We’ve moved! 👋

You can now read the latest stories from our team and from civic tech champions across the world on our website.

• Sign up for our bi-monthly newsletter to receive updates on what the Code for All team and our 30+ member organizations are up to, as well as the latest in civic tech news, and opportunities in the community.
• Follow us on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook to keep up to date with our blog posts and other civic tech news.
• You can also jump into civic tech discussion on our Slack!

While existing blog posts will remain up on our Medium page, all future content will be posted exclusively on our website.

The Code for All blog has found a new home. was originally published in Code for All on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Notice something different? That’s right, Code for All (CfAll) has a brand-spankin’ new look!

We are proud and excited to announce that as of August 30th, 2021, we are rebranding with a new logo, color scheme, website, and graphic line as part of the ongoing evolution of the CfAll network.

→ Why the re-brand?

In the life of every organization there comes a moment when you need to look closer at who you are — or better who you’ve become — and make that visible to others. That moment has come for CfAll.

Over the past several months, we’ve poured our hearts and souls into creating a new image with the help of the marvellous Lissett García Albornoz, and much input from our member organizations, that would accurately depict who the current CfAll is.

Our Co-Directors, Lorin and Sofía, summed it up best:

It all started with the need to update our website. We’re a small team and in 2019 the entire core team changed hands. Prior to that time, there were always software developers on the team and so the website had been built to be managed and updated by someone with software skills. We found ourselves a team without developers, with a need to maintain our website — so we decided to move our site to a platform that would allow non-developers to keep things up to date. The more we worked on this, the more we realized that it wasn’t only a platform shift that was needed. We thought the style of the website, which was rooted in CfAll’s branding, did not reflect the modern, diverse, creative, people-centered global community that CfAll is.

The new identity has been designed to satisfy all the existing expectations of what our original mark stood for, while simultaneously moving the organization’s graphic line forward to acknowledge the collaboration, support, iteration, and open spirit of the network, as well as the vision of diversity, and the joint relationship between technology and community that the network tries to achieve every day.

We’re very happy with it and are confident that you will be too.

→ Behind the Scenes: Get to Know Our Process

The creative process began with clear examples of what we expected to achieve: a clean, modern and happy design that invited people to be part of the network. We wanted to represent the joint collaboration between technology and the social world, while also airing the inclusivity and diversity of the network. There were a lot of different elements that needed to be boiled down into one simple message that everyone — tech background or not — could understand. Challenge was accepted.

The person in charge of this process was Lissett García Albornoz, an incredibly talented Chilean graphic designer who formerly worked with one of our member organizations: Ciudadanía Inteligente (CI). Lissett designs friendly projects focused on citizens’ rights and the intersection of politics and technology. She worked closely with us to distil a brand identity that precisely reflects our internal culture, global reach and differentiation.

It took a lot of time, as the graphic line got the F word we needed: Feedback. On several occasions throughout the design process, proposals were tested with multidisciplinary and international profiles to understand how the network is seen and projected for all. In this sense, the users’ tests and surveys were crucial to land and represent what the CfAll community expected from this redesign.

→ Our Logo Explained

It took a long time to reach a final decision on the logo redesign. The winning logo is a reinterpretation of the previous one: a compass that speaks of globality. The new logo presents a fresh air of change, aligned with a trend that will last for more than a decade. It tries to convey dynamism and resilience, as CfAll has learned and continues to adapt to the times of today.

Our main challenge was to project through our logo that CfAll is not an organization that creates civic technology, but is the network that connects and helps scale civic tech organizations from all over the world. The question was how to reinforce its main characteristic in all instances: being the largest civic technology network in the world. Liss made sure to emphasize ‘for All’ in the new logo, whereas in the old one ‘code’ is emphasized. Some of the user testers had mentioned that they thought ‘for all’ should be the part that is emphasized, and since the network is more about the people than the code, we wanted to make sure to change that emphasis.

That’s how Liss came up with elements that reference both code and globality. The logo reinterprets the four axes of the compass transforming it into a grill. This proposal is the result of the main elements of the previous logo mixed with ideas proposed during the iteration process: the compass that presents the idea of globality and collaboration, and the code symbol that refers to the connection and diversity within the network.

At first, we wanted to use a mix of color to represent the network’s diversity, but found with user testing that the proposals were too colorful and were not accessible. On the first test, one of our users was color blind and another had dyslexia; two very common types of disabilities, considering color blindness is more usual in men (and they count for 78% of the tech population). Liss recalls it was a fortunate experience to have their opinions taken into account in the survey.

She researched and understood how people with dyslexia read, and found general recommendations for leading and spacing, as well as the color contrast needed for the logo to be accessible for people who are color blind. The final proposals went through two different exercises to help us understand how the images would be visualized by folks with different types of disabilities, and then they were tested with users.

After careful consideration, we decided to honor the compass’ core elements as well as to present coding as a central element. The new design is meant to project globality, collaboration, connection and diversity.

→ New color scheme

When you think of CfAll, you might think of diversity, as the network has a presence in regions all over the world. It’s also a network full of people who are skilled in different disciplines. When looking at how to recreate the CfAll identity, we knew that this mixture of culture, skill and perspective needed to show through. So when it came to color, we decided on a palette that illustrated this, composed of three main colors: violet, turquoise, and deep blue.

Violet and turquoise both have elements of blue, which is a color that conveys seriousness and is linked to the technological area. The first is a strong and modern color, bringing a fresher feel to the new identity. Turquoise, on the other hand, softens the impact of the violet and maintains the vibe of the old logo. The rest of the colors are gradients in pastel and vibrant hues to add diversity. Warm gradients convey a friendly and inclusive character and cool gradients reinforce the tech side. The deep blue unites these two colors, as they both contain elements of blue, and this symbolizes the unification of the network, as we are united to amplify the impact of good ideas.

→ Website

So, what good is a new logo without an amazing new website to show it off?! Drum roll, please… introducing the new codeforall.org!

In the spirit of re-branding and after months of hard work and dedication we are delighted to announce that our website is now live. We updated our website to ensure that wherever you are, it’s easy to find the information and get the support you need from us:

• Easier, user-friendly navigation
• Clearer visibility around what the network is doing
• More resources & support information
• Updated look

Landing all the information into a clear message is the most complex, and also the most satisfactory stage of the redesign process. Liss defines it as her favorite step:

I enjoy landing complex information systems, defining the sections, and structuring it into something easier that is accompanied by a narrative and meaningful navigation. This initial stage starts comparing what the previous website was like and how other organizations have done it because it is important to have antecedents.

We want to thank everyone who took the time and energy to share their insight with us throughout this journey of the redesign. The tests were made to target four different user profiles: The Civic Technologist, The Network Member, The Interested Volunteer, and The Funder. For Liss, the most important part of the process is starting out with an affinity map. With this, you can plot out where the site is going, what format it will have, and iterate it with different users so that it can come to life in a way that works.

→ Meet Lissett, our amazing designer!

She considers herself a comprehensive designer focused on simple, warm and appealing visual projects that welcome users. Her focus has been on developing inclusion and accessibility platforms, incorporating a feminist gaze and accessibility for users that have some type of disability.

As a Latina woman, her background is represented in her work. Being born on the periphery of Santiago de Chile, she fights to make visible what is not hegemonic. In her work, she envisions women, people of color, and indigenous groups.

