Knowledge Hub
TICTeC is all about sharing research, knowledge and experiences to examine and improve the impacts of civic technology. Here we have gathered together resources from previous TICTeC events and initiatives to learn from each other.
Civic Tech in Hostile Environments – how can we thrive in challenging contexts?
Sectors
Categories
Globally, the civic tech community faces challenges from working in hostile environments, from facing everyday government resistance to operating in conflict and post-conflict societies. In this surgery, we discussed some of the common challenges and how we can support each other in solving them.
Learning from climate action – how can civic tech drive impactful societal change?
Sectors
Categories
Through the lens of climate action, we discussed the opportunities and challenges in using civic tech to encourage people to change and coordinate their behaviour in ways that can cause significant changes in society.
Storytelling and reach: how can we amplify our successes beyond the civic tech community to evidence our impact through mainstream channels?
Sectors
Categories
During this Surgery, we discussed the challenges of amplifying civic tech projects and their successes through mainstream channels with practitioners from across the world, as well as their solutions and ideas to tackle these.
Ensuring civic tech is accessible – how can we lead and popularise best practice?
Sectors
Categories
Civic tech tools must be accessible and inclusive if they are to truly help everyone. Practitioners from across the world share the challenges and their solutions and ideas to tackle these.
Public-private collaborations – how can civic tech work effectively with public and private institutions?
Sectors
Categories
A global panel mulls over the challenges of working on private-public civic tech projects, as well as their solutions and ideas to tackle these.
Visualising the future: how 3D imaging helps residents understand proposed changes
Sectors
Categories
One of the key barriers to housing development is public understanding of development proposals and the true impacts these might have. Improving understanding of development proposals is as important as improving the user experience and opportunity to participate in the planning process.
Disfactory: mapping and reporting illegal factories in Taiwan
Sectors
Categories
Disfactory is a crowdsourcing platform that enables citizens to report illegal factories on farmland in Taiwan, aiming to decrease pollution and accidents.
Digital champions: community led development monitoring in Tanzania
Sectors
Categories
Crowd2Map trained first time smartphone users in the Serengeti District to map their communities and help protect girls from female genital mutilation.
Open data for local self governance: learnings from five Ukrainian cities
Sectors
Categories
How to improve data and assets governance at the local level, how digitalisation can allow access to public information and the development and launch of (geo)information systems.
What are the effects of OpenStreetMapping on the mappers themselves?
Sectors
Categories
Generally, contributing to OSM’s mapping is regarded as a form of volunteer service. However, recent analyses suggest that experience of mapping could be as important as the data contributed.
#PlanTech and the geospatial ecosystem
Sectors
Categories
Citizen Space Geospatial incorporates interactive mapping and geospatial data throughout the digital engagement process — and it will have broad-reaching implications for the field of public participation.
Engaging for the future: what do the public want from engagement, and how can digital deliver?
Sectors
Categories
What are the barriers preventing people from engaging in planning? How do people want to participate? What does good and effective engagement look like?
Leave no-one behind: overcoming hurdles to online citizen assemblies
Sectors
Categories
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.
It takes two: when citizens and Congress Members deliberate online
Sectors
Categories
Researchers invited 150 constituents that were representative of the district to a week-long, single topic, online forum with their Member of Congress.
Don’t build it: a practical guide for those building civic tech
Sectors
Categories
Lessons learned from four years spent building Grassroot, a civic technology platform in South Africa.
Understanding the small hurdles that block community engagement, with behavioural design
Sectors
Categories
Across South Africa, municipalities recognise that community engagement in local policy-making is crucial for effective governance, but they nonetheless struggle with low and unrepresentative participation.
Our COVID consultation journey: from a small initiative to the desk of the president
Sectors
Categories
What should the post-COVID world look like? Civocracy wanted to find out about the hopes and dreams of the French public — but also, what they were willing to sacrifice to make the change happen.
How AfricanLII saves its users $100million a year
Sectors
Categories
Research findings that demonstrate how the African Legal Information Institute (AfricanLII), through the free, online, provision of legal information have achieved significant, positive, social, legal, and financial impacts for their users.
Keeping track of open data in times of political change
Sectors
Categories
Latin America is experiencing a significant change in terms of government and citizen relationships as well as changes in government administration due to the electoral cycle in the region.
Civic tech vs. illicit pharmacies
Sectors
Categories
Code for Pakistan partnered with the Health Department to curb malpractices within the pharmaceutical industry, digitising and automating the license issuing, tracking and renewal process.
Find that charity: a tool to help find charities and improve charity data
Sectors
Categories
A big part of publishing high quality grants data is having good organisation identifiers. 360Giving helped develop “Find that Charity”, a tool for finding non-profit organisations.
Civic tech for smartphone beginners: is the future binary?
Sectors
Categories
As real-time data becomes increasingly important for decision-making, Integrity Action‘s DevelopmentCheck tool pushes those in positions of authority to deliver better public services and infrastructure projects.
How to monitor emergency procurement with open data: lessons from 12 countries
Sectors
Categories
Unprecedented times call for quick decisions, and the pandemic saw governments around the world implementing emergency procurement measures.
