Alisa Zomer Erhardt Graeff Luke Jordan Marci Harris
20 Mar 2019, 10:45 a.m. Roger Ockrent Room (Chateau)
How can Civic Tech organisations broaden their metrics for measuring social impact?
This workshop explores how to develop better metrics that can serve organisational missions, through a design sprint with two pioneering technology platforms for civic engagement.
POPVOX supports constituent input in federal policymaking in the United States. Their corporate governance structure emphasises their civic mission as equal to their business mission, and they have resisted optimising for eyeballs and clicks.
Grassroot supports community organisers in South Africa. The organisation was founded on the idea that dense social networks can overcome collective action problems and promote government responsiveness to citizen needs.
We begin with a framework on how product design can be linked to social impact (Erhardt Graeff, Olin College of Engineering and MIT GOV/LAB). Next the community organising platforms illustrate the context and constraints that they are operating under, and present a specific challenge to solve.
Attendees then divide into small teams to design a set of solutions for each case facilitated by the workshop organisers. Finally, a feedback session allows attendees to debrief on solutions and discuss how participants can apply this design framework to their own organisations.