Lissett has worked with social and political organizations in Chile. Her interest in the joint collaboration between technology, design, and citizen participation began when she became interested in politics during college — a space she mentions can be hostile for people outside the discipline. Five years ago, Chilean society had a high level of disinterest in the institutions due to the distrust of the citizenry.

This is reflected in the social outbreak in 2019, that although deep down there is mistrust, it is not that people were apathetic but that there was mistrust of politicians. Therefore, I started working as a volunteer in my Faculty’s Student Federation designing infographics on contingency issues and the student movement. Her goal was to simplify dense information and democratize it. Another type of activity that he began to carry out was data visualization and information design.

She defines CI as her school. Her holistic perspective was forged during her six years at the feminist organization focused on fostering citizen participation and strengthening Latin American democracies by designing digital platforms that democratized information. Here she learned of the perspective of gender, racial, indigenous peoples. She was appointed Design Director, where she developed civic tech projects in Mexico, Ecuador, Paraguay, Colombia, and Argentina, as well as experiences with European countries, along with a multidisciplinary team. She previously worked with Public Citizen and right now she works with Global Initiative.

She enjoys working on projects she can relate to the values of their organizations such as the multicultural and feminist approach that advocates for social rights and work for greater social-economic equality, multicultural approach.

Coming from Ciudadanía Inteligente, I heard of CfAll, its dynamic, amazing people that embody the network, and the similar values I share: collaboration, multicultural, and making complex information simple to bring spaces closer together and not establishing a barrier with those who do not know about technology. What adds value is that it is an international civic tech network led by women. I enjoyed the process of being part of a horizontal, comprehensive, and respectful space led by Sofia and Lorin.

→ What’s next? Looking forward to the future!

Behind the new look we are still the same organization, more spread over the world, but with all the talent, passion and dedication to amply the impact of good ideas through a global network of local organizations.

The visual identity introduced today is a foundation that better communicates what the network does. We’re incredibly proud of the work that we have accomplished over the years! Our new identity will continue to satisfy all the existing expectations of what our original name stood for, while simultaneously moving the brand forward. We owe this rebrand to you, our CfAll community.

In the future, we will also be updating our branding in several other places. As these updates become available, we’ll post official announcements, brand new stories, and more information on our website. In this respect, we’ve decided to move out our previous and future stories to our new webpage, where you will find more information about our coming Summit 2021, CfAll programs, initiatives, and events. Medium will continue to serve as a repository for our previous stories.

All this has been a lot of work and we’re excited to share it with you.

Of course, and as always, if you have any questions, comments, or just want to chat, ping us on Slack (@lorin, @mar, @sofia)

Cheers!

Big news! Code for All is rebranding! was originally published in Code for All on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Last year we hosted our first online Code for All Summit and it turned out to be an experience like no other. After having in-person events for several years, the pandemic forced us to turn our energies to the digital space. What was originally planned as a 1-day event in Poland turned into a 3-day event online. We ended up hosting 21 sessions with 30 speakers and saw over 150 participants from 30+ countries throughout the course of the event.

The Summit that wasn’t & the Summit that was

This year, we’re excited to announce that the Call for Session Proposals for the Code for All Online Summit 2021 is NOW OPEN! 🔥

The summit, which will take place from September 27th to 30th, will be a space for participants to deliberate and examine the works, lessons, and impact of civic tech on a global scale; an opportunity to meet online, connect and share their work with each other.

What are the themes our online Summit 2021 will focus on?

Are governments using open-source software in their digital transformation or are they hiring closed-source tools? Do government platforms allow access with no constraints or restrictions? Can we change, improve or replicate the source of our government tech tools? Within this theme, we seek to explore the benefits of open versus closed technology in government, as well as paint a picture of the current state of governments around the world (e.g. are governments using open-source software in their digital transformation or are they hiring closed-source tools?).

For several years now, we’ve witnessed how technology is shaping not only the digitalization of in-person elections but also the narrative and information flow around candidates, encouraging citizens to take action and be part of the election process. Within this theme, we seek to explore and showcase civic tech work that promotes democracy, encourages citizen participation in decision-making processes, and safeguards democratic elections (e.g. election monitoring projects).

How does false information that is deliberately (and often covertly) spread influence public opinion? Are social media platforms doing the necessary work to tackle the distribution of fake news? What’s the role of civic tech in the fight against disinformation? Within this theme, we seek to explore the damaging impact that disinformation is having in the world and showcase civic tech projects that are working to combat it.

Who holds the power when designing, creating and implementing technology? Who’s narratives are put front and center, and who is thrown to the margins? What are we doing to challenge the status quo around tech? Within this theme, we seek to explore issues around power dynamics of the tech industry and how these issues affect the civic tech sphere (as civic tech is largely shaped by the field of tech). This might involve discussion around discrepancies regarding who has access to power and who controls the instruments of power, predictions about the types of innovations that may emerge to counter abuses or imbalances in power, and other topics around shifting power in civic tech.

Which are going to be the different session formats?

→ Panels

3 or more folks from different organizations will share their expertise and experience around a shared topic.

→ Lightning talks

Quick, pre-recorded presentations where a speaker will share insights from a project or case study.

→ Workshops

Live sessions where participants learn and develop new skills, ideas or tools together.

What’s next?

→ Submit your session proposal HERE before July 31st and stay tuned!

Let’s stay connected! Follow #CfAllSummit21 for updates in real-time.

Call for proposals — Code for All Summit 2021 was originally published in Code for All on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Our bi-monthly newsletter is one of the ways we share updates, resources, and opportunities from within the global civic tech community.

It’s been an active two months as we’ve brought a new team member onboard! Mar, our new Communication Assistant, joins us all the way from Mexico 🇲🇽 and so far, she’s rocking it! You can’t miss what we’re cooking up on social media, so be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram!

Ready for some civic tech updates? We’ve prepared this quick break-down of resources, opportunities, and updates from all around the civic tech world. Here we go!

• Our Call for Proposals for the Code for All Summit 2021 is now OPEN! 🎉This year’s Summit will focus on Open vs. Closed Tech in Government, Democracy & Elections, Disinformation & Fake News, and Power Dynamics in Tech. Sessions will include Panels, Lighting Talks and Workshops! The deadline to submit a speaking proposal is July 31st HERE.
• Upcoming news! With the help of consultant Anca Matioc, we’re designing a new workshop for Network and CoP members called “Exploring Financial Sustainability for Nonprofits”. We’ll be launching the open call for interested organizations to participate soon, so stay tuned!
• Drumroll, please. We’ll soon launch our new branding, logo and website designed by the amazing Lissett García Albornoz, and we can’t wait for you to see it!

Here find updates from a handful of our 30+ member organizations.