A change in the law for school starters in Scotland — through FOI
Sectors
Categories
The Give Them Time campaign used Freedom of Information requests, sent via WhatDoTheyKnow.com, to get the law changed, so that more children in Scotland can benefit from more time at nursery school.
Running an Access to Information platform in France: obstacles and success stories
Sectors
Categories
Open data in France looks somewhat like the leaning tower of Pisa: a beautiful building (open data is mandatory by law), but weakened because its foundations (the Freedom of Information Act) are in bad shape.
Regulating Access to Information
Sectors
Categories
mySociety discusses their work comparing different systems of regulation in place within the UK’s devolved nations, and share parts of their upcoming research comparing systems of regulation across Europe.
Watch this space (and pay for it): Alaveteli-driven exposure of the misuse of public resources in an election campaign
Sectors
Categories
Quaint footage of seaside towns and villages, and boasts about successful projects, in fact concealed a misuse of public resources for the purposes of incumbents’ campaigns.
Lost in Europe: deploying the Alaveteli network on a cross-border investigation
Sectors
Categories
Ten European FOI sites were used in this Netherlands-based investigation into the thousands of children who go missing as they migrate across European borders.
The FOI Clearing House: an openDemocracy investigation into Freedom of Information at the heart of government
Sectors
Categories
The Clearing House is a unit within the UK Cabinet Office that “advises on” and “coordinates” FOI requests referred by government departments.
Digital tools for democracy: what’s been built and where are the spaces?
Sectors
Categories
Alex Parsons, the Research Associate at mySociety, gives an overview of tools for democracy as things stood in 2020.
What role for Civic Tech (and data) in mitigating the climate crisis?
Sectors
Categories
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.
Digitising parliaments: it took a pandemic
Sectors
Categories
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.
Open data: essential, not just ‘nice to have’
Sectors
Categories
Would societies around the world be better able to respond to the pandemic, if more or better open data were freely available?
That was the question put to this expert panel, in the first in our series of online TICTeC Seminars.
From citizens to data points: the datafication of citizen engagement
Sectors
Categories
Technologies such as constituent databases are helpful for collecting, storing, and analysing constituent communication, but they promote the datafication of citizen information.
Pledge trackers as catalysts for accountability
Sectors
Categories
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.
Accountability through petitions: elections 2019
Sectors
Categories
Could a shift to digital accountability happen, if candidates are exposed to local and national petitions?
What does the African feminist future of civic technology look like?
Sectors
Categories
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.
How we failed to build an online deliberation tool: experience from Taiwan
Sectors
Categories
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.
Openly available air quality data: not just blue-sky thinking
Sectors
Categories
OpenAQ and a community of open data lovers set out on a mission, guided by the simple question: what if all the world’s air quality data were openly available?
Making law freely available online: evidence from sub-Saharan Africa
Sectors
Categories
Results of a 2019 mySociety research paper examining the usage and impact of Legal Information Institution (LII) websites in sub-Saharan Africa
Fireside chat: Hollie Russon Gilman
Sectors
Categories
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.
How to last in civic tech (especially now)
Sectors
Categories
Of the many live organisations listed in the Civic Tech Field Guide, only about 75 are more than ten years old. What are the factors that bring about such organisational longevity?
Future of tech and democracy at the city of Reykjavík
Sectors
Categories
Sigurlaug Anna Jóhannsdóttir is a Democracy advisor at the City of Reykjavik Council in Iceland.
Lessons learned from building democracy’s database
Sectors
Categories
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.
Transforming an industry through FOI
Sectors
Categories
In Germany, there’s no requirement for eateries to display food safety ratings, and no publicly accessible register. FragDenStaat’s FOI campaign ‘Pot Secret’ rallied members of the public to request food safety reports from their local authorities.
Changing a constitution
Sectors
Categories
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.
Technology and public participation in constitution making
Sectors
Categories
An overview of efforts to deploy technological tools in bottom-up constitution making initiatives.
Keynote: Nanjala Nyabola
Sectors
Categories
A key theme for Nanjala is the effect that technology is having on politics — in her home country of Kenya, but also across Africa and globally.
So you’ve declared a Climate Emergency. Now what?
Sectors
Categories
Notes from an inspiring panel featuring representatives of the Green Party, FutureGov, Hubub and Friends of the Earth.
Taking back control: why community power matters to our economy and society and what gets in its way
Sectors
Categories
Looking at four intersecting crises hitting deprived areas of the UK. A slide deck.
Enabling local people to participate in the design of civic and public life
Sectors
Categories
Looking at two projects which used civic tech to better engage with public: design services to be used by local people; and collecting opinions about autonomous vehicles. A notes document.
Automating environmental impact analyses to improve urban planning in New York City
Sectors
Categories
In New York, development proposals that increase density are required to assess the environmental impact of that increase. A slide deck.
Creating a cross-local government user research plan
Sectors
Categories
A slide deck, in which Hackney and Croydon Councils present experimental approaches to user research.
How GOV.UK common platforms are helping local authorities transform services for their residents
Sectors
Categories
Sharing components across different areas has helped GOV.UK make efficiencies in processes such as online payments. A slide deck.
