[render_custom_map location =”Poland”]
Civic tech (Polish: technologie obywatelskie) as a term has been popularised in Poland since 2013, thanks to the Code for Poland (Koduj dla Polski), a program led by ePaństwo Foundation and Personal Democracy Forum CEE conference. However one of the first communities focused on new technologies and their opportunities for the activists was NetTuesdays (NetWtorki) meetups in Warsaw with its start back in 2009.
In the meantime, more and more organizations and institutions started to organize various hackathons, promoting the usage of new technologies and open data to solve transportation, environmental or social challenges.
Another topic connected to civic tech is open data. Until 2019 only a few cities decided to launch open data portals, with a vague approach to updating the databases, as well as the quality or usability. What’s worth mentioning is the work of the Ministry of Digitisation’s Open Data team, which not only launched the open data portal, gathering data from over 120 institutions but keeps on promoting and sharing knowledge about it.
Also, The GovTech Polska program was launched in 2018 to tackle with tech challenges of public institutions.
Currently, among the challenging issues of civic tech in Poland is the promotion of open-source software for the cities (e.g. for the participatory budgeting) and environmental issues such as air quality.
Suggested resources
- Code for Poland’s project catalog
- Otwarte Dane – the central repository of Polish open government data
Projekty
Curated by Aleksandra Kamińska
Aleksandra worked on international projects and communication in the ePanstwo Foundation (ePF), a Polish NGO which mission is to develop democracy, open and transparent authorities and civic engagement through new technologies.
Since 2015 she was the part of the organising team of Personal Democracy Forum CEE – the biggest regional conference gathering people working for civic participation and transparency in public life using new technologies.
Also, she mapped European Digital Democracy projects and organisations for digitalsocial.eu within the DSISCALE project.
Currently Aleksandra lives in Lisbon working in Associacão Mais Cidadania within the European Solidarity Corps.
You can find her on Twitter @alekaminska.
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.