Circular City Studio, a program established with support from NYCEDC, encourages entrepreneurs to reimagine urban environments and help New York City address short, medium, and long term challenges facing our city. The 2020 iteration empowers engineers, inventors, and entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds to pilot technologies that support NYC's sustainability agenda and rethink energy, waste, and recycling systems in New York City. Selected teams will deploy products and services in testbeds around Manhattan and Brooklyn, working with program partners, domain experts, and research institutions to deliver solutions and introduce relevant technologies that can support community needs.

• Climate action

• Incubators

Mobilizing the next generation of technologists to create civic impact in cities and states across the country.

• Find a job or hire someone

The adoption of policing technologies must be guided by democratic legitimacy and an imperative to minimize harm.

• police violence

• Justice tech

Trestle is a non-profit team of expert engineers, designers, and product managers who partner with leading movement groups and campaigns doing critical organizing work nationwide.

• partisan

• Advocacy tech
• Organize campaigns

Public Interest Technology (PiTech) at Cornell Tech catalyzes and amplifies technical advances that promote societal welfare and address systematically unfulfilled needs. The programming currently consists of a Master's-level applied internship and a public interest track in the program's product studio.

• Research and policy centers
• Academia
• Public Interest Tech

Tools and practices for making products and services accessible to everyone.

• guides

• Govtech
• Assistive and Accessible Tech

Human-centered design frameworks start by identifying who a product is for and then placing them at the center of the product strategy. The Co/Act toolkit adapts and expands this approach to design digital products, services, or campaigns through modular do-it-yourself style activities that are aggressively low cost, high impact, interdisciplinary, and focused on building the capacity of participants. Co/Act will help you design more powerful products, services, and campaigns by centering them on your community, stakeholders, and colleagues - ensuring that the end result is more inclusive and therefore democratic.

• Design
• Toolkits

Facebook's now-defunct newsletter product

• Facebook

• Get funding
• Graveyard
• Civic crowdfunding platforms

We build digital brands and products for the future of government. A digital brand and product design studio

• Social impact design firms

Based on extensive research with these communities to build and refine products, we are offering: best practices, use cases, and knowledge from human rights activists, community organizers, and technologists from across the globe.

• human rights

• Courses

Defending Digital Campaigns makes our political process more secure by providing political parties and campaigns with knowledge, products and services to defend themselves from cyber threats and attacks.

• Advocacy tech
• Organize campaigns
• Digital security and privacy

The unregulated attention economy driving social media is fraying our democracy, threatening our mental and physical health, and exposing our children to violent and disturbing content. Our limited attention has become the most valuable resource on the internet and it is captured and manipulated via the rampant and unregulated collection of our personal data. This is surveillance capitalism at work - a relentless assault on our private data that provide intimate insights which are sold to the highest bidder, with next-to-no awareness or control. We are told that having our data taken is the price we pay for the “free” use of digital services. But this system places the priorities of corporates ahead of the social good while it manipulates our social perspective, drives division and isolates us from each other. There are few practical ways to opt out of the attention economy that depends on pervasive surveillance. And even if you manage to on an individual level, the real world impact of this data-driven social manipulation is impossible to avoid. Big Tech controls a global audience of billions with a market power that is unprecedented in the history of media. Yet they have almost no oversight and reject liability for the harms their products cause.

• Ethical tech and responsible tech

Civic Fabric is a platform for hosting public applications for citizens. The platform is in early development. Products are in alpha, and Civic Studio is looking to help government modernize and improve delivery of services online where it makes sense.

• Govtech

OpenSanctions lets investigators find leads, helps companies manage risk and enables technologists to build data-driven products.

• Civic data
• Watchdogging and transparency
• Partner networks and coalitions

The Markup made a browser extension that restores search result pages to organic results.

• extensions

• Decentralization
• Artistic interventions

We want to change the way the internet enables the spread of news and information so it serves the public good over corporate and political interests.

• Funders & donors
• Ethical tech and responsible tech
• Decentralization

The Mayor’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer has developed the NYC Internet of Things Strategy in order to support a healthy cross-sector IoT ecosystem in New York City – one that is productive, responsible, and fair.

• Smart Cities and sensors

The Brown Institute’s Local News Lab is a new team of engineers, designers, data scientists, and journalists, working to build AI-powered, open-source products to help support local newsrooms and their businesses.

• Media

A sibling to ClaimReview that allows fact-checkers to identify whether a video or image has been manipulated.

• Fight disinformation
• Factchecking
• Data schemas and standards

An Airtable with thousands of climate tech products, services, capital sources, and networks

• Climate action

• Civic tech catalogs

Information sheets for people fleeing Ukraine, in English and Ukranian

• refugees
• Ukraine

• Disaster response and humanitarian tech

An academic and practitioner-focused journal on all aspects of technology and communities.