Digital tools to connect those facing homelessness with the support they need
Sectors
Categories
Notes from a presentation about Proxy Address, which provides stable addresses for those facing the instability of homelessness.
Using machine learning to identify food bank dependency early
Sectors
Categories
Data scientists worked with a foodbank in Huddersfield to understand whether they could predict which customers are most likely to be in need of future support, so that they could intervene early. A notes document.
The impacts of civic tech for elections in the UK
Sectors
Categories
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.
Civic tech to empower democracy and increase civic engagement: local examples from the US
Sectors
Categories
Learn how US civic tech organisations are deploying a variety of means to get citizens engaged.
Beyond open data: how the Housing Data Coalition develops actionable, community-centered services
Sectors
Categories
Notes from an engaging presentation on how quantitative data changed housing reform law in New York.
The impact of data-enabled innovation in local public services in the UK
Sectors
Categories
How the Open Data Institute encouraged take up of their toolkit for data-informed policy development by local councils. A notes document.
What role can digital technologies play in citizen participation?
Sectors
Categories
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.
mySociety research: evidence and impact
Sectors
Categories
TICTEC Local 2019 was kicked off with an overarching look at the meaning, evidence and impact of local digital. Slide deck.
Preventing abuse on Facebook during the 2018 US midterm elections
Sectors
Categories
A behind-the-scenes look at how Facebook attempted to identify and combat coordinated attempts at manipulation and voter suppression on their platform.
The impact of civic technology in Latin America
Sectors
Categories
Panel discussion. With examples from Latin America used as a starting point, insights are applicable for civic tech practitioners around the world.
Engagement metrics for social impact
Sectors
Categories
A workshop exploring how to develop better metrics that can serve organisational missions, using two technology platforms for civic engagement.
Is that grant working? Citizen monitoring in Nepal
Sectors
Categories
Sindhupalcheck was an intervention that engaged citizens to monitor a house reconstruction programme in Nepal. How impactful was it?
The civic tech ecosystem in Nigeria
Sectors
Categories
Mapping the organisations in the accountability and civic tech space in Nigeria to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats – and areas for collaboration.
The impacts of OpenSCHUFA on credit scoring transparency in Germany
Sectors
Categories
OpenSCHUFA, took data donated by the public, and reverse engineered the algorithms of Schufa, Germany’s credit rating system.
When civic tech matures: the issues that arise in long-running projects
Sectors
Categories
Running Civic Tech websites over a long period of time brings some unique challenges, not all of which are foreseeable when setting out.
The legal story of g0v.tw
Sectors
Categories
Legal frameworks have been a vital factor in g0v’s development, from the free software community to Creative Commons licenses, open data and open government — and each provided a framework that was fundamental to g0v’s own success.
Decidim and the Municipal Action Plan in Barcelona: co-producing and auditing public policy through a political network
Sectors
Categories
Decidim.barcelona enabled an online/offline process for the Municipal Action Plan of Barcelona, the roadmap for the government’s public policies.
Same process, different outcomes: mapping participatory budgeting in France
Sectors
Categories
What’s the difference between Brazil and France? The degree to which participatory budgeting has changed citizen engagement.
Participatory budgeting: the opportunities and limitations of what civic tech can do
Sectors
Categories
A deep dive into whether, and how, technologies can enhance the unique value proposition of participatory budgeting initiatives.
Not all promises are equal: towards better promise trackers
Sectors
Categories
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.
Identifying checkable claims with machine learning
Sectors
Categories
Full Fact have developed a tool which can separate sentences containing claims from those that do not. This accelerates the process of fact-checking.
The civic tech timeline: a recent history
Sectors
Categories
The Civic Tech Field Guide has collected and mapped hundreds of civic tech initiatives. The result is a comprehensive timeline demonstrating over a decade of growth in our field.
The state of open data: research findings
Sectors
Categories
Key findings from the report (published in May 2019) and in particular, how they can be useful for the civic tech community.
The quest for an internet that serves us
Sectors
Categories
The Internet Health Report tells a collaborative story of how the internet is — and isn’t — a resource for good. Issues range from privacy to connectivity, to online harassment and the economics of online platforms.
The state of civic tech and gov tech in France
Sectors
Categories
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.
Digital democracy as a response to the gilets jaunes
Sectors
Categories
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.
Participatory budgeting in Paris
Sectors
Categories
Every year, the city of Paris puts aside 100 million Euros to fund projects chosen by its own inhabitants.
Being unsocial on social media: the implications for civic and political engagement
Sectors
Categories
The phenomena of political filtering and unfriending on social media, and their civic and political implications in an international context.
Learning from setbacks: Civocracy and citizen consultations
Sectors
Categories
During development of Civocracy, expectations were high: however, at launch, the anticipated impact was found to be disappointingly lacking.
What holds government back from helping civic tech projects scale?
Sectors
Categories
Classifying some of the factors that are holding back efficient public-private partnerships in civic tech, and looking at the feasibility and impact of some mitigation strategies.
