As part of our TICTeC work bringing together civic tech practitioners, we are running a community of practice for Parliamentary Monitoring Organisations (“PMOs”).

The other week we ran a session looking at “Subnational PMOs”, and this blog post is to work through what I’ve learned from the speakers, why that was a bad name for the session, and how it’s shaping my thinking on our future UK and international work.

Finding projects I want to learn from

As the name suggests, a Parliamentary Monitoring Organisation is a civil society/non governmental organisation that observes and monitors what happens in a Parliament. It’s a term that’s used internationally to help draw together and network organisations doing this work in different places.

My key interest here is that we run TheyWorkForYou, seen internationally as one of the first civic tech enabled PMOs (and it’s a delight to see new projects like Thailand’s Parliament Watch continue to cite us as an inspiration).

The trouble I’m having is in jumping between international work (where we say ‘PMO’ a lot), and long term planning for our UK services —where I see some of the key democratic problems/opportunity areas as further away from Parliament, but still something that logically fits within TheyWorkForYou.

I’ve got two “problems” here.

In the UK, I’m trying to think about what our approach should be to new levels of devolution in the UK. For international readers, the UK is an unusually centralised state, with a few layers of weak local government and a semi-federal arrangement in some areas of the country, but not others. In recent years, there has been more devolution to the larger cities and elected mayors. But this is a structure that doesn’t fit well within the framework of TheyWorkForYou, and needs new approaches.

Internationally, I’m trying to understand how we can add value in joining up organisations that wouldn’t otherwise know about each other. Joining up PMOs isn’t a new idea, and we don’t want to duplicate work with other regional networks. So part of looking subnationally is trying to learn more about organisations that may or may not consider themselves to be PMOs, and may be less discoverable (to us and each other) through the channels that already exist.

Ideally these two problems have some overlap in the solution. But the first step was to find some organisations doing what can badly be described as “subnational PMO” work. Fortunately, we found two (more detail below)! And this has helped me refine our thinking about what we’re actually trying to do here, and how we might better discover these groups in future.

Moving beyond Parliaments

I think the first thing we need to do is generalise PMOs: the term I’m thinking about is ‘Democratic Transparency Organisations (DTOs)’. Here’s a working definition:

Democratic Transparency Organisations are projects that [rework / create] public information about [democratic institutions / politicians] to improve [transparency / accountability / standards / efficiency].

The important bits of this definition for me are:

• DTOs will generally build on existing data from one or many institutions, but can also create new analysis or data.
• Their focus is democratic institutions – generally elected representatives, but could include scrutiny/transparency of citizens assemblies.
• Their role isn’t passive —it is to change the democratic system they are a part of. While the theory of change may differ, the goal isn’t to just record, but make things different.

This captures what I generally consider to be a PMO, but is also language that captures projects that share the same spirit. The tools of PMOs are a strategy that DTOs adopt when faced with democratic institutions that look like parliaments. But lots of democratic institutions do *not* look like parliaments —and these need a different approach.

Subnational DTOs

When we talk about subnational DTOs, there’s a lot of things that can be covered with the language of PMOs. Many state/devolved legislatures fit perfectly into the general model of elected representatives who are in parties and have debates, votes, etc.

But there’s a transition to entirely different forms of democratic institutions that the PMO model works less well for. The forms of democratic institutions become more varied, and the number of institutions to deal with increases.

DTOs aimed at the sub-national/municipality level have a different set of problems and these are in some respects harder problems. If your goal is to explain subnational democracy in a country, you have massively increased the scope of the work. This now involves thousands of politicians rather than hundreds, and hundreds/thousands of institutions rather than one or two.

This means a huge amount more foundational work and that changes the kind of project that’s viable. As such, even when PMO tools might be appropriate, the scale of the work makes them more inaccessible than other approaches.

Benefits of local DTOs

The scope of decisions made below the national level means improving the flow of data and understanding can have a substantial impact on public policy and the lives of citizens. Often the policy changes that have the biggest impacts on people’s day-to-day lives are made at the local level. Huge amounts of decisions and adaptation in climate especially involve local action.

The theory of change of local DTOs is the same as national ones: improving democracy through usage by citizens, civil society and official institutions.

• Citizens: Creates better feedback loops between citizens and representatives — better principal-agent alignment.
• Civil Society: Gives new tools to infomediaries (journalists, academic, CSOs) to understand, share information, and take action.
• Institutional: Creates internal efficiencies for the representative organisation(s) by making their own information more accessible/inspire improvements.

For each of these, national PMOs can hit a sweet spot of effort/cost to impact. But for each of these paths, different approaches may be more cost effective at the local level.

Going wide – Querido Diário

Querido Diário is a project that aims to bring together and make searchable the government gazettes for every city in Brazil (of which there are over 5,000). The goal is to create a national level database of decisions made in every municipality.

This evolved out of Open Knowledge Brazil (OKB)’s national level projects looking at public spending data. There often isn’t great data at the national/federal level, but this gets worse the more local you go. However, if information is technically available but horribly fragmented, this is something that civic tech can try and address from the outside. As there isn’t an API of government decisions available, OKB are building it themselves.

