Comparison of civic technology platforms

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Civic technology is technology that enables engagement and participation, or enhances the relationship between the people and government, by enhancing citizen communications and public decision, improving government delivery of services and infrastructure. This comparison of civic technology platforms compares platforms that are designed to improve citizen participation in governance, distinguished from technology that directly deals with government infrastructure.

Contents

Platform types

Graham Smith of the University of Southampton, in his book Beyond the Ballot, used the following categorization of democratic innovations: [1]

Comparison chart

Platform NameFounderDates ActiveCorporate StructureGeographyParent CompanyParty AffiliationTechnology UsedOpen SourcePlatform TypeSoftware LicensePrimary Funders
Brigade James Windon, Jason Putorti, John Thrall, Matt Mahan, Miche Capone[ citation needed ]Jun 11, 2014 [2] - May 1, 2019 [3] For ProfitSan Francisco, California, United States [4] Brigade Media Proprietary software NoElectoral Innovation, Deliberative Innovation Marc Benioff, Ron Conway, Sean Parker [5]
CitizenLab Wietse Van Ransbeeck, Aline Muylaert, Koen Gremmelprez [6] September 2015 [7] - PresentFor Profit[ citation needed ]Brussels, Belgium [8] Proprietary software NoE-democracy innovation, Consultation innovation
Civocracy Chloe Pahud, Benjamin Snow2015–PresentFor ProfitBerlin, Germany Proprietary software NoParticipation

Consultation

Innovation

Data Insights

CONSUL Miguel Arana Catania [9] September 2015 [9] - PresentGovernment Agency [9] Madrid, Spain [9] Ruby on Rails [10] Yes AGPL v3 [11] Public
Countable (app) Bart Myers, Peter Arzintar [12] July 2014 – Present [12] For ProfitSan Francisco, California, United StatesNon-partisan
Loomio Ben Knight[ citation needed ]Nov 1, 2012[ citation needed ] - PresentFor Profit[ citation needed ]Wellington, New Zealand[ citation needed ] Ruby, Javascript [13] YesDeliberative Innovation AGPL v3 [14] Crowdfunding [15]
DemocracyOS Pia Mancini, Santiago Siri[ citation needed ]2012[ citation needed ] - PresentNon Profit[ citation needed ]Palo Alto, California, United States[ citation needed ]Democracy Earth Foundation Net Party [16] JavaScript [17] YesDirect Democracy Innovation GPL v3 [18] Y Combinator, Teespring [ citation needed ]
GovTrack Joshua Tauberer [19] 2003 [20] - PresentWashington, District of Columbia, United States[ citation needed ]Civic Impulse, LLC [21] Django [22] YesCrowdfunding
Fluicity Julie de Pimodan, Jonathan Meiss, Nicolas de Briey [23] July 2015 [24] - PresentFor Profit[ citation needed ]Paris, France [23] Proprietary software NoConsultation Innovation
Hustle Perry Rosenstein, Roddy Lindsay, Tyler Brock[ citation needed ]Dec 2014[ citation needed ]For Profit[ citation needed ]San Francisco, California, United States[ citation needed ] Proprietary software NoElectoral Innovation Social Capital (venture capital)
Capitol Bells Ted Henderson[ citation needed ]2013[ citation needed ] - PresentFor Profit[ citation needed ]Washington, DC, United States[ citation needed ] Proprietary software NoConsultation Innovation
NGP Van Mark T. Sullivan, Nathaniel Pearlman 1997–Present[ citation needed ]For Profit[ citation needed ]Washington, DC, United States[ citation needed ]Democratic and Progressive Campaigns[ citation needed ] Proprietary software NoE-democracy innovation
LiquidFeedback Andreas Nitsche, Jan Behrens, Axel Kistner and Bjoern Swierczek [25] November 2009 [26] Berlin, Germany [27] Public Software Group, Interaktive Demokratie, FlexiGuided GmbH [26] Lua (programming language), PL/pgSQL YesDeliberative Innovation MIT License
OpenGov Joe Lonsdale, Mike Rosengarten, Nate Levine, Zac Bookman[ citation needed ]2012–PresentFor Profit[ citation needed ]Redwood City, California, United States JavaScript, Ruby, Java, Python [ citation needed ]Yes Emerson Collective [ citation needed ]
Resistbot Jason Putorti, Eric Ries 2017–Present 501c4 Saint Petersburg, Florida, United States [28] Resistbot Action FundNon-partisan Python, Amazon Web Services, RapidPro, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL Yes [29] Electoral innovations, Consultation innovations, Co-governance innovations, E-democracy innovations CC0
Turbovote Kathryn Peters, Seth Flaxman[ citation needed ]2010–Present [ citation needed ]For Profit[ citation needed ]Democracy Works [30] Proprietary software NoElectoral Innovation
iSideWith Taylor Peck, Nick Boutelier [31] March 2012 – Present [31] Los Angeles, California, United States [31] Non-partisan [31] Amazon AWS, Facebook API, Twitter API, PHP, PostgreSQL, Postgis, Perl, Ubuntu Server, Apache, HTML, CSS, SVG, JQuery, GeoIP, Google Analytics [32] NoElectoral Innovation
We The People Obama administrationSeptember 2011 – PresentGovernment AgencyWashington, DC, United States Democratic Party JavaScript, PHP, CSS [33] YesCo-governance Innovation GNU General Public License [33] United States Government
Voatz Nimit S. Sawhney[ citation needed ]2014–Present[ citation needed ]For Profit[ citation needed ]Boston, Massachusetts, United States [34] Go [35] NoElectoral InnovationMedici Ventures[ citation needed ]
Helios Voting Ben Adida2008–Present [36] Non Profit Python, JavaScript, HTML [37] YesDirect Democracy Innovation Apache License [37]
U Report UNICEF Innovation [38] May 2011 – Present [39] Non ProfitNew York, United States UNICEF Python, HTML, CSS [40] YesConsultation Innovation GNU Affero General Public License [40]
Maji Voice Water Services Regulatory Board (WASREB)2012–Present [41] Government AgencyNairobi, KenyaWater Services Regulatory Board (WASREB) Open Source [41] YesConsultation Innovation GNU General Public License [42] World Bank Water and Sanitation Program [41]
Democracy 2.1 Karel Janeček2013–PresentPrague Municipal District, Czech Republic Proprietary software NoDirect Democracy Innovation
Secure Vote Max Kaye, Nathan Spataro [43] 2016–Present [43] New South Wales, Australia [43] Python, HTML, Shell, [44] Blockchain [43] NoDirect Democracy Innovation MIT License
Together ''SCIENCE FOR YOU'' N.G.O. - SciFY2018–PresentNon ProfitGreece''SCIENCE FOR YOU'' N.G.O. - SciFY Open Source: [41] JavaScript, PHP, CSS [33] YesCitizen participation Apache License [37]
Spilno Oleh Chsalvskyi, Alexander Shepetko, Serhey Zakapko2018–PresentNon ProfitUkraineUkrmedia Python, HTML, CSS NoDigital Democracy Ecosystem, E-democracy social network