Scaling civic tech impact through the Open Government Partnership
Sectors
Categories
One of the key challenges facing civic tech initiatives is scaling: they often fail to achieve their full impact potential — not due to design issues, but a lack of an effective dissemination and scaling platform.
Funding impactful civic tech in Latin America
Sectors
Categories
Fundación Avina worked with researchers to try to understand the evolution and impact of civic tech projects and the organisations that lead them.
The Open Government Partnership Multi-Donor trust fund: research on the impact of open government and participatory democracy
Sectors
Categories
The OGP and several partners established a funding mechanism, the OGP MDTF, to expand research activities in the areas of open government, public participation, and civic tech.
Developing an urban barometer
Sectors
Categories
The urban barometer, uses digital technologies to engage with citizens and provide evidence on subjective aspects of wellbeing to guide policy makers
Evaluating the impacts of voter information campaigns
Sectors
Categories
What makes effective content; what are the best methods of communication; and how best to evaluate impact on voter information, behaviour, and candidate response?
Fostering democractic societies to fight platform populists: the Brazilian experience
Sectors
Categories
The keynote of TICTeC 2019 and an inspiring look at what citizen-led activism and direct engagement can achieve – even when things look hopeless.
Inclusive governance: bringing all voices on board for the design and delivery of policies and public services
Sectors
Categories
Technology has brought many opportunities to change the way that governments and citizens can interact – but it has also brought challenges.
Impacts of discussion platforms for young people
Sectors
Categories
Two million young people from Yemen, Libya, Egypt, DRC, Burundi, Mali and China engage in Citizens’ Voice online communities where they share diverse viewpoints in a safe, alternative civic space.
Questioning impact: what if you find it lacking?
Sectors
Categories
What happens when a seemingly successful initiative starts to question its Theory of Change?
Empowerment of women through civic tech in Kosovo
Sectors
Categories
This research looks at grassroots programmes in Kosovo, which teach young women advanced ICT skills and the use of Open Data.
Investing in the future of civic tech
Sectors
Categories
A panel of funders dig in deep to the question of what grantmakers want to see before they invest in civic tech.
Civic tech impact: what doesn’t work?
Sectors
Categories
This workshop provided space to explore a less talked-about side to civic tech: the very real barriers to long-term impact.
When civic tech collaborates with government: what works?
Sectors
Categories
In countries with more autocratic governments, traditional models are not effective at improving institutional performance, and impact on citizens is often very limited. ePaństwo are testing new models and already seeing promising outcomes.
How volunteers engage with government
Sectors
Categories
Volunteers drive a large proportion of civic tech activity around the world. The community organisation efforts of the Code for America network have exponentially increased the influence and impact of civic tech ideals and reshaped public expectations and government culture.
Seeing like a state: lessons from building an open data support team
Sectors
Categories
Technologiestiftung Berlin started with the hypothesis that the main obstacle for progress in Open Data was a lack of digital expertise in government. This turned out to be wrong.
Cloud – is it just pie in the sky?
Sectors
Categories
Slide deck running through the benefits of hosting in the cloud.
Council as a platform: supporting the civics
Sectors
Categories
How do you effect the fundamental rethink from service user to service provider? Slide deck.
Using tech and data to provide better support for new parents
Sectors
Categories
Shift discover that by removing judgement, online platforms become more accessible. Slide deck.
Fixing the plumbing
Sectors
Categories
MHCLG share how they are helping Local Government to ‘fix the plumbing’, by putting the basics in place now — and quickly. Slide deck.
Revealing the hidden patterns in local democracy
Sectors
Categories
New ways to look at the world, with data. This presentation included some beautiful charts for those who love data visualisation. Slide deck.
The Consul project for citizen participation
Sectors
Categories
Consul’s participation software is used by 90 governments in 18 different countries, giving citizens a voice in decisions about their own neighbourhoods. Slide deck.
FamilyStory: how technology can better support children’s services
Sectors
Categories
Better design for the case management systems used by social workers. Slide deck.
Overview of The Deal
Sectors
Categories
Wigan are trying something new: a contract between residents and the council as both sides strive for a better borough. Side deck.
Making responsible tech the new normal
Sectors
Categories
Following Martha Lane Fox’s keynote speech, Doteveryone asks how we can foster collaborations between policy makers, civil society and the tech industry to ensure responsible tech becomes the normal.
Donor forum: good practices to support civic tech
Sectors
Categories
A discussion between donors and civic tech organisations, to surface trends within the civic tech movement, explore shared objectives of scaling, and become sustainable.
Citizen participation in Rome
Sectors
Categories
Roma Capitale expects not only to boost innovation policies at local level but also to improve the civic approach to the city.
Five years of Citizen Budget: an impact assessment
Sectors
Categories
With over 120 Citizen Budgets implemented across North America, Open North have undertaken research on the impact of the tool in different cities.
Strengthening civic participation in Paraguay through online technology
Sectors
Categories
Lessons learned from implementing civic engagement processes using web-based platforms for citizens to share ideas for innovating public services and urban plans.
Exploring sense of community for online citizen engagement
Sectors
Categories
What value is created through online citizen engagement by using the community psychology Sense of Community theory to examine the behavioural aspects of eParticipation?