When you’re trying to build a project covering hundreds or thousands of different institutions, you have to do more work further down the value chain just bringing the data together before you can analyse it. For instance, in the UK, we’ve ended up being the holders of the best list of local authorities, because we needed that to power our climate analysis. The uses of that base layer are a bit abstract,- but it is the foundation that is required for highly impactful services.

In the case of Querido Diario, Diários do Clima builds on top of this base layer to create a service specifically looking at new environmental and climate regulations in all municipalities covered. Having this information in one place makes cross-city comparisons of climate action possible. As well as making gazettes easier to search for local journalists or civil society, this dataset enables subject areas journalists and researchers to do new cross cutting analysis.

Lowering the cost of accessing all local information helps people and organisations with subject matter expertise do work that would otherwise be unviable or incomplete. The scope of Querido Diario shows the challenges of scale when going wide —but also the big rewards of joining up the data.

Going deep – Datos que hacen Ciudad

An alternative to covering lots of municipalities is to build a service catering to one.

Datos que hacen Ciudad’s goal is to create better information about Santiago de Cali, a city in Colombia. The project includes familiar PMO approaches of displaying information about representatives, but is also consciously aimed towards getting better information to those representatives. The theory of change here is “If we give our leaders more information, it will lead to better decisions.” Through councillors sharing information on their areas of focus/problem areas, Datos que hacen Ciudad can both provide that information to citizens, and shape the information to be sourced and created.

One of the complexities of local governance is that they are best understood as a patchwork of different institutions. This project makes that complexity an advantage —it’s a partnership of different local institutions, pulling on resources and knowledge from different places, with a key anchoring in the university.

This feedback loop between decision makers and different groups helps create highly localised information. Data collection and analysis catering to the exact needs of decision makers can be more sensitive to local patterns than generalised national data.

The different approaches use expertise and technical knowledge in different ways, and can work constructively together:making the data of different cities more accessible helps local analysis pull on other polices and data better.

What can we learn from this?

A key takeaway, in terms of finding other organisations to connect and learn from, is that we should be looking for examples based around cities and municipalities (rather than language around ‘subnational PMOs’). This isn’t always what we’re trying to apply it to,- but they’ll be more discoverable and the approaches might be more generalisable.

In terms of work in the UK, ‘deep’ vs ‘wide’ represent different approaches. Our natural inclination at mySociety is to do ‘wide’ projects and be a foundational service. But funding wise, it’s difficult to score well in competitive bids with this approach (we’ll keep making the case, but it’s a recurring obstacle).

For new levels of devolution, it’s not just a transparency problem but a place-making problem, which requires tailoring approaches to different areas. Doing a better job in current and future devolution means more partnerships with local institutions that can shape the work towards what is most useful. Alongside that, less abstract work with a clear place based approach might be an easier sell.

In new mySociety projects, we tend to work with partners to pull in greater expertise and have a bigger impact. In our core democracy work, we’re getting back towards partnering with volunteers. We’ve thought about being accessible to students in our crowdsourcing approach (and have a few in our current cohort)– but this could go further: for instance, a more direct partnership with a London or Manchester-based university would be good for anchoring how we treat covering the respective mayors.

In general the future of TheyWorkForYou’s devolution approach may need an element of partnership with existing organisations, or incubating new groups. Going local means scaling up — and we need to find sustainable ways of doing that.

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If you’d like to join our global Community of Practice on parliamentary monitoring, then feel free to email us on tictec@mysociety.org

Image: Mateus Campos Felipe on Unsplash.

TICTeC will be returning in 2025:  10 & 11 June in Mechelen (Belgium), and online. 

Registration is open now. 

This year we are framing our call for session proposals around ‘pro-democracy technology’. This blog post contains information about the audiences, themes, and formats for the conference – and information on how to submit proposals. Read on to discover what we’re looking for in submissions, and guides to the different formats of sessions. 

What is TICTeC?

TICTeC, short for The Impacts of Civic Technology Conference, first launched in 2015 as an annual gathering. Since then, it has evolved into a programme of year-round activities through our current TICTeC Communities and previous TICTeC Labs projects. 

A key tenet of the civic tech movement is the idea that the best advocacy is the demonstration of what’s possible. This is what TICTeC is all about. We’re bringing together practical people and practical thinkers to talk about the impact of our work, and learn lessons in how we can go further.

TICTeC is all about sharing research, knowledge and experiences on how digital technologies are being used to defend and advance civic and democratic values across the world.  We want a future where technology strengthens democracy rather than undermines it, in order to build societies and technologies that serve the many, not just the few. 

TICTeC is a place where you can learn about everything from combating corruption and misinformation to empowering communities and enhancing civic participation, and is a unique platform where attendees connect and collaborate.

Attendees are a distinctive mix of small and big tech practitioners, civil society leaders, funders, users, civil servants, government representatives and academic researchers. Together we want to showcase cutting-edge pro-democracy innovations with a relentless focus on their real-world impact and effectiveness.

At previous TICTeC conferences, between 150-250 people have gathered in person and online, from more than 40 countries.