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GitHub</span> Hosting service for software projects

GitHub, Inc. is a platform and cloud-based service for software development and version control using Git, allowing developers to store and manage their code. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous integration, and wikis for every project. Headquartered in California, it has been a subsidiary of Microsoft since 2018.

Singularity Education Group is an American company that offers executive educational programs, a business incubator, and business consultancy services. Although the company uses the word "university" in its branding, it is not an accredited university and has no academic programs or accreditation.

In 2018, Tyler Technologies acquired Socrata, a business-to-government software company, that sells an "open data platform" whose goal was to help "civic developers build apps more efficiently."

Causes is a for-profit civic-technology app and website that enables users to organize grassroots and public-awareness campaigns. Causes is a website that gives summaries of breaking news, new laws, and popular topics. Users can respond, comment, share, or contact their representatives about an issue. Users can also create their own "Cause" and seek support from other users.

Andreessen Horowitz is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. As of April 2023, Andreessen Horowitz ranks first on the list of venture capital firms by assets under management.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LiquidFeedback</span> Software

LiquidFeedback is free software for political opinion formation and decision making, combining aspects of representative and direct democracy. Its most important feature is the implementation of a delegated voting system which is to establish a new form of political representation and participation that takes into account the knowledge disparity of its participants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Loomio</span>

Loomio is decision-making software and web service designed to assist groups with collaborative, consensus-focused decision-making processes. It is a free software web application, where users can initiate discussions and put up proposals. As the discussions progress to initiating a proposal, the group receives feedback through an updatable pie chart or other data visualizations. Loomio is basically a web based forum with tools to facilitate conversations and decision making processes from starting and holding conversations to reaching outcome.

