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CIVIC TECH 101

Free reuse under Creative Commons

Attribution 4.0 Intl

(TO-style)

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Civic Tech 101: Agenda

Introductions
About Civic Tech
About Civic Tech Toronto
About Civic Tech Projects
Life after 101
Questions

WELCOME!

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Introductions

Hello, again!

What is your name?
What is an issue on your mind?
What brought you here?

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Defining Civic Tech

“...any technology that is used to empower citizens or help make government more accessible, efficient and effective.” - Stacy Donahue, Omidyar Network

“...tools we use to create, support, or serve public good.”

- Laurenellen McCann, Open Technology Institute

“...any technology that intersects public life.”

- Christopher Whitaker, Code for America

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A (very) Basic Definition

“The use of tech, data, and design for the common good.”

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WHO and WHY

THE PUBLIC, aka: citizens and residents

Evolving needs and merging digital issues

THE PUBLIC SECTOR, aka: government

Agility and resource limitations

THE PRIVATE SECTOR, aka: businesses and corporations

Difficulty balancing profit motive and public interest

Why do we need civic tech?
First, there are limited resources available in the public and non-profit sector

Organizations in this space typically aim to address civic issues, however, they are increasingly being forced to do more with less. Civic technology helps these organizations become more efficient and effective in achieve their goals.

Second, governments are not agile

They are less responsive to address civic issues, and it’s much more efficient for citizens like us to implemented solutions to civic issues

Third, the needs of citizens are changing

This is related to the previous point
We are living in an increasingly digital world, and organizations that deliver public services need to rethink their approach to service delivery
Existing methods of service delivery are still very manual and time-consuming

Another reason why we need civic technology is because of what is can enable. First, it enables increase public participation.

Technology allows people to connect instantly with one another, and makes way for new forms of digital public participation.
Active citizenship has always been central to creating a healthy democracy

Lastly, civic technology provides opportunities to leverage existing data and technology

Government have a wealth of data, the potential of that data is untapped
Technology enables us to better analyze information, which hopefully will lead to better policy making and a more informed public

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About Civic Tech Toronto

WHO: People coming together to find solutions to civic challenges through technology, data, and design

WHAT: Weekly hacknights since August 2015 (seriously, every week!)

HOW: We create space, connections, and resources for projects:

A platform to start, grow, or scale a project
A network of engaged community members
Open-source for information & advice

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Civic Tech Toronto’s... Philosophy?

To build tools that empower communities and individuals

To improve on the work of existing groups and institutions

To build things that others can build on

To share open source code with the commons

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Consider “Built by”

Built for

Built with

Built by

A key tenet of civic technology is the notion of building with, not for
This term was coined by Laurenellen McCann, a fellow at the Open Technology Institute
Sometimes, when we see a problem, it easy for us to jump to conclusions about what the solution should be
But, when we build civic technology, we should be cognisant of the potential consequences of our actions and be sure to involved the communities that would be impacted by our technology

Often, civic tech projects start out as building solutions for another community, however, they should be built with communities, and ideally, built by the communities themselves
[cite Street Bump example:]

The City of Boston created a now “infamous” app called Street Bump to detect potholes using smartphone sensors. But not everyone has a smartphone or the capacity to download apps or the digital literacy to use them as intended.�The result? Potholes in wealthier, whiter, younger neighborhoods were detected, directing city services to these more privileged neighborhoods and leaving neighborhoods that were already underserved (especially in terms of their infrastructure upkeep) further disadvantaged.
https://medium.com/@elle_mccann/crafting-civictech-7f5edfb864bb#.nl6gfks0s

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About Projects

What are projects?
Who can start a project?
How do you start a project?
Where do I join a project?
And, what’s the deal with pitches?

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Life After 101

Go forth and be kind, helpful and constructive

(Code of Conduct & Anti-Harassment policy)

Own a project

Talk about it
Start one
Share one
Let us help

Connect

Listen
Share your concerns, interests, and experiences

Join a project

Go chat with a project lead
We can introduce you!

