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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
Accessing, understanding, and utilising municipal-level data related to climate governance in Brazil presents significant challenges.
In Giulio Carvalho (Diários do Clima)’s TICTeC 2025 presentation, hear how six organisations with expertise in climate journalism, transparency, and open data made a coalition to build an open source platform that collects, processes, and shares local climate-related official acts from 504 cities (and counting!), making them easily accessible and allowing for customised monitoring.
Question and answer session for the presenters of the following TICTeC 2025 presentations:
– Infrastructure for democracy: how Abrimos.info is transforming governance in Latin America– Martin Szyszlican (Abrimos.info, Mexico)
– Unveiling the power of transparency: how Access to Information exposed systemic failures in Poland’s 2020 elections – Marzena Błaszczyk 25 (Citizens Network Watchdog, Poland)
– Data to advance equity, inclusion, and sustainability – Silvana Fumega (Global Data Barometer, Argentina)
The Global Data Barometer provides fresh insights into how data is being governed, shared and used to advance the public good, with a special focus on the Global South.
In Silvana Fumega’s TICTeC 2025 presentation, learn about key recommendations for strengthening data ecosystems, including fostering collaborations between civic tech actors, governments, and researchers to promote evidence-based decision-making and policy innovation.
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.
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.
Despite narratives on the decline of UK high streets, there are many examples of local community partnerships applying strategies to repurpose traditional retail space and meet modern community needs. In London, this is supported by the High Streets Data Service and its adaptive re-use of big, private-sector data to deliver local, public-sector research and analysis. Hear Lauren Wool (Greater London Authority High Streets Data Service) talk about the project at TICTeC 2024.
Question and answer session for the following TICTeC 2024 presentations:
– Empowering community action through open mapping in disaster response and climate action – Petya Kangalova (Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, UK)
– From data to action: FloodLight’s impact on disaster response in Pakistan – Ibraheem Saleem (Code for Pakistan, Pakistan)
– Civic tech and journalism: impact through collaboration – Christoph Raetzsch (Aarhus University, Denmark)
When disaster strikes anywhere in the world, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team can mobilise thousands of volunteers, online and on the ground, to create open data that enables disaster responders to reach those in need. Open mapping is mobilising mass community action in disaster response, and open source technologies are enabling the collective mapping efforts.
In this TICTeC 2024 presentation by Petya Kangalova from the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team Hear stories on the impact open mapping has had, including mapping in response to the earthquakes in Turkey/Syria and Morocco, and floods in Libya.
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.
Question and answer session for the following TICTeC 2024 presentations:
– How civic tech is unveiling corruption and championing democracy and environmental protection in Brazil – Maria Vitória Ramos (Fiquem Sabendo, Brazil)
– Empowering communities: Budeshi’s impact on transparency and accountability in Nigerian government projects – Nnenna Eze (Public and Private Development Centre, Nigeria)
– Have you empirically improved transparency and accountability? – Shaun Russell (OpenUp, South Africa)
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.
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.
Question and answer session at TICTeC 2024 for the following presentations:
– Data, prototyping and partnerships: mySociety’s approach to the climate/democracy problem – Zarino Zappia (mySociety, UK)
Scoring councils on their climate action
– Don von Rohland (Climate Emergency UK)
Fragmented climate data in the UK – Julia Cushion (mySociety, UK)
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.
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.
Find out what works and what doesn’t, from three years of mySociety experience at the intersection of democracy and the climate crisis. Zarino, mySociety’s Climate Programme Lead, shares how we explored the challenges that communities are facing around climate, identified solutions we could test with data and technology, and then partnered with the right organisations to make those solutions effective.
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)
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.
Querido Diário, a project by Open Knowledge Brasil, meticulously maps, scrapes and publishes the official gazettes of 350 cities, rendering them accessible through a user-friendly web interface and API. The project is implemented collaboratively by a community of more than a hundred people. Discover how Querido Diário is breaking down barriers and empowering citizens to engage with their cities’ policies.
Unprecedented times call for quick decisions, and the pandemic saw governments around the world implementing emergency procurement measures.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Results of a 2019 mySociety research paper examining the usage and impact of Legal Information Institution (LII) websites in sub-Saharan Africa
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?
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.
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.
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.
This research looks at grassroots programmes in Kosovo, which teach young women advanced ICT skills and the use of Open Data.
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.
Key findings from the report (published in May 2019) and in particular, how they can be useful for the civic tech community.
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.
How the Open Data Institute encouraged take up of their toolkit for data-informed policy development by local councils. A notes document.
Notes from an engaging presentation on how quantitative data changed housing reform law in New York.
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.
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.
Despite worldwide recognition as leaders in democratic governance, the Nordic countries have displayed consistent and remarkably similar poor performance in Open Government Partnership implementation.
The appropriation by the government of civic tech tools created a dynamic of change inside government which was largely unexpected.
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 that can use open contracting data to save money and improve services generates massive improvements in government spending and quality of life.
The PWYP Data Extractors Programme is a global initiative which trains participants to uncover and make sense of extractives data.
A conversation about partnerships, culture, capacity and peer review.
New ways to look at the world, with data. This presentation included some beautiful charts for those who love data visualisation. Slide deck.
How an anti-corruption advocacy group in Indonesia uses open data as a tool to influence provincial mining policy.
Three use cases in Uruguay, Mexico and Peru to show different ways in which Open Data initiatives can contribute to better health service delivery.
How citizens and campaigns have used the Crowdpac platform in the US, the UK and France, with particular emphasis on the French elections.
Anna Ścisłowska argues that data is not enough to engage citizens — they need stories, crafted by journalists and analysts.
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?
Audrey Tang, Minister for Digital, oversaw Taiwan’s transformation into one of the most open and participatory administrations in the world.
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.
Leak sites are web-based initiatives which usually employ encryption and anonymisation technologies for concealing the identity of whistleblowers.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The audience pose questions ta TICTeC@Taipei across the presentations on procurement, contracting and budget tracking.
Over to the audience for questions across the five sessions that made up this strand of TICTeC@Taipei.
Public toilets are essential for the wellbeing, dignity and mobility of many. Here’s how open data helps them. A slide deck.
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
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.
The audience put questions to the panel at TICTeC@Taipei.
Questions from the audience, answered by the panel at TICTeC@Taipei.
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.
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.