Lead Stories is an innovative fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015.

• Media
• Fight disinformation
• Factchecking

• Media
• Fight disinformation
• Courses

Every day, people use Facebook to share their experiences, connect with friends and family, and build communities.

• Media
• Fight disinformation

This is an online resource guide for civil society groups looking to better deal with the problem of disinformation. Let us know your concerns and we will suggest resources, curated by civil society practitioners and the Programme on Democracy and Technology.

• guides

• Media
• Fight disinformation
• Civic tech catalogs

Comprova brings together journalists from 28 different Brazilian media companies to identify and explain rumors, fabricated content and manipulation tactics that might influence the 2018 presidential election campaign.

• WhatsApp

• Media
• Fight disinformation
• Partner networks and coalitions

• Media
• Ethical tech and responsible tech
• Fight disinformation

Faced with the choice between privacy and safety on the Internet, between freely expressing themselves and the ethical use of information, the media and technology – women, men and young boys and girls need new types of competencies.

• Media
• Fight disinformation
• Media literacy

The Markup, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates how the world’s most powerful institutions use technology to reshape society, today announced the development of The Citizen Browser Project—an initiative designed to measure how disinformation travels across social media platforms over time.

• Media
• Fight disinformation
• Crowdsourcing

Since 2012, the Programme on Democracy & Technology has been investigating the use of algorithms, automation, and computational propaganda in public life.

• Media
• Fight disinformation
• Research and policy centers

Take Back The Tech! is a call to everyone, especially women and girls, to take control of technology to end violence against women.

• Gender Equality
• women

• Ethical tech and responsible tech
• Specific campaigns

Digital Green is a global development organization that empowers smallholder farmers to lift themselves out of poverty by harnessing the collective power of technology and grassroots-level partnerships.

• agriculture
• No poverty

• Information & Communication Tech for Development ICT4D

Copia Gaming is our ongoing initiative to design and facilitate a variety of games that explore serious and important subjects.

• Media
• Games and gamification

How can humanitarian organizations, states, civil society, academia and the private sector join forces to maximize the benefits of technology and humanitarian data while minimizing the risks of doing harm?

• Civic data
• Ethical tech and responsible tech
• Disaster response and humanitarian tech

Benefits Data Trust (BDT) is a national nonprofit that harnesses the power of data, technology, and policy to provide efficient and dignified access to assistance.

• Access social benefits

Through a unique pan-university course, NYC universities partner to explore challenges and opportunities & build prototypes at the intersection of technology, media and democracy

• Fight disinformation
• Courses

At the Innovation Lab, an arm of the Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics team at the Government Accountability Office, we’re using emerging technology to rethink analytics, auditing, and cybersecurity.

• Govtech
• Innovation teams and labs

Amp Impact is a Salesforce-based solution for organizations pursuing impact.

• Salesforce

• Data visualization
• Evaluate impact
• Nonprofit tech

Judgment Call is an award-winning game and team-based activity that puts Microsoft’s AI principles of fairness, privacy and security, reliability and safety, transparency, inclusion, and accountability into action.

• Media
• Artificial Intelligence
• Ethical tech and responsible tech

We explore societal perspectives surrounding the development and application of digital technology, focusing on ethics, policy, politics, and quality of life. 2017

• Ethical tech and responsible tech
• Research and policy centers

Resident Fellows seek to advance society's understanding of surveillance capitalism and change the way Reset works by embedding within Reset to produce creative research and technology outputs.

• Digital security and privacy
• Ethical tech and responsible tech
• Fellowships

To recognize outstanding Smart Cities projects, IDC launched its Smart City North America Awards (SCNAA).

• Awards and prizes
• Smart Cities and sensors

Urban Impact Lab excels at strategy development, research and analysis, program development, implementation, creative placemaking, and community engagement.

• Govtech vendors

Social media platforms have a growing influence on American life. Unchecked, these networks can distort reality, fuel discrimination, and undermine elections. With stronger accountability, new technology can instead strengthen civic participation while safeguarding civil rights.

• Get funding
• Funders & donors

The Day One Project is launching its Technology Policy Accelerator to identify, develop, and publish a set of technology policy ideas that could be implemented by Congress or the Biden-Harris Administration.  The accelerator is a nine-week process, designed to guide each participant as they develop an initial idea into a tailored, actionable set of policy recommendations. Selected participants will have a chance to develop their ideas with guidance from policy advisors, meet with veteran policymakers to learn more about the nuances of policy implementation, hone their ability to craft actionable policy on the federal level, and build a community with their fellow cohort. 

