Christopher Wilson

Research Fellow

University of Oslo, Norway

Speaking In

Bridging the Civic Tech research divide

This hands-on session offers participants the opportunity to collaboratively develop connections across the different research and practitioner communities in Civic Tech.

Examining different research practices, exploring the multiple roles that we play, and facilitating discussion, we identify how useful knowledge about Civic Tech can be created, shared, and incorporated into our projects.

Why is no one using the Civic Tech evidence base?

“We need to know what works in Civic Tech, so that we can design better interventions.”

That fundamental assumption has driven research and funding, but the resulting outputs do not appear to influence program design in any meaningful way. This roundtable discusses appropriate next steps for providing the Civic Tech community with an evidence base it can actually use.

Democracy as an obstacle to impact: the Nordic race to the bottom in open government

The Nordic countries display consistent and remarkably similar poor performance in Open Government Partnership implementation. Process tracing suggests that this is due to a combination of cultural and institutional factors.

Christopher presents specific recommendations for the design of Civic Tech programs that aim for institutional engagement across levels of government.