Civic data
This page curates everything from open government data to visualization tools to data standards to algorithmic implementation. The only common thread is that all these data/data-products share a commitment to civic interest.
I’ll do my best to highlight organizations that are doing important and exciting data work, but be sure to drop me a line if you think something’s missing.
Curated by Deblina Mukherjee
Deblina Mukherjee (@deblnia) is a student at the University of Chicago. She is a research assistant at the Knowledge Lab, and the founder of UChicago’s Open Data Project.
Curators are not responsible for all of the entries in their categories.
Would you like to become a curator of the Civic Tech Field Guide? Drop us a quick note.
Distributed resource-gathering campaigns facilitated by dedicated platforms. While many civic projects make use of mainstream crowdfunding platforms, other platforms focused explicitly on civic, urban, or social impact projects.
One surefire way to engage citizens is to let them directly decide where their tax dollars go.
Systems that document, distribute, and otherwise make legible the legislative process.
Tools and platforms that aid group decision making through deliberate design decisions to improve the likelihood of desired outcomes, such as consensus.
Open innovation is the process of expanding the pool of innovators within an institution or organization through greater transparency, greater invitation to participate, creation or addition of low-barrier input channels, and similar mechanisms.
Open innovation is the process of expanding the pool of innovators within an institution or organization through greater transparency, greater invitation to participate, creation or addition of low-barrier input channels, and similar mechanisms.
Civic maps collect and display data geographically to coordinate action, plot resources, or make an argument for change.
Mapping platforms are the underlying platforms and tools that draw the maps, such as OpenStreetMap and Google Maps, that you can use.
Open innovation is the process of expanding the pool of innovators within an institution or organization through greater transparency, greater invitation to participate, creation or addition of low-barrier input channels, and similar mechanisms.
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A Civic Data Primer
Data exists at an interesting and complicated intersection of the computational and the social. “Data” supports the claims we make in essays, and “data” is the fodder of algorithms. We can collect and use data to hold governments accountable just as soon as governments and companies can use data to surveil us. The breadth of definitions and assumptions and processes and literacies that surround “data” – some of which cut directly to the core of scientific inquiry and social life – render the word both dizzying and endless.
The Syllabus
- Logic Magazine’s Ben Tarnoff on defining and democratizing data
- The “Algorithm” and “Data Visualization” sections of Software Studies: A Lexicon (although the whole book is worth a read)
- Dr. danah boyd of Data & Society’s Critical Questions for Big Data
- Dr. Chris Wiggins’ course at Columbia called data:past,present,future
- Dr. Ruha Benjamin’s Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code
- Yasodara Cordova for Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center on different protections for different types of data