• Academia
• Journals
• Information & Communication Tech for Development ICT4D

Solar Ear manufactures low cost, solar rechargeable and environment friendly hearing aids so you can hear perfectly again. Our products are manufactured by deaf workers with high quality components. FIND YOUR HEARING AID

• Deaf

• Hardware

An experimental Boston Globe Lab geo-focused Twitter aggregator

• The Tech
• Media
• Graveyard

Calgary's First Inclusive Usability Testing Service

• Assistive and Accessible Tech
• User research
• User research groups

The Design System makes it easy for state digital teams to build accessible, consistent, and performant services and products to meet Californians’ needs.

• Govtech
• Playbooks and design principles
• Design

Eligibee is a free nonprofit tool that helps you find and apply for government assistance, making it easier to get the food, healthcare, and income supports you need today.

• food
• Good health and well-being

• Access social benefits
• Nonprofit tech
• Supporting public sector from outside government

Transforming corrections with technology

• recidivism
• criminal justice

• Legal tech
• Hardware
• Justice tech

MPR can be used to find out what you can expect when your doctor prescribes you something; find out if there are cheaper generics that you can use instead; and make sure that you aren't being overcharged.

• health
• Responsible consumption and production
• Good health and well-being

• Civic data

We analyse user needs and implement open source solutions to put your services on a path of continuous improvement.

• Social impact design firms

The World Urban Campaign (WUC) is an advocacy and partnership platform to raise awareness about positive urban change in order to achieve green, productive, safe, healthy, inclusive, and well planned cities. Its goal is to place the Urban Agenda at the highest level in development policies. It is coordinated by UN-Habitat and driven by a large number of committed partners - currently 136 partners and networks - from around the world.

Our first product, Action Button, empowers readers to impact news stories that inspire them—whether by donating, signing a petition or emailing a policymaker. Our users can do more than read headlines, they can change headlines.

• Media
• Graveyard
• News to action

IDEO.org is a nonprofit design studio. We design products and services alongside organizations that are committed to creating a more just and inclusive world.

• Social impact design firms
• Design

The Ontario Digital Service (ODS) is a hub of technologists, designers and digital government experts who deliver user-centred products and digital policies using agile processes and data-driven methods.

• Govtech
• Graveyard

Design and deliver a digital government with and for the American public.

• Govtech
• Digital transformation

WhatsApp, chatbots, and other chat-based development and social good products

• WhatsApp

• Bots
• Messaging

Narrativa+Investigación+Datos

• Media
• Data science for social good
• Narrative tech

Democracy and participatory political group in Guayaquil

• Participatory democracy

Case Studies from Around the World

• Books
• Design

This seminar by Jonathan Piron tackles the issues raised by digital technologies for political institutions, politics and policies, and more broadly for the evolution of what we call “democracy“.

• Courses

Across Maps, Search, Nest, Flights, and Shopping

• Climate action
• Google

• Civic features

An editorial newsletter tool for writers and publishers.

• Graveyard
• Newsletter tech

LightBox provides “Solar-Home-Systems” solutions that use photovoltaic (Solar-Electric or PV) cells and rechargeable batteries to provide electrical power away from the main grids. LightBox's mission is to procure high quality Pico-Solar-Home Systems with a price-winning product quality of German Origin.

Aventura Investment Partners was founded in 2010, with the goal of establishing, investing in, and supporting companies that provide value chain services to smallholder growers in Africa. Aventura target companies that provide a range of services in the Input Supply, Production or Post-Harvest phases of the Value Chain.

A community of organisations and individuals involved in the effective production and usage of high-quality governance data.

The tool provides Sea Level Rise Maps for New York City, integrating the best available FEMA flood hazard data for each location with information on future sea level rise from two different peer-reviewed sources.

• Climate action

• Civic maps
• Urban planning

@Stake is a digital multiplayer roleplaying game that fosters creativity and empathy in small group deliberation

• Games and gamification
• Group decision making

Our online self-service platform helps campaigns maximize the fundraising & visibility benefits of a merch store, without incurring any of the hassles or costs of existing solutions.

• Organize campaigns
• Fundraising tools
• Merchandise

The U.S. Digital Corps is a two‑year government fellowship to launch your career at the intersection of technology and public service.

• Govtech
• Fellowships

Libre is a small design firm that employs AI to craft products and services for clients. "Our mission is to widely disseminate the benefits of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and make them accessible to the world."

• The Tech
• Adjacent Fields
• Artificial Intelligence