Conference themes

This year we’re shaping TICTeC around three thematic areas. 

• Access to information and open data
• Democracy, people and politics
• Climate change

In these areas, we’re structuring panels around ideas of defensive and constructive democratic tech. Read our blog post on pro-democracy technology to understand more what we mean by defensive and constructive technologies (there are also examples below). Proposals may in practice cover multiple areas. If your proposal does not fit either category, you can select both or neither. 

Beyond these topics, we will also have time for sessions that are interested in meta questions around ideas of civic tech and pro-democracy technology.

The examples below are not meant to be comprehensive, but give a sense of what we mean by each category. 

Access to information and open data

This thematic area applies to people working with access to information/Freedom of Information laws, or open data. The tech side may be innovations in running ATI platforms, improved government efficiencies, or projects that produce subsequent analysis or tools as a result of the data. 

Defensive tech

This category is looking at the use of access to information laws/platforms or open data as part of anti-corruption projects or platforms. This might include how data from ATI requests have been used as part of wider initiatives, or meta-investigation about how technology can make anti-corruption use of ATI more effective. 

Constructive tech

This category is looking at how open data or access to information laws can be used to build new data and tools, and the wider social (or commercial) impact of making it easier to access information. 

Democracy, people, and politics

This section covers projects concerned with mainstream democratic structures, or technical approaches to democratic processes involving people directly. 

This might include democratic transparency projects, e.g. those that create/rework public information about democratic institutions/politicians to improve transparency, accountability, standards, or efficiency. This includes Parliamentary Monitoring Organisations, but also extends to projects looking at elected politicians in other contexts that are Parliaments (such as city governments), or other democratic processes such as deliberative democracy and citizens’ assemblies. 

But it might also look like technology that directly involves people in democratic processes, such as toolkits of deliberative processes, consultation approaches, conditional commitment etc. 

Defensive tech

This covers a range of uses of technology to safeguard and investigate democratic processes. For instance: electoral violence monitoring, political donation tracking and broader anti-corruption work. 

Constructive tech

Here we are looking for empowering technologies that build democratic fibre and capacity. These approaches are less of a zero-sum game, but are looking at the potential for technology that enriches democratic life. 

This covers technology that may be trying to improve processes and understanding of electoral democratic institutions. It might include new forms or innovations in PMOs applying machine learning to existing problems. It also includes innovations in new forms of technology, and the uses of technology in deliberative processes.

Climate change

The climate crisis is a massive practical issue that requires urgent action — and like all practical issues it’s a democratic question. We’re interested both in where action on this issue is being actively disrupted by anti-democrats, and where we need to build democratic capacity to solve these problems. 

At TICTeC we want to explore practical approaches to facilitating and delivering democratic action on climate change. 

We need to develop defensive approaches — but we also need to bring the full cognitive and relational capacity of democracy to bear on the problem, – pushing decisions away from a few big levers in the middle, to understand how to reshape our environments and communities to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change. 

Submissions in this category may also fit into one or both of the other two. 

Defensive tech

In this area, defensive tech may take the form of anti-corruption approaches focused on the influence of fossil fuel companies and petrostates. This might include monitoring of fossil-fuel sponsored narratives repeated by politicians, or fact checking for climate conspiracy theories.  

Constructive tech

Constructive tech in this area is trying to bring the cognitive and relational capacity of democracy to bear on the problem, – pushing decisions away from a few big levers in the middle, to understand how to reshape our environments and communities to respond to the effects of climate change. 

This might be participatory approaches to shaping policy, directing local changes, or collaborative approaches to mixed public/private decisions home upgrades and retrofit. 

Session types

This year we’re looking for three session types.

• 20 minute presentations
• 35 minute short workshops
• 75 minute long workshops/panels

For workshops, we really want to see a strong interactive element that involves the audience in working through a practical activity, sharing information and experiences. 

Short workshops may (but don’t have to) take the form of a short presentation, with structured audience participation. 

Long workshops may take the form of a panel (where multiple speakers are involved), but there should still be a strong interactive component. For these, we would want to see panellists from a range of expertise and backgrounds. 

Structured participation doesn’t have to be complicated. When we run sessions, we tend to use the 1-2-4-all method to structure conversation around questions. Sessions in the past have used slido or similar. What we’re looking for in evaluating workshops is:

• A clear sense of the kind of discussion and questions you want to have.
• A sense that participants will have something to say, and get something out of these discussions (so being clear which subset of the TICTeC audience and themes you are talking to). 

When submitting workshop proposals, the key thing to bear in mind is that we have fewer time slots and can accept fewer of these proposals.

You are allowed to submit multiple proposals if you would like to pitch a presentation and a workshop (but both are unlikely to be accepted). 

We have a limited number of travel grants available to support speakers to attend, you can apply for this via the submissions form.

While we will favour speakers to be in-person, there are a limited number of slots for people who cannot travel to present remotely. Please indicate if you may need to present remotely when filling out the submission form.

Submission details

Submit your proposals via this application form by 15 Jan 2025 at the latest. 

Those selected for inclusion in the conference programme will be notified by 31 Jan 2025. 

