Report by the British Red Cross on aid groups' rush to use chatbots, from a skeptical perspective

• reports

• Disaster response and humanitarian tech
• Bots
• Reports

Turbo Phonebank turns any Google Sheet into a phonebank or textbank with 2-tap calling, follow-up texts to increase your contact rate, and a caller-friendly interface.

• Organize campaigns
• Advocacy tech
• Peer to peer SMS

Sets out best practices and actions online platforms can take to implement more robust support for Human Rights Defenders under threat

• human rights
• reports

• Digital security and privacy
• Foundational layers

CivicSearch is a search and discovery tool for everything that is said in local government meetings, texts, and laws. It covers 547 cities and towns in the US and Canada.

• local

• Civic data
• Artificial Intelligence
• Government transparency

Discover 49,883,271 images, texts, videos, and sounds from across the United States

• Open knowledge

A design toolkit for USAID staff on how to design inclusive digital technology interventions, written for work on global hunger but applicable in many other contexts.

• Zero hunger

• Playbooks and design principles
• Design
• Toolkits

Freedom House's an annual global report on political rights and civil liberties, composed of numerical ratings and descriptive texts for each country and a select group of territories.

• free speech

• Indicators

We help people avoid getting ticketed and towed when they park on the street through simple SMS alerts.

• mobility
• streetscape
• place-based

• Consumer watchdogging
• Service alerts

Paper by Paolo Cardullo, Ramon Ribera-Fumaz, and Paco González Gil. "In this paper we focus on the platform’s ‘soft infrastructure’ – the network of developers, ethical hackers, academics, maintainers, advocates and activists, and city administrators but also the agreements with the city and the documentation produced – on its internal governance arrangements and the provincialising relationships these might entail."

• Decidim

• Academia
• Peer-reviewed research

Consumer Reports's add-on to the White House's "cyber trust mark" for consumer connected devices

• Digital security and privacy
• Hardware
• Trustmarks

Infrastructure Space was established in 2017 to acknowledge the infrastructural turn in architectural theory, to embrace the thinking and methods established in L+U and [Re_Map] and to explore new territory, specifically the interface between digital communications, infrastructure and the production of space no longer limited to urban contexts, but accepting the often intangible manufactured nature of most British landscapes.

• Industry, innovation, and infrastructure
• cities
• place-based

• Civic data
• Urban planning

Workshop at CHI'23 on April 28th, 2023 in Hamburg, Germany

• Conferences

This white paper seeks to unpack the use of Indigenous or non-majority language in the existing digital landscape.

• reports

• Adjacent Fields
• Translation and linguistic representation

We offer tailored UX coaching to help you and your team build usable, well-designed tools.

• coaching

• The People
• Build something

Official e-newsletters from every member of Congress. In one place. In real time.

• Civic data
• Parliamentary and Legislative Tech
• Media and social media analysis

Book edited By Adrian Bua and Sonia Bussu

• Govtech
• Participatory democracy
• Learn about civic tech

Hatebase was a collaborative, regionalized repository of multilingual hate speech, developed in partnership between the Dark Data Project and The Sentinel Project

• anti-harassment

• Civic data
• Graveyard
• Crowdsourcing

The Analysis and Response Toolkit for Trust or ARTT is focused on helping people engage in trust-building ways when discussing vaccine efficacy and other topics online.

• Fight disinformation
• Evaluate impact
• COVID Engagement Projects

This paper identifies and addresses persistent gaps in the consideration of ethical practice in ‘technology for good’ development contexts.

• Ethical tech and responsible tech
• Evaluate impact

The Iraq Response Innovation Lab (IRIL) convenes actors around humanitarian problems faced locally through analysis and promotion of innovations and innovators.

• Disaster response and humanitarian tech
• Innovation teams and labs

A collection of essays edited by Ana Brandusescu and Jess Reia featuring essays from participants of the AI in the City: Building Civic Engagement and Public Trust symposium that took place remotely on February 10, 2022.

• cities

• Participatory democracy
• Artificial Intelligence
• Emerging tech

The Global DisInformation Lab (GDIL) was established in 2020 at the University of Texas at Austin to encourage collaborative interdisciplinary academic research on the global circulation of misinformation, and disinformation.

• Media
• Fight disinformation
• Research and policy centers

Add a text hotline to your services for fractions of a cent per text! Carrier Pigeon lets your team receive & reply to clients’ texts in Slack. Carrier Pigeon is currently used by abortion access organizations to provide information, find clinics, and answer clients' questions - securely & confidentially.