Two heads are better than one: working with governments
Sectors
Categories
Governments have a wealth of knowledge about the needs of their citizens. Civic tech organisations often have innovative technologies that can meet those needs.
Responsible technology as the new normal
Sectors
Categories
Martha Lane Fox on what it means to make technology responsible, at every step of the process: the way it’s developed, the way it works for users and its impact on society.
Words from Google: supporting the civic tech ecosystem
Sectors
Categories
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.
Experience in supporting developing data literacy and increasing data usage
Sectors
Categories
A conversation about partnerships, culture, capacity and peer review.
Publish What You Pay: the Data Extractors programme
Sectors
Categories
The PWYP Data Extractors Programme is a global initiative which trains participants to uncover and make sense of extractives data.
Value for money meets value for many: open contracting and civic participation
Sectors
Categories
Civic tech that can use open contracting data to save money and improve services generates massive improvements in government spending and quality of life.
Bridging the civic tech research divide
Sectors
Categories
A discussion on how to increase the ways that useful knowledge about civic tech gets created, shared, and incorporated into our projects.
The results matter: assessing technology for service provision
Sectors
Categories
A platform that allows citizens to send free, anonymous messages to local government officials, reducing the cost and increasing the efficiency of communication about public services.
Social media vs traditional media in electoral coverage
Sectors
Categories
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.
Making waves: tech for water in Sierra Leone
Sectors
Categories
Water in Sierra Leone is a complicated issue. On the one hand, availability is high; on the other, access is unequally distributed. Civic tech can help, but it’s not the whole solution.
Why do governments publish open data?
Sectors
Categories
A critical view on government’s motivations for publishing datasets, also exploring how these might translate into better public trust, participation, government accountability and sustainability.
Civic tech for governmental change
Sectors
Categories
The appropriation by the government of civic tech tools created a dynamic of change inside government which was largely unexpected.
Diverting hate speech with simple online tools
Sectors
Categories
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.
Democracy as an obstacle to impact: the Nordic race to the bottom in open government
Sectors
Categories
Despite worldwide recognition as leaders in democratic governance, the Nordic countries have displayed consistent and remarkably similar poor performance in Open Government Partnership implementation.
Civic tech in Nigeria: what works?
Sectors
Categories
Before you build internet-dependent civic tech, makes sure your intended audience has good data coverage – and other learnings from Nigeria.
Knowledge from failure: learnings from the Civic Tech Field Guide
Sectors
Categories
Discover the four common reasons that civic tech projects fail, gleaned from analysis of 800 tools, apps, platforms, and companies.
CoFacts: the chatbot that combats misinformation
Sectors
Categories
CoFacts is a collaborative fact-checking project that combines a chatbot with a hoax database, integrated within LINE, a popular instant messenger app in Asia.
PISA4U: empowering teachers through online global peer collaboration
Sectors
Categories
How an online platform brought policy experts closer to the people their recommendations are meant to impact – teachers.
The problem with impact measurement in civic tech
Sectors
Categories
Just how meaningful are the various types of impact measurements offered by civic tech startups, really? An honest look at what has value, and what counts for very little.
Smart cities vs. civic tech: an analysis
Sectors
Categories
Where is the crossover between civic tech and smart cities – and to what extent can the former, with its years of hard-won experience, shape the latter?
The Making All Voices Count programme: new lessons about donor-funded civic tech
Sectors
Categories
The potential and limits of technologies in building democratic and accountable governance; and the extent to which a donor-funded programme like MAVC incentivises a careful, critical, evaluative approach.
What research has mySociety been doing internally?
Sectors
Categories
Looking more deeply into the use, and users, of mySociety’s street fault reporting platform FixMyStreet, and the contact-your-representative website WriteToThem.
Crowdsourcing subjective perceptions of neighbourhood disorder: interpreting bias in open data
Sectors
Categories
Datasets produced as a result of people’s online activities offer new lines of enquiry in social science, in particular for concepts related to crime and disorder.
WriteToThem: an analysis
Sectors
Categories
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.
Design principles for re-engaging disaffected citizens
Sectors
Categories
This paper assesses the impact of a design process to understand root causes of anti-government populism, and the means of reversing its spread.
The personal and the public: protecting sensitive data in huge datasets
Sectors
Categories
Release of a public dataset means treading the balance between utility and protection of individuals. This session explains tools that help with PII detection, and concepts like k-anonymity and l-diversity.
Design for civic participation
Sectors
Categories
One of mySociety’s designers takes us through the main civic tech product design lessons he’s learnt while working at the organisation.
Improving civic discourse on Facebook
Sectors
Categories
From Facebook’s Civic Engagement team, a presentation considering why and how they promote civic discourse among their vast userbase. A slide deck.
Blockchain for civic change: can it deliver?
Sectors
Categories
A panel offers insights into Blockchain, the much-hyped technology, widely heralded as the answer to a vast array of public problems.
How a crowdsourced FOI campaign improved EU transparency
Sectors
Categories
Years of FOI requests and appeals finally led to the turning point in Access Info Europe’s quest to open up travel expenses: an online request campaign.
