Civic tech: digital tools for citizen involvement

“Civic technology, or civic tech for short, is technology that enables engagement, participation or enhances the relationship between the people and government by enhancing citizen communications and public decision, improving government delivery of service, and infrastructure.” – Wikipedia

With thanks to WCVA for the shortlist and analysis of functionalities – the table falls off the page on the website so please click through to this spreadsheet to see the details! Most of these are designed specifically with democratic engagement in mind, and some are designed for team work and engagement / communication.

It covers:

• Delib https://www.delib.net/
• Made Open https://weare.madeopen.co.uk/
• DooPoll https://doopoll.co/
• Loomio https://www.loomio.org/
• VocalEyes https://www.vocaleyes.org/
• People Matters Network http://www.pmnet.co.uk/togethersolutions/
• Your Priorities https://www.yrpri.org/
• Democracy OS http://democracyos.org/
• Discource https://www.discourse.org/
• Pol.is https://pol.is/
• Slack https://slack.com/
• Knowledge Hub https://khub.net/
• Basecamp https://basecamp.com/
• Yammer https://products.office.com/en-gb/yammer/yammer-overview

Some others that we’ve come across since and that we like too are:

• Kialo (for debating) https://www.kialo.com/
• Discuto (for collaborative decision making) https://www.discuto.io/en
• Kahoot! (for game-based learning) https://kahoot.com/
• WhatDoTheyKnow (https://www.mysociety.org/transparency/) and other mysociety.org tools for transparency
• FixMyStreet (https://www.mysociety.org/community/) and other mysociety.org tools for community
• TheyWorkForYou and WriteToThem (https://www.mysociety.org/democracy/) and other mysociety.org tools for democracy

And here’s also an exhaustive curated list from apolitical.co which covers:

• Citizen participation platforms
• Crowdsourcing and co-design tools
• Mobile apps
• Communication tools
• Multi-application software
• Data collection tools
• Data sharing tools

Have we missed any? Let us know in the comments below!