Grants and solutions
As part of the TICTeC Labs programme, mySociety brought together the global civic tech sector to identify and discuss the field’s biggest challenges at Civic Tech Surgeries; to discuss and decide on solutions to commission at Action Labs; and to provide subgrants to individuals/organisations to produce work to contribute to meeting these challenges. Below are the results.
#1. Showcasing public-private civic tech success stories
Responding to the question ‘What would help the global civic tech community to work more effectively with public and private institutions?’, ‘TICTeC Action Lab #1 commissioned People Powered to create case studies to highlight how civic tech organisations have worked effectively with public and private institutions, to provide inspiration to others. Following interviews with the organisations involved, People Powered created blog posts to showcase the examples, including key information on the cases and personal narratives from the participant interviews. They later added discussion guides to the examples, to help readers to reflect on the stories and the key learnings from them.
#2. A toolkit to help the global civic tech community fix common accessibility challenges
Responding to the question ‘How can the global civic tech community fix common accessibility challenges?’, the TICTeC Action Lab #2 commissioned Technoloxia (Tunisia) to create a practical guide for civic tech practitioners on how to start incorporating accessibility into their work, available as web pages, a PDF and as an audio guide. It is available in Arabic, Spanish, French and English. Working with team members with disabilities, trained practitioners and a focus group of users with different accessibility needs, they have produced an overview of what accessibility means, how to approach it, a selection of good practice for specific elements and a further list of resources.
#3. Resources to help train organisations/ the public in accessing good quality data
In response to the question ‘What would help the global civic tech community to overcome common barriers to accessing quality information?’, TICTeC Action Lab #3 commissioned Open North Inc to develop an online course on data governance and data quality, which is now available in English and French. Collaborating with the Action Lab members throughout the process of planning and building the course, Open North have created an online educational resource that is suitable for a wide range of audiences. It provides a starting point for those already working with data, or those at the beginning of their journey.
#4. Improving civic tech’s storytelling and reach
In response to discussing ‘How can we amplify our successes beyond the civic tech community to evidence our impact through mainstream channels?’, TICTeC Action Lab #4 commissioned Fundación Multitudes from Chile, to create and deliver training for civic tech organisations, equipping them with effective tools to get stories about their projects and successes into mainstream channels. The training ran from December 2022 to January 2023 – find out more and see course materials here.
#5. Driving impactful societal change with civic tech
After discussing the question ‘How can civic tech drive impactful societal change?’, TICTeC Action Lab #5 awarded a TICTeC Labs grant to the Demography Project, Kenya, for Maai Makwa, an open-source, open-data and public domain water quality and quantity monitoring project integrated with practical civic education.
#6. Civic tech in hostile environments
In response to discussing the question ‘Civic Tech in Hostile Environments – how can we thrive in challenging contexts?’, TICTeC Action Lab #6 commissioned a piece of work which repurposes existing software in a way which benefits civic tech organisations working in hostile environments. This grant was awarded to Policy Lab Africa to develop their Election Violence Tracker application to map electoral-related violence in Nigeria. They also used the TICTeC Labs grant to produce and disseminate a 2023 Election Violence Report, to share the results of data collected on the Election Violence Tracker website.