Civic Tech Field Guide

Harvard Kennedy School of Government

Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Walking Tour

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Tomiko Brown-Nagin, chair of the Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery, introduces you to the Initiative's work and this tour.

Walking tours

Harvard Democracy and Internet Governance Initiative (DIGI)

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Through public reports and briefings with policymakers, business leaders, and civil society organizations, the Initiative will highlight digital platform reform options, as well as offer expertise on legislative reform proposals and platform self-governance options.

Harvard's Public Interest Tech Lab

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

We help shape the future of technology and society to advance equity, expand opportunity and protect basic rights and liberties.

Harvard Humanitarian Initiative

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Research and Education for Communities in Humanitarian Crisis

Harvard Institute of Politics

Established in 1966, the Fellows Program is a cornerstone of Institute life and the only program of its kind at Harvard University or anywhere else. An IOP Fellowship offers the rare opportunity for professionals in politics and public service to spend a semester at Harvard sharing their experiences with students and exploring important public issues with a distinguished

Harvard's Malaria Tracking Research

Namibia

Researchers used satellite and cell phone data to map how malaria spreads throughout Namibia and show where elimination efforts have the greatest impact.

Digital Transformation in Government (Online) @ Harvard Kennedy School

Harvard Kennedy School, John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge, MA, USA

Taught by David Eaves

Technology and Public Purpose Fellowship at Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

The Technology and Public Purpose (TAPP) Fellowship provides a unique opportunity for practitioners at the intersection of responsible technology development to explore multidisciplinary approaches to maximizing the societal benefits of emerging technologies while minimizing the harms.   

Results-Driven Contracting at Harvard Kennedy School

Procurements are often perceived as routine processes to obtain products and services while complying with regulatory requirements. Instead, major procurements should be regarded as opportunities to advance the government leaders’ strategic goals. As part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities Initiative, the Government Performance Lab provides technical assistance to cities that seek to improve the results they achieve with their contracted dollars by employing results-driven contracting strategies, including:

Innovate Government course at Harvard Kenney School

79 John F. Kennedy St, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States

To collaborate with government clients to understand the problem space and develop real solutions.

CLJE:Lab (Center for Labor and a Just Economy)

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

CLJE:Lab is the policy and legal innovation lab at Harvard Law School’s Center for Labor and a Just Economy – where our ideas for building worker power and strengthening democracy hit the ground.

labor

BARI Conference 2023: Greater Boston’s Annual Insight-to-Impact Summit

BARI is an inter-university research partnership for Northeastern University and Harvard University in conjunction with the City of Boston.

BARI Conference

MIT Media Lab

BARI is an inter-university research partnership for Northeastern University and Harvard University in conjunction with the City of Boston.

Ethical Tech Collective

To address ethics and social responsibility in technology, we believe it is important to honor the expertise of many disciplines: anthropology, computer science, critical race and gender studies, data science, design, history, human rights, law, philosophy, political science, science technology & society studies, sociology, and so much more.

US Media Ownership database

Harvard Future of Media Project datasets of media ownership in the US from 2021

Conectados al Sur

youth

Hack Your Bureaucracy

United States of America (the)

A book by Marina Nitze and Nick Sinai

books

Facebook Digital Literacy Library

United States of America (the)

The Facebook Digital Literacy Library is hosted by Facebook and currently includes learning resources made available by Youth and Media at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Whose Streets report

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Harvard report on “smart city” technology risks to civil liberties.

Smart Cities and sensors

Guidebook: Crafting a Results-Driven Request for Proposals (RFP)

Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab's Guidebook

local
guides

Procurement

Ash Center for Operational Excellence in Government

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Operational Excellence in Government is led by Stephen Goldsmith, Director of the Innovations in American Government Awards program and Professor at Harvard Kennedy School. The project identifies operational efficiency themes across state and local governments, and is supported by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation and conducted in partnership with United States Common Sense, a nonpartisan nonprofit policy group dedicated to opening government data and resources to the public.

Govtech

Bloomberg Philanthropies Government Innovation program

Bloomberg Philanthropies, 25 East 78th Street, New York, NY 10075, USA

APPLYING THE BLOOMBERG PHILANTHROPIES APPROACH TO DRIVE INNOVATION IN CITIES

Bayosphere

Bay Area, CA, USA

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcherDan Gillmor's Bayosphere citizen media project has been acquired by Backfence, a Vienna, Virginia based company that intends to use local communities to generate all online content and sell advertising around it.It is a logical move but it also shows that citizen media is not easy to do. Bayosphere did not...

Solving Problems Using Technology

Harvard Graduate School of Design, Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA, USA

I-Lab students work in interdisciplinary teams to address urban and civic challenges in the Dudley and Upham’s Corner neighborhoods.

Technology and Social Change Research Project

124 Mount Auburn Street, 2nd Floor, South Elevators Cambridge, MA 02138

Combating media manipulation through knowledge and action

Soft robotic

The Soft Robotics Toolkit grew out of research conducted at Harvard University and Trinity College Dublin which focused on developing better instructional kits for hands-on design courses (Dónal P. Holland et al. 2014).

Berkman Klein Center for the Internet and Society

Berkman Center For Internet, Everett Street, Cambridge, MA, USA

We are a research center, premised on the observation that what we seek to learn is not already recorded. Our method is to build out into cyberspace, record data as we go, self-study, and share. Our mode is entrepreneurial nonprofit.

Bitfury land registry in Georgia

Georgia (Sakartvelo)

The blockchain-based land-titling project is being presented at both Harvard and the United Nations.

Digital Asia Hub

Hong Kong

AN INDEPENDENT, NON-PROFIT INTERNET AND SOCIETY RESEARCH THINK TANK BASED IN HONG KONG

Techtopia

Techtopia is a multidisciplinary research and teaching initiative that brings together Harvard students and faculty around the biggest issues in tech today.

Public Interest Technology University Network

New America, 15th Street Northwest, Washington, DC, USA

The Public Interest Technology Universities Network is a partnership that fosters collaboration between 21 universities and colleges committed to building the nascent field of public interest technology and growing a new generation of civic-minded technologists.