Presenters will be required to register for the conference by 14 February in order to confirm their slot (the registration fee will be waived for individuals presenting; people who have already booked will be refunded). 

What is a good TICTeC presentation?

TICTeC is a practical and reflective conference. We encourage presentation submissions to focus on specific impacts or usage, rather than showcase new tools that are as yet untested.  We’re less interested in speculative uses of technology, but more in people’s practical experiences of working with tools and technical approaches. Technology does not have to be new, and we welcome retrospectives on long running projects.

A tool doesn’t have to have mass usage to be worth talking about – we’re equally interested in qualitative stories on the impacts of technology; their impacts on official processes; and how users have used platforms to campaign for change. We’re also interested in stories about obstacles and barriers to having impact. The main work of your organisation does not have to be technology centred: we are interested in experiences and impacts of adopting new approaches in less technical organisations. 

TICTeC attendees are a mixture of practitioners and researchers. Presentations should expect audiences to include different levels of technical knowledge. 

We score proposals according to their alignment to the conference themes, as discussed above. 

Use of AI in writing proposals

You may use ChatGPT or similar to sharpen ideas for proposals, better highlight alignment with our themes, or improve written language. However, proposals and sessions that are entirely AI-conceived will not score well. 

Last year we saw a number of proposals we suspected were AI-written because while they were at first appearance well crafted, they ultimately only spoke in vague and general terms about the themes we asked for. Because we prioritise experience and impact, such submissions will score poorly. If using these tools, ensure the result is an accurate and truthful account of your own experiences, research, or impact. 

More information

The TICTeC 2025 Eventbrite page contains further information about the conference, including FAQs. If you still have any questions after reading that, please email tictec@mysociety.org.

Speaking opportunities through sponsorship

TICTeC 2025 sponsors receive a guaranteed speaking slot, with no need to participate in the open call. Find out more about sponsoring TICTeC 2025.

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You can follow updates as they are announced over on the TICTeC website. If you’d like to be the first to receive TICTeC 2025 updates, please sign up for our emails.

And in the meantime, if you’d like to see what TICTeC is all about, you can browse all the resources from previous events over on the TICTeC Knowledge Hub.

We look forward to welcoming you to TICTeC 2025!

 

The TICTeC conference will be returning next year: on 10 & 11 June 2025 in Mechelen (Belgium), and online. 

In light of the exceptional political times we’re living through, and that 2025 marks 10 years since TICTeC began, TICTeC 2025 will have a renewed focus on what we’re calling “Pro-Democracy Technology”.

TICTeC 2025 will bring together people working on defensive technology against threats to democracy, and those who are using technologies constructively to enrich and strengthen the heartbeat of civic and democratic life. Read more on our thoughts on reframing civic tech for the current moment.

If you’re working in this area and have things to share, or want to understand how technology can be applied to the democratic needs of our age – sign up now, we’d love for you to join us. 

What is TICTeC?

TICTeC, short for The Impacts of Civic Technology Conference, first launched in 2015 as an annual gathering. Since then, it has evolved into programmes of year-round activities through our current TICTeC Communities and previous TICTeC Labs projects. 

A key tenet of the civic tech movement is the idea that the best advocacy is the demonstration of what’s possible. This is what TICTeC is all about, we’re bringing together practical people and practical thinkers to talk about the impact of our work, and learn lessons in how we can go further.

TICTeC is all about sharing research, knowledge and experiences on how digital technologies are being used to defend and advance civic and democratic values across the world.  We want a future where technology strengthens democracy rather than undermines it, in order to build societies that serve the many, not just the few. 

From combating corruption and misinformation to empowering communities and enhancing civic participation, TICTeC is a unique platform where attendees connect and collaborate.

With a distinctive mix of small and big tech practitioners, civil society leaders, funders, users, and academic researchers, we want to showcase cutting-edge pro-democracy innovations with a relentless focus on their real-world impact and effectiveness.

At previous TICTeC conferences, between 150-250 people have gathered in-person and online from more than 40 countries.

Why do we host TICTeC?

We run TICTeC because we think there is important work being done, and that we are stronger and smarter together.

Threats to democracy and civic power are rising across the world. Anti-democratic actors aren’t standing still – and are constantly learning how to use technology to extend their power and control over people. 

Democracy’s reaction to this needs to be not to reject technology but to use it to evolve and compete, particularly in addressing society-changing issues like climate change. 

Democracy needs to be fast, effective and popular, and digital technology can and is helping to achieve this. 

That’s why TICTeC exists – to highlight and examine these pro-democracy technologies, in a collaborative and safe space. This not only strengthens our work at mySociety but also contributes to a global movement harnessing technology to protect and advance democratic values around the world. 

TICTeC 2025 themes

The 2025 TICTeC conference will focus on exploring the impact of pro-democracy tech innovations across several critical themes: Access to information (ATI), Democratic Transparency, and Climate.

In each of these areas, we want to explore what we’re calling ‘defensive’ and ‘constructive’ approaches. Defensive approaches safeguard the openness democracy needs to operate – while constructive approaches build the capacity of the engine of democratic progress.