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Dive into #Pool101

link.civictech.ca/chat

You can start by...

Name
Civic issues of interest
Background and skills
Share if you’re interested in joining or starting a project

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Questions?

Share back!

Was there something new you learned?
What is your gut reaction, insight, thoughts?
What’s the one thing we left out of 101?
Who can we connect you with?

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RESOURCES

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Projects

Our Projects�civictech.ca/projects

Projects from the 6ix�rentlogic.com | iamsick.ca | seanmarshall.ca/category/maps

Canada projects�represent.opennorth.ca | openparliament.ca

Code For America projects�codeforamerica.org/brigade/projects

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Tools we use

Slack: civictech.ca/chat

Github: github.com/CivicTechTO

Meetup.com: meetup.com/civic-tech-toronto

Website: civictech.ca

Twitter: @civictechto

Email: hi@civictech.ca

There’s a number of tools that we use to help our community and project thrive:

Slack

If you aren’t already familiar, it’s a chat tool that enables members to join topic-specific chatrooms, which are called channels, and directly message other members
This is a great tool that enables us to keep in touch with each other outside of the hacknights

Github

We use Github to keep track of all our documents and code
If you haven’t used Github before, it’s a web-based version control system. It’s primarily used for tracking code, but can also be used to other documents

Meetup.com

If you haven’t already, please join our meetup.com group
This is where we post the most up-to-date information about our hacknight every week

Blog

We have a blog that has more information about civic tech toronto and blog posts about our hacknights
If we have a speaker at the hacknight, we’ll usually take a video and upload it to the blog afterwards, so if you can’t attend a hacknight, visit the blog to catch up on what you missed

Twitter

Tweet at us @civictechto!

Email

If you’d like to get in touch with us through email, send us a line at hi@civictech.ca

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Resources & Tips

Look for finished projects in other cities, adapt wholesale or localize
Connect with speakers and their community, find inspiration for projects
Identify information gaps in public discourse (e.g. scraping data for use by journalists), in your community
Listen to what’s going on in your community, look for ways to connect with other communities with needs

toolkit.civictech.ca

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To learn more...

Ideas, Research + Orgs

Civic Hall’s Civicist

Buildwith.org

Open Technology Institute

MIT Center for Civic Media

GovLab

Knight Foundation

Open Data Institute

Sunlight Foundation

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Community

Code for Canada!

And the rest of Code for _____

CfA Brigades (Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Oakland)

Data for Good (TO)

Open Data Book Club (TO)

Open Data Institute Toronto

GOVERNMENT

18F (US), USDS (US), GDS (UK), DTO (AUS), Digital Goverment (Canada), Digital Goverment (Ontario, Canada)

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Helpful links.

http://www.opennorth.ca/

https://represent.opennorth.ca/

https://openparliament.ca/

https://bit.ly/toronto-open-data-catalogue

http://poplus.org/

http://sunlightfoundation.com/

https://www.mysociety.org/

http://www.buildwith.org/

http://www.codeforamerica.org/blog/2015/12/22/this-year-in-civic-tech-2015-in-review/

https://www.connectedlab.com/wildcombination

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Change log.

Original Content: Bianca Wylie @biancawylie (July 2015)
Graphical Design and Revisions: Matthew Gray @matthewdhgray (October 2015)
Flow revisions: Howard Tam @htamTO (January 2016)
Content revisions: Emily Fan @emilyjustinefan (February 2, 2016)
Content revisions and design: Emily Fan @emilyjustinefan (February 8, 2016)
Speaking notes: Emily Fan @emilyjustinefan (Mar 4, 2016)
Wild Combinations addition: Andrew Do @ADoAboutThings (Jan 2, 2018)
Content revisions: Alex Jung @alexjay (June-Aug 2018)

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Wild Combinations