• Ciudadanía Inteligente 🌎 launched “The Constitution is Ours” for the Chilean civil society. This project will be carried out with CONSTITU + YO, the Global Initiative and Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung (FES) as an open and collaborative platform that seeks to claim citizen power. Its objective is to make visible and articulate citizens’ proposals for the new Constitution, connect with the work of the Constituent Constituents in Chile, and influence social rights and democratic strengthening together.
• Code for Africa 🌍 The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2021 was released on 24 June, of which CfA wrote the Nigeria and South Africa research. Our Knowledge team walked away with a Sigma Award, the first one in Africa, for Mapping Makoko. The story was produced in partnership with the Guardian Nigeria, the Pulitzer Centre on Crisis Reporting, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap, MakokoDreams, AfricanDrone and UhuruLabs. It has been featured in a number of international media outlets, including CNN and the BBC. As part of our wider rollout of fact-checking desks in Africa, we have partnered with UNESCO, the EU and IFCN to launch an eight-country fact-checking network in West Africa, the African Anglophone Fact-Checking Alliance. Lastly, the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) will launch its report on 14 July, which is the largest study on the portrayal and representation of women in news and media. Alongside some of the research, enumerators used the GMMP App, which is developed and maintained by CfA to record the data.
• Code for America 🇺🇸 celebrated their 2021 Summit, where mainstage speakers and breakout sessions explored what designing an equitable government looks like. From data matching and policy design to equitable practices and digital transformation, you can rewatch the entire conference here.
• Code for Australia 🇦🇺 just launched a podcast! In ‘Talking About a More Digital Government’ we’ll hear from people involved in creating better digital outcomes within government and civic tech. If you are keen to be a guest, get in touch!
  They have several things cooking up! A new Fellowship with Revenue New South Wales to create an open data platform for the public to have a better view and understand information that affects them; their Rules as Code Fellows are wrapping up their project — check out more here; the launch of a new program which will see more senior, experienced digital government practitioners giving advice.
  Gender Equity has become a big focus in the coming months. CfAustralia has completed a Gender Audit and action plan, and also launched a Women’s Professional Development program. Want to know more? Check out this video.
• Code for Canada 🇨🇦 is thrilled to announce the appointment of our new Executive Director, Dorothy Eng!
  They will be spending the summer on a country-wide “listening tour” of local Canadian civic tech groups to learn more about their visions for their communities and how Code for Canada can support them.
  Its inclusive usability testing program, GRIT (Gathering Residents to Improve Technology,) is going national! They are looking to expand their participant pool outside of the Greater Toronto Area to involve voices from across the country in helping design products and services that work for everyone.
  Their fifth cohort of Fellows is wrapping up their 10-month long projects with their government partners in August 2021.
• Code for Germany 🇩🇪 As temperatures rise and Germany approaches the so-called ‘Sommerloch’ (summer slump), their team of tireless volunteers continues to publish a monthly overview of the latest developments in the Open Data and Civic Tech scene. The June edition of our blog series ‘Out in the Open’ reviews goings-on in Germany and beyond.
• Code for Japan 🇯🇵 has started to prepare the Code for Japan Summit 2021, for the memorable 10 years after the East Japan Earthquake, co-hosted by Brigade in Tohoku area.
  They are also running the CivicTech Challenge Cup U-22 (CCC U-22) and CivicTech Accelerator Program(CAP) for younger generation of civic hackers.
  And also, they are exhibiting works related to Civic Tech at the 2121 design exhibition, using desidim as a discussion platform and animations. Check them out HERE and HERE.
• Code for Pakistan 🇵🇰is launching a new Fellowship Program in partnership with the National Institute of Health (NIH)! Ten Fellows will work with the NIH over the course of three months to develop new solutions and services, as well as improve and maintain existing ones.
• Open Data Kosovo 🇽🇰 is dreaming big! During the past week, awesome youngsters have successfully finished the training sessions as part of the ‘Digital Development Program’. This program is part of the “Building Strong and Resilient Communities in Mitrovica” project, financed by the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund and implemented by Community Building Mitrovica, Mundësia, and Open Data Kosovo.
• OpenUp 🇿🇦 shared anti-corruption initiatives and tools in South Africa, such as Keep the Receipts, in the Open Government Week with Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM) and a team of collaborators to discuss open procurement data and transparent governments.

This is where we share current job opportunities we’ve found within and around the network.

• Code for Pakistan 🇵🇰 Country Head
• Code for Africa 🌍 Health Editor | Senior Programme Manager
• Code for Canada 🇨🇦 Web Developer (Contract) | Data Engineer (Contract) *We are also looking for volunteers to help us assess our Data Engineer candidates.
• Open Up 🇿🇦 Product Owner | Senior full stack developer | Project Manager
• Code for Australia 🇦🇺 UX Designer | Full Stack Developers | Front End Developer | Developer Expression Of Interest

This is where we share upcoming events within the civic tech realm.

• [September 27–30] Code for All Summit. Save the date!
• [November 2–5] FWD50 *Code for Canada 🇨🇦 will be securing a limited number of complimentary tickets for Code for All representatives — stay tuned!

Here’s a list of some of our latest and most-read articles.

• Towards Open Government Kosovo.
• User-Centred Civic Technology with OpenUp.
• Design Principles that Put People at the Center.
• Neglected and Unmapped: Makoko struggles to survive.
• How to create a meaningful Professional Development program for your team.

To get in touch with Code for All, hit reply to this email or find us on Slack (Sofia, Lorin, Mar and Nonso).

Ready to share what you know and inspire your peers? If you know anyone else who wants to subscribe to our Community Newsletter, they can sign up to receive updates here.

Until next month — keep up the good work!

Team Code for All

Code for All Newsletter — July 2021 was originally published in Code for All on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Code for All Newsletter — May 2021

Our bi-monthly newsletter is one of the ways we share updates, resources, and opportunities from within the global civic tech community.

👋 Welcome

It’s been a busy couple of months for our team as we’ve been navigating some big role changes and have been getting ready to welcome in a new team member! A lot of projects have recently wrapped up, and some new ones are beginning. We’ve started Summit prep, and can’t wait to see you all in September! Read on for details about Summit and also find updates from 13 of our member organizations below.

✨ Code for All Updates

• We’ve officially set the date for our 2021 virtual Summit! Be ready to join us this coming September 27–30th, where we’ll bring the global civic tech community together through lightning talks, panels, workshops and more 🎉
• Our Project Lockdown (PL) Exchange recently wrapped up! PL is an open source, civic tech initiative that aims to map lockdown policies from around the world that have popped up in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Read more about the project here.
• We’ve held 3 Communities of Practice (CoPs) meetings over the past couple of months. The topics of our CoPs are: Digital Citizen Engagement, Good Governance and Disinformation. You can join these communities through our Slack workspace (look for channels: #citizen-engagement #good-governance #disinformation)
• We’ve launched our new Support Squads program and have decided on the specific squads that will be forming. The squads will be: Funding & Partnerships, Program Management / Direction, Communications & Marketing and Product Design! Support Squads is a program where we will bring together staff members from our Member organizations who work in similar roles, so they can learn from and support each other.

📰 Member Updates

Here find updates from a handful of our 30+ member organizations.

