sessions in this section of TICTeC@Taipei, covering participation tech for Taiwan, France and Hong Kong.
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Mobile civic tech: encouraging accountability or increasing inequality?
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Mobile technology has quickly become pervasive in civic tech – but there is much about its impact that we don’t yet fully understand.
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The sociodynamics of online political behaviour: the case of lapetition.be
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When 90% of a petition site’s users are ‘lurkers’, it is harder to claim outcomes are representative. Slide deck.
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Lessons from Mexico: what works in public sector innovative and civic technology
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How do you make the Mexican government become a platform for innovation? Running through Reboot’s theory of change and outcomes. A slide deck.
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Congreso Interactivo, Elegilegi and DEMOS
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Three cases of citizen participation through technology and three different research methods used to understand impact. A slide deck.
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ICT and governance in East Africa: preliminary study findings from Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania
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A look at civic tech that has facilitated two-way interaction between representatives and citizens. A slide deck.
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Civic engagement: the paradox of crowdsourcing lies
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Slide deck on which you can read the entire paper.
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Election Violence Tracker, Nigeria
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A TICTeC Labs grant allowed PolicyLab Africa to launch this project, an open-source reporting tool that enables citizens to document and report violent incidents during Nigeria’s elections.
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Chilean institute harnesses digital platform to engage young people as change agents
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Produced thanks to a TICTeC Labs grant, this case study documents how the Chilean government’s National Youth Institute used a digital platform, CitizenLab, to get young people involved in policy making.
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Participation must be designed to ‘leave no one behind’: Argentina case study
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Produced thanks to a TICTeC Labs grant, this case study documents how Rosario municipality makes their digital participatory budgeting tools accessible to individuals with visual disabilities.
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Digital platform and training boost participation in rural Kyrgyzstan
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Produced thanks to a TICTeC Labs grant, this case study documents how the World Bank worked with the government to empower local communities to make decisions, facilitated by a digital platform.
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Accessing quality information for civic tech success: how can we overcome barriers to accessing good data and documentation?
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Practitioners from around the world discuss the challenges of accessing quality data and information for civic tech projects, as well as their solutions and ideas to tackle these.
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Technology for civic participation/engagement: Q&A
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Questions from the floor for this TICTeC@Taipei session’s panelists.
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Digital tools for democracy: what’s been built and where are the spaces?
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An overview of what tools existed for democracy in 2020, by mySociety’s researcher Alex Parsons.
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Unlocking civic tech impact: reflections on TICTeC Labs
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An online event featuring presentations from TICTeC Labs subgrantees on the work produced thanks to the programme, and how these have met the needs identified in the Civic Tech Surgeries and Action Labs.
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Safeguarding elections and democracies
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Question and answer session for the following TICTeC 2024 presentations:
How to build a country-led election coalitions and combat misinformation online – Mevan Babakar (Google, UK)
Common civic tech needs across global contexts – Matt Stempeck (Civic Tech Field Guide, Portugal/US)
Empowering civic engagement: leveraging Ushahidi for transparent and inclusive electoral monitoring and governance – Rhoda Omenya (Ushahidi, Kenya)
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