• Slack

• SMS tools
• Hotlines

A Bot to Add References to WikiData Statements

• Wikipedia

• Media
• Open knowledge

Rooted in Trust is a pandemic information response plan countering the unprecedented scale and speed of the spread of rumors and misinformation about COVID-19. Operating in ten countries.

• Media
• Fight disinformation
• COVID Media Projects

The purpose of this handbook is to increase public communicators' awareness and understanding of information influence campaigns and develop their ability to respond.

• guides

• Media
• Fight disinformation

Our syllabus is a set of free, open access ‘teach the teacher’ materials designed to help educators teach master’s level students the skills they need to thrive as public servants in the Digital Era.

• resources
• curricula

• Govtech
• Courses

A participatory European community of practice made of local actors of change from different sectors and contexts dedicated to experiment, action-research, re-imagine and co-create how to live and work in Europe. CitizensLab is a self-organised community of practice currently hosted by the French organisation CRICAO. From 2016 until 2018 CitizensLab has been implemented by MitOst e.V. supported by Robert Bosch Stiftung, Stiftung Mercator, and European Cultural Foundation.

• Partner networks

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

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

• Find a job or hire someone

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

• Socialize online
• Reading lists

People Powered's independent expert committee scored 26 of the top digital engagement platforms

• Digital participation platforms
• Report cards and audits

When to Use Them, How to Choose & Tips for Maximum Results

• guides

• Digital participation platforms

parCitypatory is a blog, but also a consultancy happy to advise you on urban planning and citizen participation issues. I organise workshops with participatory methods, help you with the project management of urban planning programmes and support the communication of your and your community’s idea. To hire me as a consultant, please get in touch with [email protected]! And if you like my writing, hire me as a writer on all things urban via Texts and the City.

We bring together people from the UK, no matter what their background, to stop the Tories from winning another parliamentary majority at the next election. We use electoral data to determine which left-leaning party has the best chance of beating the Tories in 50 of the most marginal seats and support any and all volunteers to get out campaigning.

• Brexit

• The Tech
• Engagement tech
• Voting and elections

VoxMapp Baseline allows you to collect high quality data even in contexts of crisis; VoxMapp Feedback ensures communities participate and remain at the center of the initiative; and VoxMapp Management centralizes the analysis, decision-making and learning mechanisms, to feed into a new positive cycle.

• The Tech
• Govtech
• Engagement tech

Texting large volumes of potential voters is possible while remaining compliant with TCPA rules thanks to new technology.

• Campaign tools
• Peer to peer SMS
• Email campaign tools

Community Leaders for Internet Health spotlights internet issues in diverse local community contexts and creates collaboration among local leaders to engage with tools for open campaigning towards Internet Health. Our program enables people in underrepresented regions to assess the state of the Internet in their community and share their stories on the challenges and opportunities encountered

Test+Build is a digital platform that provides customers with the tools to design their own behavioural science interventions and run their own randomised controlled trials (RCTs).

• The Tech
• Govtech
• Behavioral economics programs

In partnerships with local and international organisations, each GTI has further developed specific facilitation methodologies and training contents addressing the risks, attacks and contexts faced by activist women in the region.

• indigenous
• LGBTQI
• trainings

• Adjacent Fields
• Digital security and privacy
• Cybersecurity

Build With is a training, facilitation, and consulting practice led by Laurenellen McCann.

• trainings
• workshops

• Co-design
• Civic and social impact companies

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

• taxes

• The People
• Organize campaigns
• Learn about civic tech

Lets citizens collaboratively draft and edit legislative texts, as well as upvote and downvote individual clauses

• The Tech
• Engagement tech
• Participatory democracy

OTF’s Secure Usability and Accessibility Lab offers secure usability and user-interface assistance to Internet freedom and digital security tools to help them recognise and solve usability challenges that hampered the adoption of those tools in repressive contexts.

• trainings
• coaching

• The People
• Adjacent Fields
• Build something

MIT City Science has developed an international network of cooperative City Science Labs

• cities

• The People
• Learn about civic tech
• Meet the others

“Jamnevisi” provides a platform which public – specially scholars and stakeholders – can participate in the process of providing the draft of country’s legal texts; a platform which significantly will result in the improvement and debugging of legal texts of the country.

• Participatory democracy
• Parliamentary and Legislative Tech

The Open Internet for Democracy Playbook serves as a companion piece to the Democratic Principles for an Open Internet, which is a framework for understanding what principles must be upheld in order for the internet to foster democracy.

• The People
• Adjacent Fields
• Build something

Constitute offers access to the world’s constitutions so that users can systematically compare them across a broad set of topics — using an inviting, clean interface.

• APIs

• The Tech
• Civic data
• Adjacent Fields