Bridging the gap between parliament and the people
Sectors
Categories
How the Centre for Policy Analysis are using technology and multimedia tools to make information on Parliament more accessible for mainstream online audiences.
Impacts of anti-corruption pledge trackers
Sectors
Categories
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?”
The political construction of accountability keywords: lessons from action-research
Sectors
Categories
Reflections on the political origins and implications of terms in the accountability field, addressing their invention, translation, appropriation and circulation in different contexts.
Q&A for “Civic tech for better communities and improved service delivery”
Sectors
Categories
Over to the audience for questions across the five sessions that made up this strand of TICTeC@Taipei.
Q&A for “Civic tech for following the money”
Sectors
Categories
The audience pose questions ta TICTeC@Taipei across the presentations on procurement, contracting and budget tracking.
TICTeC closing: all you can CHANGE!
Sectors
Categories
The inspiring wrap-up session from TICTeC@Taipei, with words from representatives of the two organisations that ran the conference, mySociety and g0v.
Q&A for “Technology for civic participation/engagement”
Sectors
Categories
Audience questions for the sessions in this section of TICTeC@Taipei, covering participation tech for Taiwan, France and Hong Kong.
What is civic technology? How and why is mySociety measuring its impacts?
Sectors
Categories
Dr Rebecca Rumbul presents mySociety’s research projects which strive to evaluate the impacts (both positive and negative) of Civic Technologies in many countries worldwide.
Struggling democracy: how can civic tech fight against openwashing
Sectors
Categories
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.
Taiwan Open Government report release forum
Sectors
Categories
This discussion, in Chinese, was livestreamed and can now be watched as a video.
Digital skills training for better citizen participation in France
Sectors
Categories
Video footage of TICTeC@Taipei conference session by French Digital Agency, a governmental agency overseen by the Ministry for the Economy.
The impacts of PopVote in Hong Kong
Sectors
Categories
Sharing the outcomes of a project that experimented with blockchain technologies to make an election process in Taiwan more secure from cyber attacks.
An analysis of ‘g0v’ for collaborative participation
Sectors
Categories
g0v is a distributed, civic hacker community in Taiwan. Its members collaborate to bridge the information gap between the government and citizens — and to enlighten and empower citizens to oversee the government.
Findings of the Taiwan Open Government Report
Sectors
Categories
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.
Impacts and challenges of civic tech experiments in India
Sectors
Categories
Venkatesh Kannaiah speaks about Civic Tech experiments in India, including I Change My City and I Paid A Bribe.
Impacts of ‘school chooser’ digital tools
Sectors
Categories
When the sole determinant of which school children attend is their residential address, it can produce a spiral of unequal schooling conditions that are difficult to remedy.
Participatory city planning with open data and Minecraft in Berlin
Sectors
Categories
In 2016, the Berlin City Senate released its official 3D city model as Open Data.
The Ideation Lab converted the model to work within Minecraft, a computer game especially popular with children and young adults.
The impacts of the SmartCity platform
Sectors
Categories
The Government of Andhra Pradesh aimed to bring 110 cities and towns online, with the goals of improving service delivery to citizens, moving to data-driven governance processes, improving revenues and increasing transparency and accountability.
Serenata de Amor: tracking Congresspeople’s expense claims in Brazil
Sectors
Categories
Using data on Lower House representatives’ expense reimbursements, the Serenata de Amor Operation team built an artificial intelligence capable of analysing each expense and rating it for the probability of having broken the law.
The impacts of open contracting reforms in Ukraine and Slovakia
Sectors
Categories
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?
Impacts of budeshi.ng on Nigerian public procurement
Sectors
Categories
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.
Impacts of open data standards on transparency tools
Sectors
Categories
Most open data initiatives assume the provision of data by governments which will be used by a variety of sectors for the good of all. But for some, the promises of Open Data fall far short of the reality.
Impacts of civic tech projects in Pakistan
Sectors
Categories
Code for Pakistan’s applications have improved government efficiency and the experiences of hundreds of citizens who interact with government every day.
Impacts of leak sites
Sectors
Categories
Leak sites are web-based initiatives which usually employ encryption and anonymisation technologies for concealing the identity of whistleblowers.
Government led civic technology: successes and challenges
Sectors
Categories
Increasingly governments are innovating in the civic tech sphere. What are the advantages and disadvantages of citizen-to-government applications implemented by governments themselves?
How can civic tech reach more people? How can civic tech be more inclusive?
Sectors
Categories
Examples of technology projects that tackle digital exclusion. As a community, coders and activists must ensure that tools genuinely benefit the communities who need them most.
Fireside chat: Stephen King, Omidyar Network
Sectors
Categories
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.
Examples of civic technologies and their impacts
Sectors
Categories
Now that the Civic Technology sector has matured, we can take a step back and assess its worth.
The interested bystander, in context
Sectors
Categories
The interested bystander is an individual who is civically aware, but not civically active.
WhatsApp for better public service delivery
Sectors
Categories
Governments seeking to harness existing communication trends also must grapple with the additional constraints that come with adapting to these rather inflexible platforms.
