Civic Tech Field Guide

HERE for Local Journalism

These aren’t breaking news alerts—they’re on-your-block alerts.

apps

Where Technology Meets Ethics: The Humanitarian Principles and Their Problematic Relationship to Technology

Over the past decade, alarms have sounded the need for the humanitarian sector to start seriously considering the impacts of technology and how it should be used. This paper aims to raise another but different alarm: The time for theorizing is coming to an end. The need for action has arrived.

reports

Disaster response and humanitarian tech

Open Data Is Here. But What Data Do Governments Publish?

Government Technology used the Socrata Open Data API to look at about 55,000 data assets published by 336 U.S. state and local governments — an average of 163 assets per publisher

Yale Law School series: A Healthy Digital Public Sphere

In the spring of 2022, we partnered with the editors of the Yale Journal of Law and Technology to commission a collection of papers examining what it means to have a healthy or vibrant digital public sphere.

Where in the World is AI? Responsible & Unethical AI Examples

Everyone is talking about AI, but how and where is it actually being used? We've mapped out interesting examples where AI has been harmful and where it's been helpful.

The Digital Public Sphere White Paper Series

Ethical tech and responsible tech

Big Tents and Going Where You Want: Movement-Building in Open Gov

Uber responds to vTaiwan’s coherent blended volition

Uber

Where is my Transport

An integrated mass transit solution for emerging markets, focused on providing public transport data and technologies that enrich services, empower people, and enable innovation.

mass transit

Bayosphere

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...