Civic Tech Field Guide

CitizenLab

Cantersteen 12

Bringing the town hall to your citizens

Liquid

United States of America (the)

Demo data visualization of an election held with liquid democracy in place

Ask Without Shame provides accurate emergency sexual health information to youth in Africa through mobile technology. This is done through an Android app, WhatsApp, calls, and SMS. Medical experts and counsellors are available 24/7 to assist users with the right information regarding sexuality at the fingertips of every youth from the age of 12 to 35 years without judgment or shame. Ask Without Shame aims to reach one million youth in East Africa by 2018, scale Ask Without shame in other African countries five years from then and eliminate sexual taboo Africa by 2050.

WhatsApp

Notices from SeeClickFix

New Haven, CT

SeeClickFix makes it easy for neighbors to request information and services from local service providers. But what about when these organizations need to reach out to the public to give them useful information and important updates?

The Skeptic's Guide to Open Government

When you open government, what do you get in return? If you are asking this question, this guide is for you.

guides

Open Source COVID19 Medical Supplies

This group is being formed to evaluate, design, validate, and source the fabrication of open source emergency medical supplies around the world, given a variety of local supply conditions.

GSBI Boost

GSBI Boost packs core business lessons into a powerful 3-day workshop. We help local, early-stage social entrepreneurs learn business fundamentals, improve their strategic thinking, and articulate a business plan

Obywatelskie Fedrowanie Danych

Ursynowska 2200-001, Warszawa, Poland

“FOIA Data Mining” is a FOIA service that enables watchdog organizations to organize volunteers in retyping and structuring responses to FOIA requests.

Carrotmob

Carrotmob is a new way to influence businesses. We spend money as a group, and in return businesses take socially-responsible actions we care about.

Every Boundary

86-90 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NE, United Kingdom

Help us find the world’s electoral boundaries!

CanDo

Everyone a humanitarian

Wise Entertainment

Los Angeles, CA

Wise Entertainment is an award winning independent studio that develops, creates and produces content that lives at the intersection of entertainment, social justice and civic imagination. Their “proof of concept” was the hit drama series East Los High.

Connected Canada 150

Canada

As the Confederation turns 150, Connected Canada will examine what it means to be a digital citizen in Canada today. Together, participants will draft a public research agenda for digital citizenship that will set the foundation for strong institutions and good policy. Join us October 13-14, 2017 in Ottawa as we consider the impacts of the Internet on Canadian institutions, policies, and people.

Conferences

Give Lively

We build better fundraising tech and give it away for free (seriously). Our products drastically improve the online giving experience and help 501(c)(3) nonprofits raise more for their causes.

Code for Anchorage

Anchorage, Alaska, United States of America

We're a brigade of Code for America, which means that we're a volunteer group of coders who like to work on software projects for the good of our community.

indigenous

Enjambre

Mexico (Estados Unidos Mexicanos)

We are an organization that defends and promotes Internet freedom, through concrete actions of research, dissemination and defense in cases where there is a violation of digital rights.

Architizer

New York City

Architizer is how architects find building-products.

NYC Benefits Screening API

New York City

Create modern web applications that evaluate household data against eligibility rules for 31 different City, State, and Federal benefits programs (including SNAP, Cash Assistance, WIC, HEAP, and more).

OpenSecrets.org

Center For Responsive Politics, L Street Northwest, Washington, DC, USA

We pursue our mission largely through our award-winning website, OpenSecrets.org, which is the most comprehensive resource for federal campaign contributions, lobbying data and analysis available anywhere. And for other organizations and news media, the Center's exclusive data powers their online features tracking money in politics - counting cash to make change. Our OpenSecrets Blog features newsbreaking original reporting about money-in-politics, including the sort of investigative work that won the Society of Professional Journalists' 2013 award for Public Service in Online Journalism.

Watchdogging and transparency

Ignis

Lincoln, NE, USA

The system attaches to a drone, and drops small incendiaries known as “dragon eggs” from a safe height, at a much lower cost and personal risk than a helicopter.

fires

I am Vigilant

Tunisia (Tunis)

I am Vigilant" is a Tunisian, non-profit, and independent monitoring organization that aims to combat financial and administrative corruption and enhance transparency. Anna Yazdat became the official contact point for Transparency International in Tunisia in November 2013 and since January 29, 2017 the branch is under construction for Transparency International in Tunisia. The organization aims at two main goals: transparency and fighting corruption

Code for Democracy

We build tools that help data journalists investigate the relationship between campaign contributions and political narratives in US elections.

Rooms Against COVID

Portugal

Alojamento para profissionais de saúde

housing

ZenCity

Tel Aviv, Israel

Hear from all of your residents and better connect to your community's heartbeat with Zencity, a cross-channel platform that takes civic engagement to the next level

cities

Code for Science and Society

Portland, OR

We empower communities to work together and build innovative technology for the public good.