• Ciudadanía Inteligente 🌎 After a successful call with more than 600 applications from all corners of Latin America, our School of Digital Activism has started. This is a project (with support from the Karibu Foundation) where we provide free tools so that activists from all over Latin America can begin to promote social change through digital media and tools. Learn more about Ciudadanía Inteligente here!
• Civic Tech Sweden 🇸🇪 is organising a two-part lab about Climate (Citizens) assemblies on 18 and 20 May! With awesome guests such as the makers of the Danish climate assembly and a Swedish citizen lobby! It’s free and open to anyone, register here!
• Code for Africa 🌍 Read AfricanDRONE’s report on how hostels originally built for mine workers in South Africa have perpetuated racial inequities. Read our CEO Justin Arenstein and Investigations Manager at ANCIR Allan Cheboi’s insights on how disinfo undermines public trust and democracy across Africa. Read our report on how Africa ranks on 2021’s Press Freedom Index. 🏆 WanaData fellow Tobore Ovuorie won DW’s 2021 Freedom of Speech Award. ‘Sucked Dry’ has won a second award for an investigation on land grabs in the Nile River Basin, a project our Data Academy worked on along with InfoNile and the Pulitzer Centre.
• Code for America 🇺🇸 is holding our annual Code for America summit this week. Our Brigade Network has launched an ambitious ReVisioning Project to redefine the primary purpose and value of our Network. Together with the team at Open Source Politics and Digidem Labs, we’ve created an online, participatory process for ReVisioning by piloting an instance of Decidim.
• Code for Australia 🇦🇺 We’ve been super busy wrapping up a few Fellowships — one with Sydney’s largest Council where we built a dashboard application for staff members and increased capability throughout the organisation — check out the demo here. We’re also working with the New South Wales Government on a Rules as Code project wherein we’re turning policy intro code — find out more here. Our volunteer program Civic Makers are finishing off the design phase of their climate change project — fill in their survey here. Finally, we’re working on some brand new programs which we can’t wait to share with you all soon!
• Code for Canada 🇨🇦 The C4C team is thrilled to introduce our new Executive Director: Dorothy Eng! Dorothy (or Dot as we call her) has been with Code for Canada since the beginning, serving first as a Board member and then our Director of Partnerships. She’s a committed civic technologist and is also one of the co-founders of Civic Tech Toronto. You can get to know Dorothy more, and learn about her vision for Code for Canada on our blog.
• Code for Germany 🇩🇪 As spring finally comes around in Germany, we highlight a project that chloro-fills 🌱us with joy: The local volunteer group in Leipzig developed the app “Giess den Kiez” (‘Water your hood’) for their city. With Giess den Kiez, locals can adopt a tree in their neighbourhood and keep a watering journal! 💦 🌳This project was realized in cooperation between the local Code for Leipzig volunteers, CityLAB Berlin and others. It’s a great example of how knowledge transfer and collaboration can work smoothly between cities, when the workload is distributed evenly, and volunteers are supported by government-(funded) structures.
• Code for Japan 🇯🇵 is excited to announce the launch of Civic Tech Accelerator Programs and the Second Civic Tech Challenge Cup U-22! These programs aim to provide technical, financial, and professional support to emerging civic tech services dedicated to solving social equity issues in Japan. We also welcomed new full-time members on the team as we are expanding our other projects, such as the development of City OS for smart cities across the country.
• Code for Pakistan 🇵🇰 We published our latest Annual Report 2020 on our website.
• Codeando México 🇲🇽 co-hosted DataConMX 2021 this week, with conversations about national open data policy, the evolution of open data in México, open data success stories, and more!
• mySociety 🇬🇧 We have our next TICteC show and tell on May 25th 2021! Please do come along: Empowering communities using geospatial technology Tickets, Tue 25 May 2021 at 15:00
• Open Data Kosovo 🇽🇰 As part of the Global Data Barometer, we’ve successfully finished the recruitment process for researchers from Kosovo and Albania. In the following months the report will be conducted and shared with everyone. Stay tuned!
• OpenUp 🇿🇦 has been working on two projects in partnership with Local Municipalities in the Western Cape province with the aim to enhance and digitise public participation, the Citizen Engagement App and Public Participation Guide. These tools promote two-way communication, establish digital pathways for participation, and are designed to support citizens by informing, empowering, and activating them throughout the entire process.

💻 Job Opportunities

This is where we share current job opportunities we’ve found within the network.

• Code for Africa All Openings
• Code for America All Openings
• mySociety All Openings

🎉 Events

This is where we share upcoming events within the civic tech realm.

• [May 12–13] Code for America Summit
• [May 18 & 20] Civic Tech Lab: Can citizen assemblies help us tackle climate change?
• [May 25] Empowering communities using geospatial technology
• [June 7–11] RightsCon
• [September 27–30] Code for All Summit (More details coming soon!)

📚 Reading Room

Here’s a list of some of our latest and most-read articles.

• Project Lockdown — Unlocking our Rights
• Drip by Drip: Creating a Water Commons
• 5 tips to make your conference proposal shine
• A beginner’s guide to civic tech
• Black Lives Matter — Statement from Code for All
• Civic Tech Takes on a Pandemic

🐰 That’s all folks!

To get in touch with Code for All, hit reply to this email or find us on Slack (@sofia, @lorin).

Also, if you know anyone else who might want to subscribe to our community newsletter, they can sign up to receive updates here.

Until next time — keep up the good work!

Team Code for All

(Sofía, Nonso & Lorin)

Code for All Newsletter — May 2021 was originally published in Code for All on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Project Lockdown —Unlocking our Rights

An open source civic tech initiative that originated organically because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Abstract

This article is a short introduction and story about Project Lockdown.

Some of the successes of the initiative were possible thanks to the National Democratic Institute (NDI) as part of the Code for All Exchange Program, to whom we are all grateful.

Note: Through this account I have deliberately avoided naming certain people essentially because I haven’t had the opportunity to ask for their permission. Should I get it at any point I’ll be more than happy to update the text. They do deserve their recognition by all means.

How Project Lockdown came to be

When you think about an endeavor that has engulfed your life (and that of many others) for over a year, it’s nice to imagine that there’s a ravishing origin story behind it. Most of the time this is driven by a desire to romanticize reality, but often the origin story is simple: Project Lockdown started as a random conversation between myself and members of Code for All.

At the break of the COVID-19 pandemic, we found ourselves surrounded by an overwhelming series of data on reported cases and deaths. No doubt those were troubled times that challenged everyone’s perception of “our normal” or how I prefer to call it “our automated habits”.

In my daily life, I manage an organization called The IO Foundation (TIOF), advocating for Data-Centric Digital Rights. Attempting change is never short of a challenge; managing a young NGO doubles down on those difficulties. In early 2020, we went from having a well laid out plan (which included participating in international events), to being unsure of just about everything.

While attempting to figure out how to adapt our plans, the most valuable piece of information to me was not the reported cases per se, rather the policies taken as a result. In short, we were witnessing the world clamping down one lockdown at a time and we couldn’t really tell for how long. To my dismay, there wasn’t a clear map that would indicate which territories underwent restrictions and, most importantly, for how long. Because what “today” looked like was certainly less relevant to understanding how “tomorrow” was going to look.

Bothered by this, I thought about doing something about it. My first thought was the same that stopped me from starting The IO Foundation 15 years earlier: “Someone more prepared, with better resources and better connections will take care of this.” So I went around and threw the idea to some people who had made the news about putting together websites on reported cases. No one replied.

Then I thought: it shouldn’t be too difficult to build a map. I went to Code for All’s Slack workspace and asked a simple question:

I really had no idea what I was getting myself into.

First Baby Steps - Alpha Times

The initial implementation targeted a very simple goal: map lockdowns.

