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.
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.
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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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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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 ‘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.
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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How to use AI in analysing mass responses to FOI requests
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Authorities hold information that could clarify societal discussions — but the formats it is held in can make it challenging to interpret digitally. Fedrowanie streamlines the gathering of information from public institutions through mass FOI requests. A recent evolution from manual volunteer work to AI integration represents a leap in enhancing public discourse and governance.
In this TICTeC 2024 presentation, Marzena Blaszczyk (Citizens Network Watchdog Poland) shares their work with AI to analyse mass responses to FOI requests.
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.
Routing algorithms, 20-minute neighbourhoods and hills in Scottish towns
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The Scottish government committed to support 20 minute neighbourhoods — but not all algorithms are equal, even the simplest ones. Scotland’s particularly hilly towns present a challenge. How does the 20 minute neighbourhood profile change, in different Scottish towns, when the routing algorithm takes up/down hill walking into consideration?
In her TICTeC 2024 presentation, Gala presents analysis on the accessibility (or lack thereof) to transportation and services in a number of Scottish towns, taking into consideration slower paces when walking uphill, downhill, and both uphill and downhill.
Identifying checkable claims with machine learning
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Full Fact have developed a tool which can separate sentences containing claims from those that do not. This accelerates the process of fact-checking.
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Using machine learning to identify food bank dependency early
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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.
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