Perimeter

Bay Area, CA, USA

Collaborative, real-time incident response tool for first responders.

apps
fires

Art of Data Exhibit

Kansas City, MO

The Art of Data exhibit represented a unique visual perspective on the data that drives decisions and improvements in Kansas City.

cities

People's Assembly

South Africa (South Africa, Afrika-Borwa, Suid-Afrika)

People's Assembly is a website that provides information about elected representatives for example, finding out what member of parliaments have been saying in parliament and it allows citizens to provide feedback to the representatives and institutions.

GEOIDEA.RO

Romania

Geoidea.ro stands for GEodata Openness Initative for Development and Economic Advancement in ROmania and started in January 2013. It aims at improving the scientific basis for open geodata model adoption in Romania

Obama for America's organizing trainings

Chicago, IL

Most of these trainings include slides, an outline, and the appropriate worksheets, so you can either adapt the trainings for your own audience, or go through the training yourselves.

trainings

Subnational Citizen Engagement

Kenya

We work to build citizen capacity to use data for better engagement with government and other stakeholders.

Crowdsourcing

Camino

San Mateo, California, USA

We are a Silicon Valley-based technology company that partners with cities to rethink the permitting and development process.

Mutante

Bogotà D.C., Carrera 7, Bogota, Colombia

A tool that shows how MPs use Twitter

Every Voice Engaged

The Every Voice Engaged Foundation is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that helps citizens, governments and other nonprofit organizations solve problems that benefit from effective civic engagement.

One Concern

Menlo Park, California, United States

Our platform provides unprecedented situational awareness and actionable insights for decision-makers.

Article One

Washington, DC

Fireside specializes in creating the most innovative and easy-to-use tools to help Congressional offices connect with their constituents more efficiently.

SIM|ED

Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

SIM|ED is a tech incubator housed in the SAFElab at Columbia University School of Social Work.

Civic Data Library of Context

A collaborative platform for open metadata built on intersectional and inclusive practices of ethical data governance.

framework

Intertwinkles

A PhD student's suite of apps for small group consensus-building and facilitation.

The Coronavirus Hackathon (April 18-19)

We will use the hackathon concept to come up with new products, business models, policy and campaigns by encouraging cross-pollination of ideas.

CryptoHarlem

Harlem, Manhattan, New York, NY, USA

CryptoHarlem is a Digital Surveillance Clinic that has been meeting on a monthly basis since 2013 in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. It is always open to the public and completely free of charge.

workshops

Nokaneng App (Gender Links)

Lesotho

GL is well known for championing the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development, and coordinating an Alliance of over 40 women’s NGOs that campaigned for the adoption and implementation of the Protocol, following its 2016 revision that was adopted by the SADC 36th Summit of Heads of State and Government in Mbabane, Swaziland. The revised SADC Protocol on Gender and Development is aligned to the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), the Beijing Declaration and its Platform of Action, The Maputo Protocol and the Agenda 2063 among other gender norms and standards.

Netroots Nation

For more than a decade, Netroots Nation has hosted the largest annual conference for progressives, drawing 3,000+ attendees from around the country and beyond.

EuroCities

Brussels, Belgium

EUROCITIES is the network of major European cities.

Worldie – Social Media for Good

San Diego, CA

Worldie‘s mission is to create safety, equality, humanitarianism, positive social impact, and all-in-one integration to improve lives with technology, helpful social media systems, social projects, public safety, crowdsourced help, and a network of partners.

Polis

Seattle, WA, United States of America

Polis is a real-time system for gathering, analyzing and understanding what large groups of people think in their own words, enabled by advanced statistics and machine learning.

Polis

Hotsoup.com

A bipartisan group of prominent political strategists announced an Internet information venture designed to interact with America's opinion leaders and serve as an antidote to the right-left clash that typifies political discourse on the Web.

MobiSAM

South Africa (South Africa, Afrika-Borwa, Suid-Afrika)

MobiSAM (Mobile Social Accountability and Monitoring) is a mobile application and web, Whatsapp and Facebook platform that connects Grahamstown/Makana residents in the Eastern Cape to their local municipality.

WhatsApp

Planning 4 Informality

South Africa (South Africa, Afrika-Borwa, Suid-Afrika)

Planning4Informality is a website which acts as 'policy tracker', datatool and accountability Platform. It was designed to measure and critically assess eight South African cities' response to national targets set to upgrade 750,000 out of the total 1.2 million informal households to standards outlined in stages 2 and 3 of the Upgrading of Informal Settlements Programme (UISP), part 3 of the National Housing Code. These cities are: Buffalo City, City of Cape Town, City of Joburg, City of Tshwane, Mangaung, eThekwini, Ekurhuleni, and Nelson Mandela Bay Metro. Open Data Durban partnered with Isandla Institute to create this living tracker that enables journalists, researchers, local government, communities, and many other user groups assess where each South African metro is at in terms of housing provision and upgrading informal settlements, supporting evidence-based decision making for city housing policy.