That was it, nothing else. We wanted to provide accurate information backed by official pronouncements, and we wanted to provide a view over the future. The idea was to display the past, present and future status of lockdowns, without playing crystal ball games with predictive algorithms: if no new policies are implemented, this is what the world will look like in months to come.

Development caught up fast. Members from Code for Netherlands joined and we started scouting for extra help on volunteer platforms. Everyone was excited about giving a hand — people suddenly had lots of free time and a drive to do something about the pandemic.

Soon enough though, we realized that searching, browsing and encoding the data out of official pronouncements only for the lockdown status was not ideal. It became apparent that we were leaving behind a significant amount of relevant data points that provided for a better picture of what was going on.

The problem was… how could we decide upon the data points to follow? What would our criteria be? Could we come up with something that would be relevant and useful?

It didn’t take much to find an answer. As many of us suspected (and observed as policies were enacted), the situation was a paradise for self-serving politicians. More and more policies were issued that would restrict citizens’ freedoms and Rights if left unchecked. We then decided that we would determine our data points based on their impact on Human or Digital Rights.

We had then found our formula:

- Core data points based on their impact on Rights, so that citizens could grasp the implications on their lives.

- Data extracted exclusively from official pronouncements, so it would have legal merit.

Note: We also decided to not use the term “countries” and instead adopt the more neutral term “territories” to remain as non-political as possible. What matters to us is that people on a certain piece of land live under the policies of a specific governing body, regardless of whether some governments recognize them or not.

That First Award

In the first weeks of the pandemic, COVID-19 hackathons were the hot stuff, for better or for worse. A bit out of nowhere, our team found itself involved in the EU vs VIRUS hackathon organized by the European Commission. We took it as an internal exercise and as a good catalyst to push for the platform to keep growing. We entered the competition with an Alpha version and exited with our Beta.

All major objectives were achieved and we made it into the winners list. Personally, what I enjoyed the most was working alongside my teammates and developing internal structures that would help the project solidify and move forward. Those steps proved to be critical and the basis for what is Project Lockdown nowadays.

Few weeks of hard work later, we launched our v1.0 (in other words, the first version of our project).

It was no small feat. We managed to, out of nowhere, bring together 90 strangers distributed across 15 times zones, organize teams, find the data we needed, train people on how to extract the data points, create internal SOPs, write extensive documentation, explore what alternatives were out there and how we compared to them, build alliances with partners, create a project identity…

We were hungry. We wanted more and we quickly understood that the concept had a lot of potential and that we wanted to go beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

Plans were made to build a platform that could render different thematic policies and create a Global Rights Index with all that information. We wanted to make it easier for people to understand the complex business of Rights in an easy and intuitive manner while providing data and tools for journalists and Rights defenders to do their job.

Growing Pains

I have a decent amount of volunteer experience in a good number of different advocacies, and I understand the emotional cycles we all go through. We have some free time, we get excited at the possibility of helping out — but soon enough, time runs out and motivation jumps through the window.

From my time volunteering as an STI screener, I kept a quote from the training package that says “Commitment is doing what you said you would, long after the mood you said it in has left.” That page has been on my fridge door for over 5 years and I read it daily. This is something I keep in mind when on a team, whether it’s composed of friends, colleagues or volunteers.

(The other always valuable reminder is our dear friend Pareto).

As we headed towards developing v2.0, the world started opening up at different speeds. People got busy again with their lives with an inescapable desire to embrace back some normalcy and to interact face to face with others. Time became again a scarce commodity in the volunteer scene and Project Lockdown was not going to be an exception. Development came to a halt and we began bleeding members, so to speak.

It was however gratifying to observe that certain core members, who had been in the project since its very early inception, remained in the project and kept pushing for new goals to be achieved. We had (and have) many features we wanted to implement, and an undeterred belief in what the initiative represents has made it possible to overcome those obstacles.

As part of the new game plan, we decided that one positive strategy would be to participate in events so as to give the project more exposure as well as attract new talent and, perhaps, additional support.

Since then we managed to run sessions at the Bread&Net 2020 as well as g0v Summit. MozFest 2021 didn’t pan out yet we will have a Tech Demo session on the upcoming RightsCon 2021 and we are preparing submissions for the Paris Peace Forum 2021 and the Internet Governance Forum 2021 (plus a few more in the oven).

The difficulties experienced didn’t curtail our plans — we remain determined to turn Project Lockdown into a Global Rights Observatory and we see the utility of developing a Global Rights Index that would provide a temperature check for the health of Rights, both by territory and worldwide. We truly feel there’s a need for this.

Forging New Strategies

Disclaimer: If you are not a technical person you may find this section challenging. I encourage you to nevertheless take up the gauntlet and brave through it. You will close this tab knowing you learned a thing or two.

It turned out that one of the main challenges to achieve our goals was not the technical development of the platform. The dataset in the room was scaling our ability to obtain and curate all the data that would be necessary to keep our initial COVID-19 NPIs (Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions — fancy name for policies) dataset layer and all the new ones we were preparing. This took us into a process of redefining our data funnels and we came up with a few options that would help in that endeavor. We would crowdsource the data entry (somehow Wikipedia style, with some necessary differences), explore training an ML algorithm to ingest official sources and, more excitingly, provide a direct feed capability for public authorities to load their policies directly to the platform; after all, there are reasonable incentives for those who have pledged (or are mandated) for transparency in their administrations.

Another big leap forward for the project was to move our operations to Github. At its very early stages we opted for Trello and then battled for months to make it a viable project management solution for us. It didn’t quite pan out (no offense intended, dear Atlassian). We then had a rather rad idea of massively using Github as not only the repository for the codebase but for just about all tasks related to the project. We then embarked into a very revealing adventure of organizing all components and documentation into one single source of truth articulated through a comprehensive use of labels. The repository now contains all that you need to know about the project in one single place (from pending tasks to code, documentation, media kit or policies). While the concept is still a work in progress, it is now possible to crowdsource all kinds of non-technical tasks in areas such as accounting, HR, or helping connect us with partners we wish to reach out to (for those curious, check the Need labels).

We wanted more — and so we went for more.

The IO Foundation is a rather new player in the civic tech & civil society hoods. Our advocacy is Data-Centric Digital Rights and one of its axioms is that programmers are the next generation of Rights defenders; both Human and Digital. On a monthly basis, we run TechUp, our engagement program where we attempt to provide them with the necessary tools to develop the skills and sense of responsibility required to gap the separation between what they implement and the impact it creates for citizens. Since one of the activities is pairing open source projects with volunteers, guess which project we brought in?

Bingo.

So what’s next?

For months now, we have been dedicated to building our version 2.0. Despite all the difficulties to engage volunteers, we were determined to not drop the original volunteer-lead spirit of the project while needing to address how to reach a more consistent level of development. We have now experimented in a hybrid strategy of hiring programmers for the development of core features and providing our volunteers with tasks that are more adequate to the time they can dedicate to code.

We are also currently developing the Direct Feed data funnel. Do you know any public authorities that would be interested in exploring this? Reach out to us!

(Taiwan, I am looking — intensely — at you)

On the partners side, we are exploring options with the CoronaNet project and other policy trackers which would increase our COVID-19 DSL database while providing them with a mapping platform. Other DSLs are also in the making.