Data collaboratives: an assessment of new ways to use data for civic impact
Sectors
Categories
While the impact of open government data has become more understood, little is known about the practice, potential and impact of sharing proprietary datasets to solve civic problems.
Populism, post-truth and fake news: the role of civic tech in the post-fact world
Sectors
Categories
2017, when we were just getting to grips with the terms ‘fake news’, ‘populism’ and ‘post-truth’.
Creating new avenues
Sectors
Categories
Exploring the use of Bootlegger, a synchronous participatory media tool, to capture everyday stories, contributing to the production of a neighbourhood plan.
Designing for digital democracy
Sectors
Categories
EngageTech, not just online engagement, is critical for representative democracy. How are governments now designing for digital democracy? Slide deck.
Discussions and decisions on Decidim: data analysis of Barcelona’s participatory democracy
Sectors
Categories
Using Decidim Barcelona’s Open Data API to analyse the political process of participatory democracy in the city.
The state of civic tech: beneath the surface
Sectors
Categories
Looking beneath the surface at the state of civic tech by tracing the dependency graph — the links between software and its constituent parts.
The impacts of civic tech… on the people who make it
Sectors
Categories
When we talk about the impact of civic technology, we tend to look only at the impact on the end users. But what about the impact it has on the makers — the individuals who become creators and change agents?
Automating feedback – the answer for small civic tech teams?
Sectors
Categories
We all know it’s crucial, but if you’re a tiny team of developers, it’s hard to dedicate resources to study the impact of your work.
Designing for monitorial citizenship
Sectors
Categories
A qualitative meta-analysis of the existing literature and additional original case studies, organising monitorial citizenship tools into thematic groups.
A democracy of feelings: revolutionising government through digital
Sectors
Categories
Audrey Tang, Minister for Digital, oversaw Taiwan’s transformation into one of the most open and participatory administrations in the world.
Randomised control trials: lessons for civic tech
Sectors
Categories
What have these powerful tools taught us about state capacity, government accountability, and responsiveness? And what does the RCT literature tell us about the use of technology to improve public services and galvanise citizen groups?
What does ‘relevant open data’ even mean?
Sectors
Categories
The Global Open Data Index seeks to audit the availability of open government data relevant to civil society. But who is ‘civil society’? And which data is important to what part of civil society?
Disaster preparedness: a universal tech solution?
Sectors
Categories
In 2013, the Red Cross’s Global Disaster Preparedness Center (GDPC) developed two smartphone app templates, one for First Aid preparedness and one for Multi-Hazard preparedness.
RTI platforms as a force for positive change
Sectors
Categories
RTI (also known as FOI) laws create a new type of relationship between government and civil society. Fumega and Scrollini argue that civil society-led FOI portals have affected RTI regimes in a positive way.
Look who’s talking
Sectors
Categories
The Open Government Partnership is perhaps the most prominent international effort to connect citizens and governments through the use of technology.
Increasing voter knowledge of the ballot with Facebook
Sectors
Categories
Members of Facebook’s Civic Engagement team run through their democratic bolt-on to the social media site, Voting Plan. A slide deck.
If you build it, will they come?
Sectors
Categories
Anna Ścisłowska argues that data is not enough to engage citizens — they need stories, crafted by journalists and analysts.
Big data platforms for a better politics
Sectors
Categories
How citizens and campaigns have used the Crowdpac platform in the US, the UK and France, with particular emphasis on the French elections.
Political matchmaking online: changing the electorate?
Sectors
Categories
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.
Open data for better health service delivery
Sectors
Categories
Three use cases in Uruguay, Mexico and Peru to show different ways in which Open Data initiatives can contribute to better health service delivery.
From portal to policy: how open data can be used to achieve policy outcomes
Sectors
Categories
How an anti-corruption advocacy group in Indonesia uses open data as a tool to influence provincial mining policy.
Media coverage and elections: tracking news stories on politicians
Sectors
Categories
First findings from a project to bolster trust in the political system and mainstream media, through the use of transparency.
(Un)civic tech?
Sectors
Categories
An overview of the use of technology to enhance democratic processes, highlighting how they have often failed to meet the expectations of their time.
GovLab demonstrate The Open Governance Research Exchange (OGRX)
Sectors
Categories
GovLab launch OGRX, an online hub for quantitative and qualitative research on innovations in governance.
Mobile civic tech: encouraging accountability or increasing inequality?
Sectors
Categories
Mobile technology has quickly become pervasive in civic tech – but there is much about its impact that we don’t yet fully understand.
From the funders
Sectors
Categories
Funders discuss what they look for when choosing which civic tech projects to support.
The digital divide: why civic tech leaves 3 billion people behind
Sectors
Categories
The chasm between the digital haves and the have-nots has never been more evident. Are we all missing the point?
Civic engagement: the paradox of crowdsourcing lies
Sectors
Categories
Slide deck on which you can read the entire paper.
Building a national toilet map for the public’s convenience
Sectors
Categories
Public toilets are essential for the wellbeing, dignity and mobility of many. Here’s how open data helps them. A slide deck.