The OpenGov Foundation is a United States nonpartisan, nonprofit organization. It conducts research on legislatures like the United States Congress, develops software for government officials, and claims to help governments create policies and rules that support openness and effective engagement with the public.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atom (text editor)</span> Free and open-source text and source code editor

Atom was a free and open-source text and source code editor for macOS, Linux, and Windows with support for plug-ins written in JavaScript, and embedded Git Control. Developed by GitHub, Atom was released on June 25, 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DigitalOcean</span> American cloud infrastructure provider

DigitalOcean Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational technology company and cloud service provider. The company is headquartered in New York City, New York, USA, with 15 globally distributed data centers worldwide. DigitalOcean provides developers, startups, and SMBs with cloud infrastructure-as-a-service platforms.

Civic technology, or civic tech, enhances the relationship between the people and government with software for communications, decision-making, service delivery, and political process. It includes information and communications technology supporting government with software built by community-led teams of volunteers, nonprofits, consultants, and private companies as well as embedded tech teams working within government.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GitLab</span> Open-source Git software package

GitLab Inc. is an open-core company that operates GitLab, a DevOps software package which can develop, secure, and operate software. The open source software project was created by Ukrainian developer Dmytro Zaporozhets and Dutch developer Sytse Sijbrandij. In 2018, GitLab Inc. was considered the first partly-Ukrainian unicorn.

Co-Creation Hub, commonly referred to as Cc-HUB or the HUB, is a technology-oriented centre located in Yaba, a district of Lagos. Founded in 2010 by Bosun Tijani and Femi Longe, it provides a platform where technology-oriented people share ideas to solving social problems in Nigeria.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brigade Media</span>

Brigade Media, also known as Brigade, was a civic technology platform that was formed on June 4, 2014, and founded by James Windon, Jason Putorti, John Thrall, Matt Mahan, and Miche Capone. The platform was intended to help users connect with others who share the same or similar views and to voice their opinions, create debates, or organize petitions. This process was intended to make the users' concerns more visible to and influential towards the United States policymakers. In early 2019 the engineering team at Brigade was acqui-hired by Pinterest. The remaining company assets and IP, including the Causes assets, were purchased by GovTech app Countable.

Countable Corporation is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company based in San Francisco. The company was founded in 2013 by its CEO Bart Myers.

Resistbot is a service that people in the United States can use to compose and send letters to elected officials from the messaging apps on their mobile phones, with the goal being that the task can be completed in "under two minutes". It identifies a user's federal, state, and city elected officials, then provides an electronic service to deliver to those officials, as well as to local newspapers, and to publish online. As the platform has developed, Resistbot has added functionality such as confirming voter registrations, locating town halls, finding volunteer opportunities, and locating polling places. Resistbot has been funded by over 24,000 small-dollar donations as of September 12, 2017, and is built and maintained by volunteers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catherine Bracy</span>

Catherine Bracy is a CEO and co-founder of TechEquity, a tax and housing policy advocacy organization whose backers include the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PeachPie</span>

PeachPie is an open-source PHP language compiler and runtime for the .NET Framework and .NET. It is built on top of the Microsoft Roslyn compiler platform and is based on the first-generation Phalanger project. PeachPie compiles source code written in PHP to CIL byte-code. PeachPie takes advantage of the JIT compiler component of the .NET Framework in order to handle the beginning of the compilation process. Its purpose is not to generate or optimize native code, but rather to compile PHP scripts into .NET assemblies containing CIL code and meta-data. In July 2017, the project became a member of the .NET Foundation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.tech</span> Internet top-level domain

.tech is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) of the Domain Name System (DNS) used in the Internet. The name is truncated from technology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matt Mahan</span> American politician and tech entrepreneur (born 1982)

Matthew William Mahan is an American politician and tech entrepreneur, now serving his first term as the Mayor of San Jose. He previously served as the District 10 Councilmember representing the Almaden Valley, Blossom Valley, and Vista Park neighborhoods. Mahan also served as the co-founder and CEO of Brigade Media, a tech company focused on civic engagement.