Call for Proposals

We’ll soon be launching our Call for Proposals, giving more information and the opportunity to pitch your session ideas on the above themes. Be sure to sign up for email updates to be the first to know when submissions open.

Register now- Early Bird tickets available

It is essential to register on Eventbrite in order to attend TICTeC 2025, whether that’s in person or online. Early Bird tickets are available until 3rd March 2025, saving £100. More practical information and FAQs can be found on the TICTeC 2025 webpage.

If you have general ideas or questions about TICTeC 2025, or are interested in sponsoring the conference, please get in touch. 

We can’t wait to see you at TICTeC 2025—either in person in Mechelen or online. Let’s come together again to explore how technology can be leveraged for a resilient and proactive global democratic future.

Image: CC Visit Mechelen. 

In how we’re framing TICTeC and our wider work, we’re talking less about civic tech and more about what we’re calling Pro-Democracy Tech (PDT).

The reason for this is we’re finding civic tech is a less helpful term for the kind of convening work we want to do. It won the argument of its time, and there is much less need to make the basic case for technology as part of the civic tool kit. But as a result, it has less to say about the situation we’re in now. Instead, we need framing that better talks to the range of people and institutions who are doing civic and democratic work with technology today. 

What is Pro-Democracy Tech?

Pro-Democracy Tech describes digital tools aimed at realising and defending democratic values. 

A key motivation of this approach is that authoritarianism isn’t standing still – and is learning how to use technology to extend its surveillance and control over people. Democracy’s reaction to this needs to be not to reject technology but to use it to evolve and compete. Democracy needs to be fast, effective and popular, while not conceding that the only way to do this is by becoming more centralised and authoritarian itself.

Within this, there are two key activities:

• Defensive democratic tech –  defending the open society: anti-corruption, anti-misinformation, etc.
• Constructive democratic tech  – empowering technologies that build democratic fibre and capacity: participation and deliberation, community tools, civic response tech. 

These are interconnected, and not hard divides. Defensive approaches safeguard the openness which democracy needs to function, while constructive approaches build the capacity of the engine of democratic progress. 

There are tools and approaches that apply to both. Access to Information laws are both vital anti-corruption tools, and part of capacity building through lowering costs of accessing information. Democratic transparency organisations (PMOs and similar) are both about increasing anti-corruption surveillance, and transforming the capacity and connections of democratic institutions.

Where they differ is in their approaches to new technological tools. Defensive democratic tech is in an arms war with anti-democrats. We have to keep moving and innovating to stay in place.  It is reactive against a well-financed opponent, and needs to understand how to bend tools (often developed by those with deep pockets and their own motives) to democratic purposes.

Constructive democratic tech is less of a zero-sum game. Just as there are technological approaches that make authoritarianism much more effective, there are approaches that make democracy much more effective. Here the enemy is less organised but omnipresent: inertia, low expectations, and a belief that things can’t be better. The goal of this approach is developing civic capacity, and taking us on the path from “citizen sensors” to “citizen thinkers” – where the extraordinary capacity and cognitive diversity in a democracy are fully enabled to work together to solve the big problems of the age (such as climate change). 

Why do we need this shift?

Going back twenty years (or even just ten years to the first TICTeC), what the “civic tech movement” is trying to get across is that there are civic-minded people who are using technology to create new kinds of organisations and services. Civic tech is a term to describe this novelty, make the case to funders, and advocate for this idea that technology isn’t just about online shopping, but can help people work together to improve the society they’re in. 

The good news is that these people mostly won. Governments, journalism and NGOs have generally taken on the lessons of the early civic tech movement. A wider range of governments and organisations understand the value of technology in helping them achieve their purpose, and there are more outlets for the kind of people who originally would have founded civic tech organisations. 

As a result, when we look internationally, we see very few organisations where the core identity is “civic tech” and that run a range of services in the same way that mySociety does. Instead, we tend to see organisations more tightly focused on an area of work (like access to information), and tech is one of a range of skill sets represented, or where civic tech-like work is part of a broader portfolio of more traditional research and advocacy work.

As civic tech is speaking to problems that no longer exist in the same way, the phrase doesn’t apply well to the problems we have now.  We need language and terms to bring together people who are using tech as part of the work to defend and enrich our democratic societies. 

Putting this into practice

The purpose of this framing is to create practical language. At TICTeC 2025, we’re exploring how we’ll use constructive/defensive framing to structure the conference – across specific areas of work we have a focus in: democratic transparency, access to information and climate change. We also want to use it to be clearer about the broader range of organisations and projects we ‘d like to see there. 

Pro-Democracy Tech reflects both the purpose of the technology, a general attitude that pro-democracy tech is possible, and a recognition that there is anti-democratic technology out there. It was really helpful putting this together to see some similar language and divides in this NED/IFDS essay collection.

Leaving the tech aside, the spirit of civic tech is about challenging low expectations of how things are, and demonstrating that things can be done better.  As mySociety, we still see ourselves as a civic tech organisation, and the idea of a civic tech movement as important to understand ourselves and our history. But we also need language that helps us understand how we relate to others that don’t share that history.

