Civic Tech Field Guide

Unanimous AI

San Francisco

Unanimous AI develops Swarm® & Swarm AI® technology that amplifies human intelligence, empowering groups to optimize their collective knowledge, wisdom, and intuition by forming real-time AI systems [plus Thinkscape and Mindmix]

Directionlessgov

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the)

Protest site compaing Direct.gov.uk and Google Search results

e-parlement

Toulouse, France

Proposez vos idées de lois, votez sur celles des autres, et regardez comment vos suggestions évoluent au sein de la communauté.

Active Citizen

Reykjavík, Iceland

Active Citizen is an open source library, API and UI using various AI technologies aimed at empowering citizens democratically.

Your Priorities

Stanford Online Deliberation Platform

450 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA

The Online Deliberation Platform is a video discussion platform for groups of 8-15 people.

SocietySpeaks.io

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the)

Where Conversations Shape Our Future

OpenStad.org

Netherlands (Nederland, Holland)

Het open source platform voor digitale participatie-projecten.

Participa gencat

Catalonia (Spain)

Portal de participació ciutadana de la Generalitat de Catalunya. Decidim instance.

Decidim

Murmuration.org

United States of America (the)

Amplifying the Power of Civic Engagement

SwarmAI

San Francisco

Swarm is an AI-powered collaboration platform that uses the biological principle of Swarm Intelligence to amplify the wisdom of any online team or group, quickly enabling more accurate forecasts, estimations, insights and evaluations

Policy Synth

Iceland (Ísland)

Policy Synth is an open-source TypeScript library developed by the Citizens Foundation to facilitate the creation of multi-scale AI agent logic flows, APIs, and real-time web applications.

ChatGPT

West Ham and Beckton GPT

London

As well as the broad range of information that the regular AI uses, this modified version has been exposed to a specific set of policies and information to help unlock the power of AI for the new constituency of West Ham and Beckton.

CartoDEBAT

Saint-Etienne, France

Argument and transparency in public debate

Common Good AI

PO Box 880264, San Francisco, CA 94188-0264

Common Good AI is a new non-profit organization that leverages human abilities to innovate and find solutions by integrating AI to empower groups of any size to collaboratively ideate, debate diverse ideas, identify shared goals, and find a path forward together.

Baltimore Beat

Baltimore, MD

Baltimore Beat is a Black-led, Black-controlled nonprofit newspaper and media outlet whose mission is to honor the tradition of the Black press and the spirit of alt-weekly journalism with reporting that focuses on community, questions power structures, and prioritizes thoughtful engagement with readers, including those with limited internet access and those from underrepresented communities.

Excelsior Citizen

Excelsior Springs, MO

Excelsior Citizen connects and enriches the community of Excelsior Springs by delivering comprehensive local news, insightful community coverage, and effective civic engagement. It strives to be the leading source of local information that residents trust and rely upon.

Shasta Scout

Redding, CA

Shasta Scout strengthens democracy by providing access to trustworthy information in a way that deepens and empowers engagement with the news, neighbors, and people in power for readers in Shasta County, Calif.

Wausau Pilot & Review

Wausau, WI

Wausau Pilot and Review delivers in-depth reporting and analysis that improves local decision-making. It seeks to drive the public conversation, set the agenda on key issues, and empower people through insight, information, and engagement. The independent nonprofit newsroom is devoted to hard-hitting journalism that serves the people of central Wisconsin.

Cicero Independiente

Cicero, IL

Cicero Independiente serves the diverse communities of Cicero and Berwyn with inclusive and bilingual news and storytelling opportunities that elevate local voices and foster civic engagement. It envisions a future in which every member of the community in Cicero and Berwyn is informed, engaged, and empowered to tell their own stories, shaping the narrative of their community.

Atlantic City Focus

Pleasantville, NJ

Atlantic City Focus promotes civic engagement and encourages members of the African American community to share their voices. It provides news and information that readers can use to combat social ills that plague Atlantic City and other BIPOC communities, while providing an outlet to celebrate African American culture, history, and traditions.

Atlanta Civic Circle

Atlanta, GA

Atlanta Civic Circle informs the public on the most critical issues facing the Atlanta metro area by providing in-depth reporting and presenting possible solutions with opportunities for civic engagement online and in the community.

Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism

Somerville, MA

The Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism (BINJ) supports the development and production of independent news reporting in Massachusetts. BINJ provides organizational support to community publications, runs reporting collaborations and civic engagement initiatives, trains new and early-career journalists, and produces bold, independent journalism.

Charlottesville Tomorrow

Charlottesville, VA

Charlottesville Tomorrow delivers in-depth reporting and analysis that improves local decision-making in central Virginia. It seeks to expand civic engagement to foster a vibrant, inclusive, and interdependent community.

Shift Press

Houston, TX

Shift Press is a media organization that provides journalism training and news that encourages Houston youth civic engagement.

Our Times Newspaper

Evansville, IN

Our Times Newspaper, the legacy Black-owned newspaper in Evansville, Indiana, seeks to raise racial equity and address power structure imbalance by providing transformative civic journalism solutions to address the community’s news desert. Its mission is to provide truthful information to the public, foster civic engagement, promote accountability, and elevate the voice of the Black community.