References

  1. ↑ Smith, Graham (2005). "Beyond the ballot: 57 democratic innovations from around the world". westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk. POWER Inquiry. Retrieved 2018-04-18.
  2. ↑ "Sean Parker's Brigade Media Acquires Causes In Its Quest To Revitalize American Democracy". TechCrunch. 11 June 2014. Retrieved 2019-12-31.
  3. ↑ "Sean Parker's Brigade/Causes acquired by govtech app Countable". TechCrunch. May 2019. Retrieved 2019-12-31.
  4. ↑ "Follow Brigade on Index.co". Index.co. Retrieved 2018-04-02.
  5. ↑ "Brigade Media Raises $9.3M From Sean Parker To Shake Up American Democracy". TechCrunch. 14 April 2014. Retrieved 2019-12-31.
  6. ↑ "CitizenLab". www.forbes.com. Retrieved 2018-05-14.
  7. ↑ "CitizenLab". www.facebook.com. Retrieved 2018-05-12.
  8. ↑ "About us - CitizenLab". citizenlab.co. Retrieved 2018-05-14.
  9. 1 2 3 4 "This is how people power wins an election: The story of Ahora Madrid". www.commonstransition.org. 21 December 2016. Retrieved 2019-01-19.
  10. ↑ "Consul Democracy". www.github.com. Retrieved 2019-01-19.
  11. ↑ "Consul Democracy". GitHub. Retrieved 2019-01-19.
  12. 1 2 "Countable Wants To Make Politics A 'Continual Conversation'". TechCrunch. 16 July 2014. Retrieved 2019-12-31.
  13. ↑ "loomio/loomio". GitHub. Retrieved 2018-04-02.
  14. ↑ "loomio/loomio". GitHub. Retrieved 2018-04-02.
  15. ↑ "Out in the Open: Occupy Wall Street Reincarnated as Open Source Software". WIRED. Retrieved 2018-04-02.
  16. ↑ "A Conversation With DemocracyOS, The YC Non-Profit That Built A Latin American Political Party – TechCrunch". techcrunch.com. 17 April 2015. Retrieved 2018-04-02.
  17. ↑ "DemocracyOS/democracyos". GitHub. Retrieved 2018-04-02.
  18. ↑ "DemocracyOS/democracyos". GitHub. Retrieved 2018-04-02.
  19. ↑ "Web site a pork hunting ground / It joins others aiding analysis of bills for 'earmark' signs". SFGate. Retrieved 2018-04-02.
  20. ↑ "Joshua Tauberer's Homepage". razor.occams.info. Retrieved 2018-04-02.
  21. ↑ "govtrack/civic-impulse-llc". GitHub. Retrieved 2018-04-02.
  22. ↑ "govtrack/govtrack.us-web". GitHub. Retrieved 2018-04-02.
  23. 1 2 "Fluicity". angel.co. Retrieved 2018-04-07.
  24. ↑ "Fluicity". www.facebook.com. Retrieved 2018-04-07.
  25. ↑ "Etopia News L.A. talks with Andreas Nitsche | Interaktive Demokratie". www.interaktive-demokratie.org. Retrieved 2018-04-22.
  26. 1 2 "Information Kit (PDF)" (PDF).
  27. ↑ "LiquidFeedback - The democracy software". liquidfeedback.org. Retrieved 2018-04-22.
  28. ↑ "Resistbot". resist.bot. Retrieved 2019-12-31.
  29. ↑ Form definitions powering Resistbot's electronic deliveries to elected officials in the United States.: resistbot/contact-officials, Resistbot, 2019-12-30, retrieved 2019-12-31
  30. ↑ "Democracy Works: Democracy Fund". www.democracyfund.org. Retrieved 2018-04-11.
  31. 1 2 3 4 "About iSideWith.com". iSideWith. Retrieved 2018-04-18.
  32. ↑ Boutelier, Nick. "LinkedIn".
  33. 1 2 3 "WhiteHouse/petitions". GitHub. Retrieved 2018-04-23.
  34. ↑ "Voatz". angel.co. Retrieved 2018-04-19.
  35. ↑ "blacktreebird/voatz". GitHub. Retrieved 2018-04-19.
  36. ↑ Adida, Marneffe, Pereira, Quisquater, Ben, Olivier, Olivier, Jean-Jacques. "Electing a University President using Open-Audit Voting: Analysis of real-world use of Helios" (PDF).{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  37. 1 2 3 "benadida/helios-server". GitHub. Retrieved 2018-04-23.
  38. ↑ "U-Report: Ilhasoft's application for Unicef - Ilhasoft". Ilhasoft. 2016-01-12. Retrieved 2018-04-23.
  39. ↑ "U-report application revolutionizes social mobilization, empowering Ugandan youth". UNICEF. Retrieved 2018-04-23.
  40. 1 2 "rapidpro/ureport". GitHub. Retrieved 2018-04-23.
  41. 1 2 3 4 "WB Maji Voice Policy Note" (PDF).
  42. ↑ "CustomerFeedbackSystem/code". GitHub. 15 August 2015. Retrieved 2018-04-23.
  43. 1 2 3 4 "SecureVote". Techboard. 2017-04-26. Retrieved 2018-04-19.
  44. ↑ "muminoff/securevote". GitHub. 18 May 2016. Retrieved 2018-04-19.
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