A feature of the current moment is that ideas of democracy are under attack, and authoritarians have embraced and made technology core to how they work. What is up for debate is the orientation of the pro-democracy side towards technology. We think ceding the ground would be a mistake and through TICTeC we want to incubate the best version of the pro-democratic tech argument. At the same time, we want to stay true to an important value of the civic tech movement: that the best advocacy is the demonstration of what’s possible.

Header image: Photo by Bhushan Sadani on Unsplash

 

A month has rolled by and look what amazing work the Global Access to Information Network members have achieved!

FragDenStaat: have been uncovering issues in the German medical system where patient symptoms are missed, hospitals are understaffed and the system is squeezed. 

mySociety: have been onboarding our first partners onto the Projects self- service to check it works, and writing user guides to help people navigate the new features. We’ve also added the Pro service to KiMitTud!

Access Info: have been working hard with both Arthro5a and VreauInfo, working on project plans with MaDada and SPOON alongside launching a campaign with Article 19 in Europe on recommendations for implementation of reg 1049 for transparency in Europe. They’re also still accepting nominations for their transparency Impact Award until September 9th 

Sieć Obywatelska Watchdog Polska: are busy organising an event on Transparency to link with International Right to Know day on September 28th and also protesting against dangerous border policies which risk migrant lives when crossing into Poland. 

MaDada: Ma Dada has been planning their project with AccessInfo, and crunching data for their upcoming observatory of access to documents.

ForSet: are super busy organising DataFest in Tbilisi, Georgia which is happening 19-21 September 2024. They’d love to see any familiar faces from the network if anyone is going along!

ImamoPravoZnati: Gong has been collecting data on the implementation of civic education in Croatian schools (including forms and level at which it is being implemented, number of pupils involved and number of teachers trained to implement it) by filing requests to local and regional government units, in hopes of mapping the regional disbalances and other issues pertaining to the current policy framework for formal civic education.

KiMitTud: have been filing requests to the Sovereignty Protection Office, looking into how they’d requested authorities to collect data on an ongoing basis which went beyond their remit.  

DostupDoPravda: have been investigating everything from the denial of access to state secrets to complaints to the Human Rights Commissioner over ATI violations. 

Vouliwatch/Arthro5A: are continuing their campaign work and also launching a new site monitoring the Greek Government commitments to marine conservation and their progress towards those commitments. 

Plaza Cívica: has been making strides in improving public transport in Lima and Callao. We took on the challenge of mapping and updating the data for 521 public transport routes, which was no easy task given the messy and outdated information we had to work with. This initiative required extensive public information requests from various government agencies and collaboration with private entities. Now, anyone in the city can use Google Maps to find the best routes for their commute. This project is just one way we use open data to make everyday life easier and push for more transparency and civic engagement.

Datos Concepción: are working with local authorities in Entre Ríos (Argentina) to improve the access to info law (2017) , focused on modifying the application process into the local government. Also are working on the 5th annual plan of Argentina on OGP related to the federal programme. 

PPDC:  we are currently conducting both National and Sub-national Freedom of Information (FOI) rankings in Nigeria, covering 250 MDAs at the national level and 152 MDAs across 3 states (Adamawa, Ekiti, Kaduna). Additionally, we’re actively working on expanding community engagement to various sub-nationals, aiming to enhance their procurement processes for greater transparency and accountability. Furthermore, we’re excited to be extending our reach to 2 additional states (Oyo and Anambra), empowering CSOs and citizens with the skills and knowledge needed to effectively utilize the FOI Act to hold the government accountable.

AccessInfo Hong Kong: We are about to launch a manual on www.civicsight.org in English and Cantonese on how to use the AccessInfo platform to both make requests but also to appeal to the Ombudsman when requests are either not responded to in full or at all by the Hong Kong Government.

Article 19 Eastern Africa: Ongoing assessment of Kenya’s status of implementation of the Access to Information Act. Launch of new Strategic Plan for Eastern Africa 2024-2027 entitled “Stronger for Expression’ with ATI and Information Integrity as part of key strategic pillars. Launch of annual report- Eastern Africa: A year of repression and resistance.

Abrimos Info: There is a constitutional reform on “organic simplification” in México already approved in commission in the lower chamber, about to remove the autonomy of INAI (the national authority in access to information). There is great alarm about the future of the transparency system in the whole ecosystem. You can read more in spanish: INAI’s reaction and journalistic analysis.

Civic Data Lab: Please find some of our key updates here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/strengthening-our-commitment-towards-resilientindia-civicdatalab-2zkgc/ 

OpenUp ZA: Through our Data Desk – supported by the Africa Data Hub – we have been providing support to African journalists to interpret and visualise data (and FOI record data). We will be expanding the Data Desk to provide data sourcing, analysis and visualisation services to South Africa’s anti-corruption civil society community, from September. We have also been developing a research framework to try and unpack success criteria from historical FOI data to help automate the generation of successful FOI requests.

Other news: In Europe the IJ4EU have launched 2 cross border funds which might be of interest to sites working with journalists – one for teams, and one for freelancers; you can read more here and here.