The Global Rights Index is also under development. Are you interested in this type of research? You know what to do!

Increase adoption, connect citizens with organizations, increase presence in events and run Sprints on TechUp are, you guessed it, totally in our agenda.

Fun times.

Lessons Learned

So… after all is said and done, did we learn anything? You bet we did; I sure did.

1. For real, if you have an idea, just go for it.

I am not being corny: just bloody go for it.

You are not supposed to be the most knowledgeable person in the room, you don’t require having extensive resources, you don’t need to have prior experience.

Yes, all of the above will certainly help and will alleviate some of the friction.

No, none of those can compare to your degree of determination.

Few thoughts that may help:

• No one is born knowing
• The only dumb question is the one not asked
• Function as if money matters and operate as if it doesn’t
• Pareto is your forever frenemy

The reason why I am sharing this is quite straightforward: I question myself pretty much on a daily basis and while that is not a bad thing in itself, it must never become an insurmountable friction. I learned that lesson way before Project Lockdown and am painfully reminded of it on a daily basis.

#DoNotGiveUp

2. The world is a mess

We send cars to Mars while we can’t agree on how to map and name places in a standard, universal way. No joke.

We’ve been lucky to have the support of Mapbox along the way through their Community Manager (props to you, Marena Brinkhurst), and their developers.

3. Stick to technologies that maximize your volunteer base.

We initially took a mixture of good decisions and not-so-good ones. For instance, instead of React we started with PReact and somehow a PWA service worker made its way into the code. Bad move. Took us many months to get rid of those and v2.0 has being recoded from scratch with React. Also, for the long run, Typescript is your friend.

4. Document Document Document

Never ever, under no circumstance, underestimate the value of documentation. Dozens of volunteers will come and go, and enabling their quick understanding of the code is paramount for them to get involved. Make it as easy for them as you can and ask them to pay it forward with just as much documentation in the code they contribute.

Advice: Create a guideline about that so that everyone is on the same page.

5. Get things started even if not totally planned

Though it’s definitely better to have a fully-fledged action plan, this is not always possible — even more so in spontaneous projects like this, where developments happen overnight. Don’t be afraid to make decisions and don’t fall into paralysis by analysis. It’s better to get something done and correct it than to not do anything.

#GetS**tDone

6. Working with volunteers is, you’ve guessed it, challenging.

In fact, it’s the most difficult part of any project, yet without teammates you can’t move forward (the alternative is painfully slow).

Best you can do is accept the highs and lows. You’ll have periods with a high influx of volunteers and times where you’ll be functioning with a skeleton team. This is a constant in any volunteer-driven project and the best you can do is keep your infrastructure ready on standby for whenever a new influx may materialize.

Advice: Make peace with the Pareto Principle and try to inspire your volunteers as much as you can.

7. Beware of too many tools: Consolidate

When you run a project without resources, you’ll end up using a myriad of online tools in their free-tier modality. Being a registered NGO, we have the advantage of qualifying for a good number of free licenses (which nevertheless are time-consuming to identify and sometimes negotiate). This inevitably ends up being a mess and becomes an extra friction when onboarding new project members (informing, training, assisting…). Try to consolidate platforms as much as you can. Project Lockdown is lucky to have the support of organizations such as Basaas and ZenHub that have allowed us to make sense of all the (over a dozen) online platforms we use.

Pro Tip #1: Come over to our TechUp monthly event to discover organizations providing free support to open source projects and civil society. We grow the list every month (don’t be a stranger, it’s free).

Pro Tip #2: If you are one such organization, reach out to us. We want to connect as many of you with the projects that need you (Contact@TheIOFoundation.org or find us on the #the-io-foundation channel on the Code for All Slack workspace).

8. Persist, persist, persist

There is no magic formula to get things done: the universe does not cooperate. Find new communities to reach out to, talk about your project with the people you know, never give up on the thought of succeeding in your vision.

Finding the right people to materialize that vision alongside you is only a matter of a relentless, merciless search. Sooner or later you find those who fit perfectly in your project and they will feel at home. Cherish them: those are awesome people.

Are you interested in joining Project Lockdown?

• Reach out to us via email Contact@TheIOFoundation.org or find us on the #the-io-foundation channel on the Code for All Slack workspace.
• Participate in our TechUp events or find us in other similar initiatives, such as DemocracyLab.

Acknowledgements

I’d like to take the chance to thank Code for NL for bootstrapping the project, Rashika Senapathy (Team HR), Petra Jääskeläinen (ex Team UXUI), Nadja Petrovic and Marta Mangiarulo (Team Comms), Ruha Ratnam (Team Management), Mark Datysgeld (Team Devs) and Julie Green (Team Research) for the relentless encouragement and for actively participating in proposing solutions to move forward. Props to Jeff Knurek (Team Devs) who joined recently to keep the development on the codebase going. It is fair to mention that many more people helped just as much and it would be impossible to cite all of them lest I’d intend to turn this post into the white pages. Suffice to say that I have a debt of gratitude towards every single person that has supported Project Lockdown.

About the Author

For a long while, Jean F. Queralt had been disturbed by the level of intrusion information and communication technologies have in the personal lives of people and societies at large. With a full career in IT, first as a programmer and later as a sysadmin, he took the leap in 2018 of founding The IO Foundation to establish a more solid and targeted direction to address Digital Rights from a technical standards perspective.

He can be reached at: Email — LinkedIn

About The IO Foundation

The IO Foundation (TIOF) is a global nonprofit advocating for Data-Centric Digital Rights, born out of a fundamental concern on the future of digital communities, both in their governance and implementation.

TIOF aims to provide platforms to raise awareness on Digital Rights as well as effective solutions to ensure that they are adequately observed.

Reach out to TIOF: Website — Email — LinkedIn

Project Lockdown — Unlocking our Rights was originally published in Code for All on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Code for All Newsletter — March 2021

Our bi-monthly newsletter is one of the ways we share updates, resources, and opportunities from within the global civic tech community.

👋 Hello civic tech friends

Welcome to your March update from Code for All. It’s been a sad, yet exciting month for us as we’re getting ready to farewell the incredible Kelly Halseth from the Code for All team. Kelly will be taking the opportunity to join a Working Artist Program at a pottery studio in Berlin, and will be building her own pottery business! We’ll miss Kelly’s thoughtful leadership, big-picture thinking, and her knack for inspiring our team to always bring our full selves to work. If you want to check out her pottery, you can find her on Instagram at @rebelheartceramics.

And now for your global civic tech updates!

⏰ Sixty Minute Sprint

Where you’ll find the stuff that’s most pressing for the network, which won’t ever be more than an hour of your time, total.

• Code for All is hiring! We’re seeking a part-time Communications Assistant to join our team starting in June! If you or someone you know would be perfect for this role, please check out and share our job call. Applications are open until March 31st.
• We’ve started making moves to organize the Code for All 2021 Summit! The exact date hasn’t been set but it will likely take place during the last week of September. Let us know which themes/topics you’d like to see at Summit by answering this one-question survey 🙌
• If you know of any great video producers who have experience in both animation and interview-style videos, please let us know! We may be hiring someone soon to help us create a short promotional video.

