Civic Tech Field Guide

Civic Voices

Nairobi

With the Civic Voice, you have the power to access, follow through and contribute to bills that matter most to you.

apps

Kilter

Charleston, South Carolina

Donate Your Hustle

Good health and well-being

GiveSmart

Power your mission with industry-leading fundraising and donor management software. Engage donors seamlessly from anywhere with a built-to-grow solution.

The Continent

The Continent is an award-winning African newspaper, designed to be read and shared on WhatsApp.

WhatsApp

ONTRaC Learning Management System

Canada

This is the online learning portal of the Community Solutions Network

trainings

Vote Rookie

Germany (Deutschland)

Vote Rookie ist eine überparteiliche Demokratie Plattform. Wir unterstützen junge Menschen bei der Teilhabe an Politik und bürgerschaftlichem Engagement.

youth

Framework for Digitally enabled citizen-led participatory processes

Pakistan

A guide prepared by Codeando México and Code for Pakistan as part of the Code for All Exchange Programme.

guides

InfoNile

United Republic of Tanzania (Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania)

InfoNile is a cross-border group of geojournalists with a mission to uncover critical stories on water issues in the Nile River Basin through data-based multimedia storytelling.

Mchaguzi is an independent web-based, voter-centred electoral intelligence toolkit designed and implemented by The Demography Project, to enhance citizen participation and engagement before, during and after the 2022 Kenyan General Election.

OpenWeb

Powering comments sections

Undebates

United States of America (the)

Undebates web-based technology allows candidates to self-record and upload their content simply by clicking a link and following on-screen instructions.

PromiseTracker (Code for Africa)

Africa

Promise Tracker is a tool designed to help journalists and civil society watchdogs track campaign/promises/pledges by government officials

actNOW

Africa

A public engagement toolkit that enables a media house or civil society organisation to easily set up channels for engagement. Appears to still be under development.

PolicyEngine

United States of America (the)

Compute the impact of public policy

Climate action

Public Interest Technology (PInT) at Olin College

Olin College of Engineering

PInT is the student-run public interest technology (PIT) organization at Olin College of Engineering

students

Media Mapping

United States of America (the)

Identifying audiences via TV, internet and news consumption patterns

YouTube

CiviCue

Taiwan (T'ai-wan)

CiviCue is a decentralized autonomous civic media platform equipped with blockchain civic tech that aims to disrupt existing media landscape by serving as a public good collectively owned and managed by all users who contribute to the platform wellbeing and benefit from profit sharing, thus balancing commercial interests and social values.

Smart City-Strategie Berlin

Berlin

Public engagement around plan to merge digital strategy and smart city strategy in Berlin

Urbanpinion

Estonia (Eesti Vabariik)

Urbanpinion is a citizen engagement platform that lets city government, community leaders, architects and activists easily set up a landing with an interactive map to collect citizens suggestions, receive analytics based on collected data and make later on right decisions for city development.

In.CoDe: Indonesia’s Competition for Civic Tech Apps

Indonesia

To increase civic engagement in strengthening government effectiveness in Indonesia, The Asia Foundation held a competition for civic tech apps through the “Innovation and Collaboration for Development” (In.CoDe) program.

Civic hackathons

Hawkfish

New York City

Hawkfish was a 2020 Election effort, supported by Mike Bloomberg, that engaged with Democratic candidates, allies & causes to reach the right voters with the right message in the right place using robust technology, data, and digital-first storytelling.

partisan

Potential Energy Coalition

New York City

Potential Energy is a nonpartisan, nonprofit coalition that brings together America’s leading creative, analytic and media agencies to shift the narrative on climate change

Climate action

Advertising

Design for Civic Change

New York City, NY, USA

Design for Civic Change is a professional development program for government workers interested in implementing community-engaged design within their work.

NYC Open Data Project Gallery

New York City, NY, USA

On the Open Data Project Gallery, you can find examples of open data in action and gain inspiration for projects of your own. See how NYC Open Data is used by activists to advocate for change, by entrepreneurs to develop products, by teachers to build analytics skills in the classroom, by government agencies to make data more accessible, and much more.