Photo by Fons Heijnsbroek on Unsplash

Summer is finally upon us, and though things are slowing slightly in the heat there’s been lots of amazing work happening on Access to Information across Europe this month!

NB: Our TICTeC community of practice is Global and we’d love to hear updates from our global members too in the future!

Without further ado:

FragDenStaat: are working on a long running investigation into a funding scandal at the Ministry of Education looking at the withdrawal of funds from critical scientists. More on that here

mySociety: are working on a new release of Alaveteli to bring some of our new features into your platforms. We’re also getting WDTK Projects as a self serve option into the Alaveteli Codebase, investigating AI for assessing batches and talking about our marginalised communities work at the Women’s Aid 50th Anniversary Conference. We’ve also finally released our Resource Hub, can you spot the pre-September event doc? Hint hint

Access Info: are working on legal reform projects with Moldova and Greece, as well as supporting Serbia with some legal challenges and convening a group of CSOs and activists around the 1049 Article.

SPOON: just got a win from the court in Amsterdam (more here) on rejections based on draft documents! There’s been some support from a minister who suggests the house waits to see what happens with FOI before talking about Abuse of the law and dealing with the complexities of things passing through the house when trying to ask for information about bill proceedings.

Transparency International Slovenia: have been Releasing their global integrity report with Ernst Young and going into conversation with Ernst and Young about what this means for Slovenian businesses.

Transparencia: is using FOI campaign to change 7 Belgian FOI regulations. Our actual campaign is on the federal Belgian law. We have collaborated with mainstream media to support that goal Transparence : ces documents que l’on ne veut pas (facilement) rendre publics – Le Soir and we presented to the press an FOI-investigation on fraud in covid-government contracts Des espions dans le Covid #1 : Vaccins périmés, manipulations et vidéos, le scandale belge qui éclabousse la France et l’Europe (blast-info.fr)

ImamoPravoZnati: are sailing along smoothly this month; Users are sending their questions, receiving answers and they calculated they receive around 6% of all the FOIs sent in the Republic of Croatia to public authorities!

KiMitTud: Atlatzso (KMT’s parent company) have been using FOI to investigate fraudulent calls for vote recounts and uncovered that almost half the calls (114) for a recount in one constituency were made by the candidate themselves, not the vote counters.

Arthro5A: Vouliwatch (Arthro5a’s parent organisation) ran their first workshop around Access to Information to encourage journalists and CSOs to make requests and use their right to information. It was well attended and 18 CSOs signed up to the campaign afterwards. The event was supported by Access Info and Open Knowledge Germany.

If you’re in our Network and Community of Practice and have something to share for August monthnotes – drop Jen a line!

Whether or not you were lucky enough to attend TICTeC in person earlier this month, you can now experience it all over again.

Where there are videos and slides for a session, you can access them via the Schedule page. Just click on ‘see session detail’ to see which resources there are. Or discover all the videos via the TICTeC 24 YouTube playlist.

Note: Videos and slides are only available for sessions that were recorded, and where presenters gave consent to share.

Plus: browse through photos from the two days of TICTeC 24 on our Flickr page, here. All photos are available under a non-commercial Creative Commons licence, so please do share them where you like.

Don’t miss TICTeC 2025!

Work with us at TICTeC 2025: we’re open to suggestions from organisations who might like to partner with us to host TICTeC in your region; and we’re also always happy to talk to potential sponsors. Drop us a line if you’d like to discuss more.

Subscribe to updates: Be the first to know when we put out the call for papers, open bookings and announce the location for next year’s TICTeC — sign up here.

Thanks for your feedback

We love hearing what other people got out of TICTeC! Special thanks to those who have taken time to feed back on what those two days meant to them.

Here are just a couple of the comments we’ve received: follow us on Instagram to see more over the next few weeks.

 

We’ve just come back from two intense days packed with presentations from the wonderful global community of civic tech practitioners. Heartfelt thanks to everyone who made TICTeC 2024 possible: our wonderful speakers, delegates both on the ground and joining us remotely; sponsors the National Endowment for Democracy, the team of red-shirted mySociety staff who made everything run so smoothly (including our volunteer for the day, Teona); venue Mary Ward Hall; and the videography team from AV Projections who gave our online attendees a seamless experience.

Each attendee will of course have their own highlights, but they surely must include some of the following: María Baron and Nick Mabey OBE igniting each day’s proceedings with relevant and provocative keynotes; a panel of seasoned civic technologists reflecting on what happened the day they woke up and realised their project had become critical national infrastructure; first-person testimonies from practitioners operating in hostile or war-torn environments; and deep dives into where AI can be helpful and where it has inherent dangers.

The last in-person conference was in 2019, and to be completely honest, we did wonder whether we’d be able to fully recapture the TICTeC spirit. Fortunately, people’s reactions, messages and social media posts — not to mention the buzz of excitement throughout the two days — has put those concerns entirely to rest. There’s as much affection and appreciation for TICTeC as there ever was.

Thanks to everyone who was a part of it – not least our own Gemma Moulder who pulled off her usual seemingly effortless, but in reality massive, feat of organisation.

We’ll be sharing slides, videos and photos as soon as they’ve all been processed, so watch this space.