BirminghamWatch

Birmingham, AL

BirminghamWatch serves the civic good of Birmingham and Alabama by supporting journalism that makes a positive impact and encourages citizen engagement with fair, factual, unflinching, and focused news.

The River Reporter

Narrowsburg, NY

The River Reporter provides accurate and important community news and sponsors local forums and creative conversations, events, and initiatives (in collaboration with local organizations) to enhance the quality of life and increase civic engagement in the communities of the Upper Delaware River Valley

El Comercio de Colorado

Denver, CO

El Comercio de Colorado is a bilingual multi-media organization targeting the growing Hispanic/Latinx community in Colorado since 2006. El Comercio’s goal is to empower the Hispanic/Latinx community through information, engagement, and advocacy.

Athens County Independent

Athens, OH

The Athens County Independent empowers community engagement through accessible public service journalism.

Climate change psychological distress is associated with increased collective climate action in the U.S.

"Importantly, people experiencing distress are more likely to engage in collective action on climate change or express a willingness to do so, even when controlling for several correlates of environmental behavior"

Community-Centered Planning for Mobility as Social Service

Indiana

The project will establish a workshop to bring community-centered planning to the emerging technology of autonomous vehicles (AV)

MOXY

Washington, DC

A Social Ecosystem connecting Voters, Elected Representatives, Thought Leaders and Authorized Organizations

Operation Black Vote

London

We are on a mission to amplify Black* voices and ensure our complete engagement in the national debate about how to build a better Britain founded on accessible citizenship, judicial rights, climate and racial justice, equality, and fairness.

racial equity

Localwatch

Athens

Civic tech participatory platform focusing on local level (municipalities). Kάνε ερωτήσεις και προτάσεις στο Δημοτικό Συμβούλιο, οργάνωσε εθελοντικές δράσεις , συνδιαμόρφωσε τον προϋπολογισμό του Δήμου και πάρε μέρος στις διαβουλεύσεις και στην αξιολόγησή του

GovTech Maturity Index (GTMI)

Washington, DC

The GovTech Maturity Index (GTMI) was developed as part of the GovTech Initiative to introduce a measure of GovTech maturity in four focus areas — supporting core government systems, enhancing service delivery, mainstreaming citizen engagement, and fostering GovTech enablers— and to assist practitioners in the design of new digital transformation projects.

GovTech Global Partnership (GTGP)

Vienna

The World Bank's program to "support countries in adopting sound practices and solutions in GovTech, and to ensure a broad global partnership for effective exchange and transfer of knowledge and good practice."

US Open Government Federal Advisory Committee

GSA (General Services Administration), F Street Northwest, Washington, DC, USA

They will play a critical role in the collaboration of the U.S. National Action Plan for Open Government (NAP 6) and support for broader open government initiatives.

YoMobi

Johannesburg, South Africa

YoMobi is a digital platform cooperative that empowers youth organisations by providing tools for skill development, learning, and community engagement to tackle youth unemployment and enhance socio-economic inclusion.

Civic Echo

Geneva, Switzerland

Civic Echo is a citizen survey tool that provides a simple and inclusive way to diagnose the opinions of a population while making the results available in real time in a transparent way.

Stump

Boulder, CO

Stump is a non-partisan tool for empowering voters to participate in democracy in a real-time, social, and impactful way.

Instituto Cidade Democrática

São Paulo

Civil society organization that strengthens democracy through digital listening tools and participatory processes.

Empurrando Juntas

São Paulo

Free tool to gather opinions and simplify participation.

SketchMapTool

The Sketch Map Tool is an easy-to-use tool for participatory sketch mapping through offline collection, digitization and georeferencing of local spatial knowledge. The tool has a variety of applications. For example, do you want to work together with people in a community to map their experience and perception of risk in their neighbourhood in a paper-based format, but still be able to quickly analyse the results digitally? Then, the Sketch Map Tool is exactly what you need!

DEMOCRACY X

Denmark (Danmark)

In 2023, the Danish Board of Technology and ParticipationDenmark merged. We are now called DEMOCRACY X, with a focus on technology, society and sustainability.

Climate action

Poliquicks

Delaware

Nonpartisan political education app.

apps

African Union Civic Tech Fund (AUCTF)

Johannesburg, South Africa

The African Union Civic Tech Fund supports initiatives, particularly those led by or relevant to youth, that strengthen citizen engagement through the innovative use of data and digital technologies, or, in other words, that can support targeted civic technology solutions.

Get funding

Congressional systems map

This map...illustrates a [Congress] in a state of dysfunction, with growing dissatisfaction on the part of the public, waning trust in its ability perform, and -- most significantly -- large-scale disengagement from the system by the public.

Using machine learning to help vulnerable tenants in New York City

New York City

Our best-performing model can potentially help TSU find 59% more buildings where tenants face landlord harassment than the current outreach method using the same resources.

housing

The Participation Gap

Political equality as the foundation of democracy -- Opening political doors -- For richer or poorer, politically speaking -- Civil society mobilizing action -- Age, generations, and participation -- What's a good citizen to do? -- The special case of online activism -- Contextual and inequality / Russell J