Learn to Discern (L2D) - Media Literacy Training

IREX’s Learn to Discern approach builds resilience to manipulative information by empowering those who engage with media and information to navigate it in a safe, critical, responsible, healthy, and empathy-driven way.

trainings

GhanaFact

Ghana

Ghana’s first full-time fact-checking organisation signatory to the International Fact-checking Network (IFCN) Code of Principles.

Fiskkit

Fiskkit allows news readers to annotate the news line by line

Glassbox

a protocol for news publishers to open the history of changes of any Wordpress-based site. The intention was to give audiences the possibility of seeing stealth edits in the news.

Factly

Hyderabad

Factly strives to cultivate civic participation and engaging citizens in accessing, understanding, and using important government data/information at various levels

Dubawa

Nigeria

DUBAWA is Nigeria’s independent verification and fact-checking platform, initiated by the Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ) and supported by the most influential newsrooms and civic organisations in the country to help amplify the culture of truth in public discourse, public policy, and media practice.

Digital Polarization Initiative

The Digital Polarization Initiative, or “DigiPo”, is ADP's national effort to build student civic, information and web literacy by having students participate in a broad, cross-institutional project to fact-check, annotate, and provide context to the different news stories that show up in our Twitter and Facebook feeds.

students

The Computational Propaganda Project

University of Oxford, 1 St Giles', Oxford OX1 3JS, UK

Since 2012, the Programme on Democracy & Technology has been investigating the use of algorithms, automation, and computational propaganda in public life.

La Constitución es Nuestra

Santiago, Chile

Proyecto de evaluación ciudadana del proceso constituyente en Chile

Rooted in Trust

Internews Network, 15th Street Northwest, Washington, DC, USA

Rooted in Trust is a pandemic information response plan countering the unprecedented scale and speed of the spread of rumors and misinformation about COVID-19. Operating in ten countries.

rbutr

rbutr tells you when the webpage you are viewing has been disputed, rebutted or contradicted elsewhere on the internet. Last used 2013.

extensions

Project Look Sharp Media Curriculum

Ithaca, New York

Project Look Sharp is a nonprofit, mission-driven outreach program of Ithaca College.

students

Mnemonic

Mnemonic is an NGO dedicated to archiving, investigating and memorializing digital information documenting human rights violations and international crimes.

Mobile Information Literacy Project

The Technology & Social Change Group (TASCHA) at the University of Washington's Information School explores the role of digital technologies in building more open, inclusive, and equitable societies.

Center for Policy Alternatives

Batticaloa, Sri Lanka

The Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) was formed in the firm belief that there is an urgent need to strengthen institution and capacity-building for good governance and conflict transformation in Sri Lanka and that non-partisan civil society groups have an important and constructive contribution to make to this process.

Citizen Helpdesk

The Citizen Helpdesks are a pioneering citizen feedback, dialogue and community voice platform to ensure accountability in the development process.

WeVerify

Europe

An open source platform aiming to engage communities and citizen journalists alongside newsroom and freelance journalists for collaborative, decentralised content verification, tracking, and debunking.

Budget Simulator for Pilot United Territorial Communities

Ukraine (Ukrayina)

A set of information technology (IT) tools to enable citizens to analyze state budgets, in theory to develop critical thinking to counter politicians’ populist rhetoric on complex economic issues.

Bot Sentinel

In 2018 we launched Bot Sentinel to help fight disinformation and targeted harassment. We believe Twitter users should be able to engage in healthy online discourse without inauthentic accounts, toxic trolls, foreign countries, and organized groups manipulating the conversation.

X (Twitter)

Our.News

"Our.News - now in its beta - provides in-sight tools and add-ons that fact check news stories aggregated from across the internet on the spot." - Counteringdisinformation.org

NewsTracker

"A grant from the Knight Foundation to PBS News Hour, the Newstracker project has tasked itself with "developing a tool that combines online news content with engagement data from social media and other sources to help journalists and others better understand the scale, scope and shape of the misinformation problem." - Counteringdisinformation.org

NewsQ

NewsQ seeks to elevate quality journalism when algorithms rank and recommend news articles online. We approach this problem by engaging in design thinking activities in collaboration with technology, journalism, academia and other communities.

News Literacy Project

"The News Literacy Project is a national education nonprofit offering nonpartisan, independent programs that teach students how to know what to believe in the digital age." - Counteringdisinformation.org