 

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Photo: Alice Williams

 

 

Yes, it’s that marvellous time for the Civic Tech community: the full TICTeC schedule is now online and you can browse it to your heart’s content, picking which sessions you’ll attend — not always an easy decision when there’s so much to choose from!

As usual, TICTeC promises access to civic tech around the world with insights you won’t get elsewhere, presented by a truly amazing roster of international speakers. This year we have a focus on threats to democracy and climate, and the tools that are working to counter them.

You’ll find grassroots NGOs, making a difference through their on-the-ground technology; representatives of governments; tech giants; and of course the academic researchers that make sense of everything we do in the civic tech world.

• Hear from Mevan Babakar, News and Information Credibility Lead at Google;
• Learn how tech has shaped citizen-government communication from the Taiwan Ministry of Digital Affairs;
• See what happens when you wake up and realise your civic tech project is now critical national infrastructure, with Alex Blandford of the University of Oxford

These are just a few of the 60+ sessions from an international range of perspectives that you can dip into across TICTeC’s two days. Which will you choose?

Come along in person, or tune in from home

This year, most of TICTeC’s sessions will be livestreamed, so you can tune in no matter where you are (the workshops won’t be broadcast, as they don’t lend themselves to online participation). If you’d like to attend virtually, you can book a ticket via Eventbrite for just £50.

Or, if you’d prefer to join the conference in person, enjoying all that a real-life meet-up entails, with sessions interspersed with networking, nibbles, and socialising, make sure you snap up one of the limited slots. But hurry – TICTeC always sells out, and this year is looking like no exception.

Register for TICTeC now.

TICTeC, our Impacts of Civic Technology Conference, will be returning for its 7th edition on 12th and 13th June 2024, in London and online. We’re delighted to announce that the call for proposals and registration for TICTeC 2024 are now open.

TICTeC is all about sharing research, knowledge and experiences to examine and improve the impacts of civic technology, in order to strengthen democracy, public participation, transparency, and accountability across the world.

Call for Proposals: open until 22nd March 2024

Core themes

After twenty years of mySociety, and approaching ten years of TICTeC – we want to think about what is needed now to match the big challenges of the next twenty years. 

As well as examining the impact that civic technology is having upon societies around the world, the big question we want to answer through TICTeC is:

What is needed to make civic tech on a global scale more successful and impactful, to tackle global problems around democracy and climate change?

Through TICTeC 2024 and 2025, and our new Communities of Practice – we are going to break down this question, and work through for ourselves, and with our partners, what is needed to deliver on the radical goals of the civic technology movement. 

This breaks down into two sub questions that we want to explore. What is the role of civic tech in:

• safeguarding and advancing democracy/transparency where it is under threat?
• enabling the effective and democratic change needed to meet the challenge of climate change?

For this year’s TICTeC we encourage proposals that contribute to discussion around these two thematic questions, as well as to the overarching conference theme. Potential topic areas may include:

• Access to Information/Freedom of Information
• Monitoring parliaments/legislatures
• Climate change/climate action
• Tools for citizen participation
• AI and Democracy
• Civic tech as part of civil society
• Crowdsourcing and volunteers
• Impacts of big tech/tech giants
• Fact checking
• Technical infrastructure/cybersecurity

You can propose 20 minute presentations and ideas for longer workshops.

We encourage presentation submissions to focus on the specific impacts of technologies, rather than showcase new tools that are as yet untested. A tool doesn’t have to have mass usage to be worth talking about – we’re also interested in qualitative stories on the impacts of technology, their impacts on official processes, and how users have used platforms to campaign for change. We’re also interested in stories about obstacles and barriers to having impact. 

Workshop proposals should be relevant to the conference themes. Technology does not have to be new, and we welcome retrospectives on long running projects. 

The deadline for applications is the 22nd March 2024. Those selected for inclusion in the conference programme will be notified no later than 5th April 2024.

Presenters will be required to register for the conference by 19th April in order to confirm their slot (the registration fee will be waived for individuals presenting). 

Submit your proposals via this application form by 22nd March 2024 at the latest. 

Register now

Registration for TICTeC 2024 is now open and is essential in order to attend. TICTeC has sold out in previous years – so make sure you get tickets early. Early bird tickets provide a significant discount, so it’s well worth registering before early bird ticket sales end on 20th April 2024.

Attending TICTeC 2024 in-person will allow attendees access to all conference sessions, including main plenary sessions, presentation/Q&A sessions, workshops, networking sessions, lunches and drinks reception. Attending online will allow remote attendees access to all main plenary sessions and some breakout presentation/Q&A sessions.

The TICTeC 2024 Eventbrite page contains further information about the conference, as well as FAQs, but do let us know if you have any questions by emailing tictec@mysociety.org.

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In the following months, we will be publishing full details of proceedings as they are announced over on the TICTeC website. If you’d like to hear of TICTeC 2024 updates first, please sign up for email updates.

And in the meantime, if you’d like to see what TICTeC is all about, you can browse all the resources from previous TICTeC events over on the TICTeC Knowledge Hub.

We look forward to welcoming you to TICTeC 2024!