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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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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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.
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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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.
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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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.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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