✨ Code for All Updates

• We’ve launched an Open Call for our latest Exchange! This funding opportunity, which is open to Network Members, is focused on Disinformation and Fact-checking projects. Find details here, and apply by March 28th.
• We’re currently designing our first Communities of Practice (CoPs) meetings for 2021. The themes are: Digital Citizen Engagement, Good Governance and Disinformation. We’ll be sharing details on the dates and times with you soon! Reach out to @sofia on Slack if you want to learn more about the CoPs.
• Sofía Corona, our Communities of Practice Manager, recently spoke with Devex as part of the NDI #ChangingTheFaceOfPolitics media partnership, about how civic tech can advance gender equality. Read the Q&A here.
• Our first cohort of the Effective Online Engagement Workshop with Lina Patel 🇦🇺 wrapped up and the second cohort began last week! We’re super happy with how the first round went and can’t wait to see how the second one goes.
• We’re currently working with the amazing Lissett García Albornoz 🇨🇱 to redesign our branding and website! Reply to this email to let us know if you’d like to be included in the user research phase of the redesign (this is where we’ll ask for your opinion on logo and website design options).

📰 Member Updates

Here find updates from a handful of our 31 member organizations.

• Code for Africa 🌍 + Code for Germany 🇩🇪 + OpenUp 🇿🇦 have wrapped up their recent Water Wazi Exchange — they’ve been working together to create a repository for global water data to support those who lack access to clean water. Read all about it here.
• Ciudadanía Inteligente 🌎 In a few weeks one of the most important elections in the history of Chile will be held. That’s why at Ciudadania Inteligente, we’re working on our project Chile marks preference, so that all citizens can review and compare the position of the main political actors on more than 20 key issues and in this way encourage a conscious vote. In addition, we already have 100 people registered for our School of Digital Activism where we will deliver completely free tools to activists in Latin America to support collective action in times of COVID.
• Civic Tech Sweden 🇸🇪We had a very popular lab on Community Tools in February that you can read about on our blog and in our forum. What more labs should we do this year? We would love to hear your thoughts in our poll!
• Code for Africa 🌍WanaData, CfA’s pan-African network of women data scientists, journalists and technologists, hosted a three-day event for International Women’s Day where speakers shared how they choose to challenge gender discrimination. We have also joined the Partnership on AI global community to address the threats to public discourse that AI brings. Plus our Data Academy bagged another win for a project we partnered on with the Pulitzer Centre, Sucked Dry — an investigation on land grabs in the Nile River Basin.
• Code for Australia 🇦🇺It’s been a busy summer for us, with three Fellowship teams at different stages of delivery, including the new NSW DPIE Fellowship — who are working in the exciting “Rules as Code” space. We also launched a Community of Practice platform and shared our plans for the launch of two new services this year.
• Code for Canada 🇨🇦is celebrating the launch of MOVE, a two-year collaboration with the City of Toronto that has modernized how Canada’s largest city collects and uses traffic data. In addition to replacing legacy data systems that were built in the 1990s, the project led to significant digital capacity building and transformation inside of Toronto’s Transportation Services Department. Learn more about MOVE on our blog, or stay tuned to our YouTube channel for a video recap of our Open House with the MOVE team.
• Code for Japan 🇯🇵We are promoting the provision of online communication, including decidim, as a means for local governments to communicate with citizens.
• Code for Pakistan 🇵🇰 We’re currently working with the provincial Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) government to conceptualise, design and develop a “Super App” to serve as a single source of public services in KP.
• mySociety 🇬🇧Looking forward to starting work on new AlaveteliPro upgrades and installs in Hungary, Greece, Ukraine and Croatia in April! Also, don’t forget: TICTeC Show and Tells start soon! First one is on 23rd March 2021.
• Open Data Kosovo 🇽🇰was chosen as a regional hub to monitor the research on Kosovo and Albania as part of the Global Data Barometer. The GDB is a critical new benchmark on country-level data governance, data capability, data availability, and data use for the public good. By this year, we will share the research/deliverable with our audience.

💻 Job Opportunities

This is where we share current job opportunities we’ve found within the network.

• Code for All Communications Assistant
• Code for Pakistan Country Director
• Code for Africa All Openings
• Code for America All Openings

🎉 Events

This is where we share upcoming events within the civic tech realm.

• [March — May] TICTeC Show & Tells
• [May 12–13] Code for America Summit
• [June 7–11] RightsCon
• [September] Code for All Summit (More details coming soon!)
• Civic Tech Field Guide Event Calendar

📚 Reading Room

Here’s a list of some of our latest and most-read articles.

• Drip by Drip: Creating a Water Commons
• Stories of Collaboration: 2020 Tech for Non Tech Exchange
• Introducing our Meeting Magician: Lina Patel
• Introducing our Equity & Inclusion Consultant: Nonso Jideofor
• 5 tips to make your conference proposal shine
• A beginner’s guide to civic tech
• Black Lives Matter — Statement from Code for All
• Civic Tech Takes on a Pandemic

🐰 That’s all folks!

To get in touch with Code for All, hit reply to this email or find us on Slack (@sofia, @lorin).

Also, if you know anyone else who might want to subscribe to our community newsletter, they can sign up to receive updates here.

Until next time — keep up the good work!

Team Code for All

(Kelly, Sofía, Nonso & Lorin)

Code for All Newsletter — March 2021 was originally published in Code for All on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Background

Code for All, led by ePaństwo Foundation, is an international network of civic tech organizations that drive change through digital technology, citizen participation, collaborative decision-making and good governance to deliver solutions for social challenges while improving the relationship between governments and citizens.

We’re a small, fully remote team currently spread across four countries (Australia, Germany, México & Nigeria), and we’re seeking a new, part-time Communications Assistant.

Description

The role will mostly be centered around storytelling, marketing & community organizing, but we’re looking for someone who is keen to take up an adaptable position where they will likely wear many hats.

The Communications Assistant will work closely with the Code for All Directors to help spread the word about a variety of programs & projects, and will also assist in organizing our annual Summit.

This role is 100% remote, and you can be located anywhere in the world.

We’re looking for someone who is a native or fluent English speaker, since most of the work will be conducted in English.

Responsibilities

• Help tell the story of the work and impact of Code for All and our 31 Member organizations across our social media channels, website, newsletter, email campaigns and blog
• Share the latest news in civic tech and digital government with our audiences
• Create promotional campaigns, help measure their efficacy, and experiment with different ways to engage and grow our audience
• Help manage inbound messages to Code for All and connect people to the right places and people
• Support the Code for All team in creating beautiful artefacts, documents and promotional material to help support their work
• Help to coordinate communication between Network members to support various projects and programs (including support for our Communities of Practice, Support Squads and Exchange programs)
• Experiment with ways to keep members engaged within the network, via whatever channels you’d like to use
• Assist in organizing and promoting the annual Code for All virtual Summit (using platforms such as Eventbrite, Zoom, Slack, G-Suite)

Who we’re looking for

We’re looking for someone who is adaptable, organized, comfortable working in the open and a natural problem-solver — someone who is happy to roll up their sleeves and use whatever tools required to get the job done.

We would love to find someone who’s passionate about social media marketing, community organizing, and creative communication.

