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?
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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?
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
(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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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?
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
The interested bystander, in context
Sectors
Categories
The interested bystander is an individual who is civically aware, but not civically active.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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?
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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?
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
Taiwan Open Government report release forum
Sectors
Categories
This discussion, in Chinese, was livestreamed and can now be watched as a video.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
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.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
Using Access to Information to Support Social Change
Sectors
Categories
A look at how organisations which support marginalised communities use and request information from public bodies, what the information unlocks and how to better support this use of access to information.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
Mapping the online Access To Information network in Europe
Sectors
Categories
Research on running an Access to Information requesting website in Europe, looking at the challenges faced by organisations, strengths and success stories.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
Exploring information about Freedom of Information in the UK
Sectors
Categories
Discover statistics on Freedom of Information in UK central government and in Scotland.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
How many people use Freedom of Information?
Sectors
Categories
Trying to understand the percentage of the population who use FOI.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
Research into mySociety’s online Freedom of Information platform, Alaveteli
Sectors
Categories
In what circumstances, if any, can the Freedom of Information tools mySociety builds be shown to have measurable impacts on the ability of citizens to exert power over under-performing institutions?
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
Do authorities respond faster by email or through an FOI website?
Sectors
Categories
Research showing that online portals result in faster responses from authorities.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
What People Want To Know on WhatDoTheyKnow
Sectors
Categories
Research into the topics of FOI requests sent through WhatDoTheyKnow.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
WhatDoTheyKnow used for research on FOI refusals
Sectors
Categories
Link to an article about best and worst practices in FOI refusals.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
Assessing the Impact of Alaveteli
Sectors
Categories
Researchers Savita Bailur and Tom Longley answer this question: “In what circumstances, if any, can the FOI tools mySociety builds be shown to have measurable impacts on the ability of citizens to exert power over underperforming institutions?”
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
The Third Sector and Online Citizen Empowerment: the Case of mySociety
Sectors
Categories
Surveys across all mySociety’s sites, including WhatDoTheyKnow, allowed these researchers to better understand the habits and motives of their users.
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)
Access Info Impact Award
Sectors
Categories
A video about Access Info’s Impact award 2024
(You're leaving the site, this is an external resource)