Civic Innovation

Setting the Stage

There was a time when

the only way people

interacted with their

government was by

voting or reading the

newspaper.

Now we communicate

directly. Strangers are

talking to each other,

organizing together,

and working together to

shape their worlds.

Everything is different

about how we can work

with governments and

we're only just starting

to figure it out.

What is Civic Innovation?

Civic innovation is the act of discovering and implementing new

ways to help a community solve its own problems

This might mean...

● Helping a local government release new

datasets about violent crime.

● Using low cost sensors to collect information

about local air quality in New York City

suburbs.

● Making it easier for people to learn about

their candidates for the state senate.

● etc.

The Need for Civic Innovation

Why Is Civic Innovation So Important?

Massive Existing

InfrastructureEffective technology can make

community processes and services more

effective and more impactful.

Everyone Relies

on Civic ServicesThe quality of public services affects the

quality of a everyone’s lives, and

everybody can benefit from efforts to

improve them.

Empowers

StakeholdersWe can enable understanding by collecting,

organizing, and distributing information more

effectively.

Immediate

ReusabilityCivic organizations around the world

share unique versions of the same

problems.

Solution

Solution – Data Collection

Solution – Content Management

Solution – Access Layer

System Access Layer Breakdown

Solution – Content Analysis

The Civic Innovation Process

Understand

Community

PrioritiesDefine a Strategy

for ImpactDevelop a

Solution

Validation

and Analytics

Systematize

the Successes

Data Seal

Allowing governments to release authentic datasets

- Uses hashing and encryption

to make it easy for an

organization to release any

type of file in a way that

others can validate

authenticity later.

- Intended to prevent the need

for the use of proprietary data

formats such as pdf.

- Built for the district attourney

of Washington DC.

Connecticut Data Collaborative

Changing the way Connecticut uses data

- Data portal featuring dozens

of datasets.

- Allows elected officials,

citizens, and journalists to

explore information about

cities and towns in the state.

- Several types of data

visualization, and tools to

filter and explore.

Opened Captions

- Socket-based API to push the

words being spoken on live

television onto the Internet.

- Distributed architecture,

designed to support second

screen experiences.

- Rapid prototyping tool,

possible to set up working

caption stream in under two

minutes.

Connecting television to the Internet

CivOmega

- Platform for engineers to

create question patterns that

map to API calls and

database queries

- Intended to make

government datasets more

useful to non-technical users.

Making data useful to normal human beings

Truth Goggles

Helping people remember when to think

- Layer of information to

highlight phrases in news that

readers should think about

more carefully.

- Interfaces designed to help

bypass people’s biases and

negative reactions to new

information.

- Tool for journalists to design

their own highlights, and

embed in their articles.