• Accelerators
• Tech or Digital Policy

Civic Tech Book Club is a virtual book club that meets sporadically to discuss readings related to civics and technology.

• Socialize online
• Reading lists

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

• Find a job or hire someone

Taught by David Eaves

• Govtech
• Digital transformation
• Courses

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

• reports
• public space

• Smart Cities and sensors

systemic racism, cannot be solved with yesterday’s toolkit. Solving PublicProblems shows how readers can take advantage of digital technology, data,and the collective wisdom of our communities to design and deliver powerfulsolutions to contemporary problems."

• Books

We are an interdisciplinary group of experts in labor, technology, anti-racism, feminism, and transnationalism.

• labor

• Research and policy centers
• Peer networks

Alloy was a nonprofit technology company building broadly accessible, radically affordable, high-quality data and technology for the progressive community.

• partisan

• Organize campaigns
• Graveyard
• Advocacy tech

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

596 Acres built tools to help neighbors see vacant lots as opportunities and create needed green spaces that become focal points for community organizing and civic engagement.

• land
• cities

• Graveyard
• Specific campaigns

Skylight is a digital consultancy using design and technology to help agencies deliver better public services.

• trainings

• Procurement
• Govtech vendors

Though successive generations of digital technology have become increasingly powerful in the past twenty years, digital democracy has yet to realize its potential for deliberative transformation.

• Digital Public Infrastructure

Send Texts, Make Change We leverage technology and our army of passionate, remote volunteers to help progressives run and win everywhere.

• Peer to peer SMS

Our journey of 5 years delivering positive social impact with technology for the public interest – Tech4PI.

• Incubators

The Digital Democracy Lab researches the implications of digital technology for politics and democracy using computational social science methods.

• Research and policy centers

The PIT Lab is building a thoughtful community around public interest technology at Stanford. Themes include systemic inequities, democratic values, bridging the divide, career pathways.

• Ethical tech and responsible tech
• Research and policy centers
• Public Interest Tech

Stiftung Neue Verantwortung is a German non-profit think tank based in Berlin that specializes in public policy related to technology's effect on society.

• Funders & donors

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

• police violence

• Justice tech

If you're new to the Good Tech Fest community, we work to utilize data and technology for social impact. Unlike other nonprofit or social sector technology conferences, we are very much focused on program and field technologies. Basically, how can we use technology to further our mission?

• Conferences

Participate in the international celebration of GIS technology.

• Mapping
• Holidays

The Sage project will design and build a new kind of national-scale reusable cyberinfrastructure to enable AI at the edge.

• air quality
• cities

• Smart Cities and sensors

Pol Comm Tech is an academic research group at the University of Ottawa focused on exploring the intersections of politics, communication, and technology.

• Research and policy centers

Hosted by Caterina Fake, Should This Exist? is a show that takes a single technology and asks: What is its greatest potential? And what could possibly go wrong?

• Ethical tech and responsible tech
• Podcasts

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

In 2017, Media Democracy Fund launched a pilot for PhDX, a fellowship program designed to pair graduate or PhD level university students with a background in technology with DC-based public interest technology policy organizations for an immersive fellowship experience over two consecutive summers.

• students

• Fellowships

The Digital Equity Laboratory uncovers and addresses structural inequities that persist and evolve as technology transforms our cultural, social, and political systems.

• Digital security and privacy
• Ethical tech and responsible tech
• Research and policy centers

The hidden costs of artificial intelligence, from natural resources and labor to privacy and freedom What happens when artificial intelligence saturates political life and depletes the planet? How is AI shaping our understanding of ourselves and our societies? In this book Kate Crawford reveals how this planetary network is fueling a shift toward undemocratic governance and increased inequality. Drawing on more than a decade of research, award-winning science, and technology, Crawford reveals how AI is a technology of extraction: from the energy and minerals needed to build and sustain its infrastructure, to the exploited workers behind “automated” services, to the data AI collects from us. Rather than taking a narrow focus on code and algorithms, Crawford offers us a political and a material perspective on what it takes to make artificial intelligence and where it goes wrong. While technical systems present a veneer of objectivity, they are always systems of power. This is an urgent account of what is at stake as technology companies use artificial intelligence to reshape the world. Kate Crawford is a senior principal researcher at Microsoft Research, the inaugural visiting chair of AI and Justice at the École Normale Supérieure, and the Miegunyah distinguished visiting fellow at the University of Melbourne. She co-founded the AI Now Institute at New York University, and leads the Foundations of Machine Learning international working group. She lives in New York City. By Kate Crawford

• Books