Summarizes tech terms and conditions in a more legible format

• Adjacent Fields
• Digital security and privacy

Open Terms Archive publicly records every version of the terms of digital services to enable democratic oversight.

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

This course will provide you with skills to develop an applied understanding of how to use technological platforms to enhance the interface between government and citizens in the delivery of services.

• Learn about civic tech
• Academia
• Courses

The AI Assembly is the first national deliberative event on AI in the United States and represents a significant step toward understanding public sentiment on AI-related issues and shaping the conversation around the role of AI systems in society, with a focus on transparency, accountability, and responsible use.  

• Participatory democracy
• Artificial Intelligence
• Sortition

We are an initiative that serves as a crucial building block in strengthening the Kenyan media ecosystem, working to rebuild trust amongst the key players in the ecosystem and the public, and putting in place resources that will help address challenges being faced in terms of business models.

• Media
• Journalism
• Newsroom partnership networks

Its over-arching goal is to reinforce trust in public institutions and to unleash multiple measurable positive impacts in terms of efficiency gains and reduction of current administrative burden and costs, rooted on a Toolkit for extended semantic interoperability and on secure, privacy-preserving and trustworthy realisation of fundamental once-only, relevant-only and digital by default principles, through state-of-the-art, usable and high-quality fully online procedures accessible through the Single Digital Gateway (SDG).

• Govtech
• Digital transformation
• Government Interoperability

EASY LAWS is a free mobile app and website in Lebanon that explains laws in everyday language, giving ordinary people access to legislation from a citizen’s rather than a legalistic perspective. With easy searches via a simplified database covering 380 legal topics, over 6000 questions and answers, explanatory notes, real life examples, a glossary of terms, and extensive legal references, EASYLAWS gives people equal opportunities and leads to the elimination of discriminatory policies and laws by empowering citizens in their quest for justice.

• apps

• Legal tech
• Freedom of Information

This course provides users with a practical introduction to the topic and importance of data quality. It discusses key concepts and offers clear exercises on accessing good data and evaluating the quality of data. Available in English and French.

• Civic data
• Online courses

"an end-to-end open-source framework for creating georeferenced pedestrian networks from aerial imagery"

• place-based
• streetscape
• Good health and well-being

• Peer-reviewed research
• Satellites
• Urban planning

After the 2022 midterms, the Cooperative Impact Lab published initial findings for the Digital Innovation Fund, telling the story of how, in just four months, we stood up and administered one of the most extensive research-grant programs focused on TikTok’s uses for progressive politics and social good.

• TikTok
• reports

• Advocacy tech
• Media and social media analysis
• Creators and Influencers

Brookings report: Using a combination of analytical methods – including natural language processing, machine learning, and manual classifying – this research provided the first overarching assessment of the role that popular political podcasting plays in spreading unsubstantiated and false claims.

• reports

• Media
• Fight disinformation
• Media and social media analysis

The Uganda Response Innovation Lab (Uganda RIL) was founded in 2018 by Save the Children Uganda. The main objective of the lab is to support the humanitarian response to 1.4 million refugees from eight East African countries, mainly from the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, and their host communities across 13 districts in the country through innovative approaches, systems, technologies and products.

• refugees

• Disaster response and humanitarian tech

This site contains directories for the 41st (1869-1871) -104th (1995-96) Congresses forward, as well all Interim editions (online-only revisions) for the 105th Congress forward. Documents are available as ASCII text and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files

• Govtech
• Parliamentary and Legislative Tech
• Archives

DemGames for Debates - developed in partnership with NDI’s Citizen Participation and Latin American and Caribbean teams - provides users with a fun way to practice the terms and concepts associated with crafting arguments, identifying evidence, and justifying rebuttals.

• youth

• The Tech
• Media
• Adjacent Fields

A guide for civil society organizations looking to get started on a cybersecurity plan

• Digital security and privacy
• Cybersecurity

Radar is a project which uses a combination of algorithms and manual research to find posts related to three themes over a wide variety of social media platforms in Brazil.

• Media
• Fight disinformation
• Media and social media analysis

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

"The Hypothesis Project is a new effort to implement an old idea: A conversation layer over the entire web that works everywhere, without needing implementation by any underlying site."

• Media
• Fight disinformation
• Crowdsourcing

Mozilla Foundation survey of builders' perceptions of data governance

• Build something
• Ethical tech and responsible tech
• Data governance

The 21st Century Vocabulary seeks to map and catalog the emergence of new terms to enable a more sophisticated public discourse on technology, innovation, and governance.

• Glossaries

Identifying high-priority policies and needs that could benefit from shared software across jurisdictions.

• local

• Govtech
• Partner networks
• Peer networks

Participation simulator game and card deck

• Participatory democracy
• Games and gamification
• Policy simulators

How mobile text reminders earned Madagascar a 32,900% ROI in collecting unpaid taxes

• taxes

• The People
• Learn about civic tech
• Organize campaigns

This portal makes available data on the City of Cape Town to increase transparency in its processes and actively involve residents and other stakeholders in local government, as well as promote economic opportunity.

• The Tech
• Civic data
• Open data publishing portals

This tool allows researchers, watchdog organizations and investigative journalists to measure how countries are performing against each other in terms of public procurement transparency, to use it in further advocacy for more transparent procurement as well as to spot corruption using red flag indicators.

• The Tech
• Govtech
• Advocacy tech

Understanding the balance between utility, privacy and the uncertainty associated with synthetic data sets

• The Tech
• Artificial Intelligence
• Emerging tech

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.

LexLucid is a service that grades elements in contracts and online legal documents, such as terms of service and privacy policies.

• Adjacent Fields
• Tech for public challenges
• Legal tech

• The People
• Learn about civic tech
• Defining the field

Hold your politicians accountable. Tell your representatives what you want them to do. We'll track whether they listen, so you'll know if they deserve your vote in the next election.

• apps

• The Tech
• Advocacy tech
• Voting and elections

The Open Data Barometer for Latin America and the Caribbean covers 24 countries and classifies governments according to readiness for open data initiatives, implementation of open data programs, and impact that open data is having on companies, politics and civil society.

• Civic data
• Report cards and audits

The page uses search terms, surfaced through the research, to find job postings using that language via Indeed.

• The People
• Graveyard
• Find a job or hire someone

Watchdogging Czech Republic

• The Tech
• Civic data
• Govtech

A now deprecated glossary of tech terms from the Mayor's CTO office

• The People
• Learn about civic tech
• Glossaries

Glossary of terms for constituent engagement

• The People
• Learn about civic tech
• Glossaries

In this audit, we obtained an understanding of the Commonwealth’s current IoT environment in terms of device use and planned use by surveying a sample of Commonwealth agencies (see Appendix) where we believed IoT devices were used for significant purposes.

• The Tech
• Govtech
• Advocacy tech

The bank you choose can make a big difference in terms of the social and economic impact created by your money.

• banking

• Boycott or buycott

This study introduces a framework for evaluating the democratic potential of civic apps, distinguishing six criteria: inclusiveness, deliberation, influence, publicity, mobilization, and knowledge production.

• research

• The Tech
• The People
• Evaluate impact