ICT and governance in East Africa: preliminary study findings from Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania
Sectors
Categories
A look at civic tech that has facilitated two-way interaction between representatives and citizens. A slide deck.
Mapping slacktivism: patterns of low-threshold civic participation on the internet
Sectors
Categories
Looking more deeply into the impact of low-cost, low-risk online actions. A slide deck.
It’s there for you now use it: making sure young people see the point of civic tech
Sectors
Categories
Slides from the Accountability Lab, looking at the challenges around getting young folk to adopt civic tech initiatives.
The haves and the have nots: is civic tech impacting the people who need it most?
Sectors
Categories
The digital divide means that a lot of people never even see those fancy civic tech interventions. Looking into the data behind the impact claims.
Congreso Interactivo, Elegilegi and DEMOS
Sectors
Categories
Three cases of citizen participation through technology and three different research methods used to understand impact. A slide deck.
What counts as civic tech success for Africa?
Sectors
Categories
A donor’s perspective on how to think about impact in the civic tech space in Africa. Slide deck.
Code for All: comparative models across borders
Sectors
Categories
Looking at different setups of the volunteer network across the globe. A slide deck.
Lessons from Mexico: what works in public sector innovative and civic technology
Sectors
Categories
How do you make the Mexican government become a platform for innovation? Running through Reboot’s theory of change and outcomes. A slide deck.
Approaching research as a small team of developers
Sectors
Categories
The OpenAustralia Foundation run seven projects with just three full time and one part time staff. When do they find time for research?
Slide deck with speaker notes.
The politics of civic tech platforms
Sectors
Categories
Civic tech started as an idea that became a community that became a buzzword. Now, it is a market.
Slide deck.
The sociodynamics of online political behaviour: the case of lapetition.be
Sectors
Categories
When 90% of a petition site’s users are ‘lurkers’, it is harder to claim outcomes are representative. Slide deck.
The Viewpoint project: engaging a disenfranchised community with street tech
Sectors
Categories
What can you do when residents are suffering from ‘consultation fatigue’, with a low sense of efficacy due to lack of change? A slide deck.
It starts with a click
Sectors
Categories
Civics through the lens of efficacy. What can individuals do to influence their communities, their societies and their nations?
Opportunity and threat: experimenting with Mzalendo
Sectors
Categories
Research on how to obtain more users, what information appeals to those users, and how to prompt them to engage with their institutions and politicians on issues that matter to them.
TICTeC2015 Keynote: ‘Hey! It’s time to check your tech’
Sectors
Categories
What if your civic tech had no impact in the real world? Dr. Boulianne talks us through an analysis of more than 80 studies, because isn’t it time we checked that the internet actually has an effect on civic and political life?
Election Violence Tracker, Nigeria
Sectors
Categories
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.
Training for Civic Tech Organisations on storytelling and reach
Sectors
Categories
Using a TICTeC Labs grant, Fundación Multitudes created a training course for civic tech organisations in how to get stories about their projects and successes into the mainstream media.
Data Quality course
Sectors
Categories
Produced thanks to a TICTeC Labs grant, this course provides users with a practical introduction to accessing good data and evaluating the quality of data. Available in French too: https://lms.opennorth.ca/catalog/info/id:195
Chilean institute harnesses digital platform to engage young people as change agents
Sectors
Categories
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.
Participation must be designed to ‘leave no one behind’: Argentina case study
Sectors
Categories
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.
In China, popular social media platform is harnessed to increase participation
Sectors
Categories
Produced thanks to a TICTeC Labs grant, this case study documents how China’s Participation Center developed a “mini app” for the popular WeChat platform, and grew the number of participatory budgeting users in Chengdu city to more than 3 million.
Digital platform and training boost participation in rural Kyrgyzstan
Sectors
Categories
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.
Accessibility ABCs: A practical toolkit for the global civic tech community
Sectors
Categories
Produced thanks to a TICTeC Labs grant, this guide is meant to be a resource to support the global civic tech community to make their work more accessible. It is available in Arabic, Spanish, French and English.
Accessing quality information for civic tech success: how can we overcome barriers to accessing good data and documentation?
Sectors
Categories
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.
Civic Tech for better communities and improved service delivery: Q&A
Sectors
Categories
Questions from the audience, answered by the panel at TICTeC@Taipei.
Civic tech for following the money: Q&A
Sectors
Categories
The audience put questions to the panel at TICTeC@Taipei.
Technology for civic participation/engagement: Q&A
Sectors
Categories
Questions from the floor for this TICTeC@Taipei session’s panelists.
Digital tools for democracy: what’s been built and where are the spaces?
Sectors
Categories
An overview of what tools existed for democracy in 2020, by mySociety’s researcher Alex Parsons.
Creating a live map of empty commercial spaces in London & findings from ‘Act Local: Empowering London’s neighbourhoods’ research
Sectors
Categories
Putting the capital’s unused commercial properties to use as ‘meanwhile spaces’. Slide deck.
Seeing like a state: lessons from building an Open Data support team
Sectors
Categories
The ODIS project started with the hypothesis that the main obstacle for progress in Open Data was a lack of digital expertise in government. This turned out to be wrong.