‘Must-have’ skills:

• A strong writer and communicator who can work fast to meet deadlines
• The ability to translate the jargon of tech, civic innovation and government into language and narratives that resonate with people
• A strong understanding of social media platforms and promotion on those platforms
• Basic graphic design (e.g. developing images for social media and to promote programs, etc.)

‘Nice-to-have’ skills:

• A demonstrated interest in technology, government, public policy and/or civic tech
• Experience running and measuring marketing campaigns and paid social media campaigns
• Experience organizing events: writing invitation copy, managing RSVPs and liaising with speakers
• Experience maintaining websites and social media channels, and monitoring and analyzing related metrics
• Additional technical skills like website development, video editing, advanced graphic design or podcast production
• Familiarity with collaboration tools like Slack
• Excellent cat-herding abilities 🐈

Commitment

• 12-month contract, starting June 2021
• Part-time position with the possibility of becoming full time
• To finish the deliverables outlined in the contract

What we offer

Remuneration

In full transparency, this is a difficult question for us to answer as we hire people from all over the world. As such, we need to remain flexible and consider the currency, cost of living and appropriate salaries for those areas.

Based on the current grant that is funding this position we have a set amount of USD $14,000 for the 12 month position. We will discuss how many hours would be appropriate based on location.

• An amazing adventure!
• The opportunity to play a crucial part in the largest civic tech community, with connections all over the world
• Training and support in areas that you want to grow in
• Autonomy to experiment with new ideas and grow your skill set
• Flexible hours with a fully remote team

How to apply

If you think you’d be a great fit for this role, we’d love to hear from you! You can submit your application to hiring@codeforall.org.

Please include in your application:

• Your CV, noting relevant work experience
• Links to two writing samples and any relevant social media accounts
• A note about where you found this job posting

Please do not attach a cover letter, instead, please include a few lines about why you’re interested in Code for All’s work in the body of your email.

Applications are open until 31 March, 2021.

We’re hiring a Communications Assistant! was originally published in Code for All on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Despite its overwhelming importance, hard data on water access and quality is hard to come by. A small band of journalists and civic tech groups are pooling resources to fix the problem.

Written by John Myers & Claudia Jach

In August 2020, Code for Africa, OpenUp, Code for Germany and the Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism teamed up to collaboratively build a repository for global water data. All five of our groups had been working on water-related projects and were encountering similar problems locating data and putting it to work. What a shock, since water is vital to everything we do as human beings. The United Nations has even declared access to clean water a universal human right, and its Sustainable Development Goals rightfully take note of the critical role data plays in securing those rights.

Yet, here we were, facing a kind of information drought.

Enter the Code for All Exchange Program, funded by the National Democratic Institute and the National Endowment for Democracy. The program gave us a chance to pool our technical and investigative resources for a much larger aim: to support those who lack access to clean water. In particular, we wanted to build something that would empower journalists and civil society actors to press forward in this quest; as their storytelling and research into local water grievances can help activate communities for change. It was also important for us to test and leverage the expertise of the Code for All Network to overcome the data and resource barriers we were facing in our separate projects.

Building on previous projects

Though we never established clear cut roles, our organic collaborative style seems to be working thanks to the skill and commitment everyone brings to the table. There is OpenUp that developed Wazimap, a spatial open data portal to make geographically-linked information more readily available to non-technical audiences. A lot of rich demographic data and even some water-related information had already been collected into the platform’s central database, making it a snap for our tech team to fire up a new “instance” focused primarily on the new data we’ve been collecting for the Water Commons itself.

We greatly profited from the insights into journalistic needs and approaches provided by the Centre for Collaborative Investigative Journalism (CCIJ), a non-profit that was already producing several data-driven and visually rich investigations into water rights.

Code for Africa, an impact accelerator that supports a range of water focused data citizen science initiatives, has been working on water quality testing kits for water-borne diseases. Additionally, CfAfrica’s forensic data science team, the iLAB, helps transform this data into actionable insights for a network of watchdog CSO and media partners, performing the interface between both worlds.

And Code for Germany has dealt with water data on a more administrative level, trying to convince decision makers to open water data to the public. To demonstrate how this data can benefit the population overall, CfG developed a drinking water app that visualizes the quality of drinking water in municipalities throughout Germany.

First steps and problems encountered

We set up a weekly Jour Fixe (regular group meeting), which helped us gel as a team and feel comfortable discussing project issues as a collective. These standing meetings also helped us avoid most of the scheduling headaches that might otherwise plague a team of Africans, Europeans and Americans; though, as a kind of professional exchange bonus, we did learn about one another’s holidays, pets, snowstorms and even some construction work that occasionally made virtual attendance complicated. More beneficial, our weekly meetings have helped us minimize the duplication of efforts.

This was also part of our motivation when we asked Code for All members and others in our broader community to share any water-related projects they might have underway. Several colleagues pointed us to water data in their home countries and regions, and their responses in general underscored the importance of water to the civic tech community. However, existing project commitments and COVID-19 seemed to conspire against us as we tried to rope in more collaborators, especially when our work was just getting started and our ideas yet to take concrete form.

During these early days, we put a lot of effort into researching water data and hunting down any existing tools. No need to reinvent the wheel. But it became clear that we were in fact building something useful, especially if we could combine data from many countries and subnational levels in one place.

Lessons learned

At this point it’s quite clear that there really isn’t enough water data available and that, yes, it is hard to find! Although international actors like WHO and UNICEF provide important global baseline information, subnational data is particularly scarce and rarely standardized. And water testing is still mostly a governmental domain, leaving few alternatives.

Simply put, gathering water quality data is an elaborate and expensive process. Because of the corrosive effects of water, you can’t leave toolkits submerged and unsupervised for long periods of time. Depending on the type of water body, samples have to be taken at different depths and locations and sample-takers have to be trained with the equipment.

With this problem in mind, we spent a significant amount of time searching for more basic assessments of water quality: photos for visible attributes, characterization of smell or even the presence of animals and microbes. We stumbled across the miniSASS project early on as a promising lead, which simply asks citizen scientists to collect samples of macro-invertebrates in any body of water to get a general measure of water quality. This low-tech, inexpensive approach piqued our imaginations, and when we suggested a potential partnership, the miniSASS developers showed mutual interest.

But even if we could measure water quality cheaply and uniformly, we uncovered other vexing problems. One of the biggest challenges facing journalists is simply a lack of localized data with the specificity they require. Water data is often presented at the aggregate level nationally, making it difficult to pinpoint problems within specific communities. And when we asked journalists in our network to describe the data they were after, they identified a dizzyingly diverse collection of needs: borehole locations in Nairobi; dam efficiency and water-level indicators; water pipe replacement and maintenance schedules; the cost, efficacy and byproducts of specific water treatment chemicals; and much more.

In Lagos, Nigeria, CfAfrica has been hard at work in the Makoko community tackling this information shortfall head on. The team trained groups of volunteers to take samples in local water sources and worked with local researchers to produce detailed lab results; all of which we are loading into our Water Commons database. The effort has given our team a good sense for how expensive and labor intensive water testing can be, but we’ve also seen an exciting level of engagement at the community level.

Meanwhile, CCIJ put out a call to its network of journalists asking them to uncover interesting datasets and pitch powerful accompanying stories. This approach ultimately forced us to think very broadly about what might constitute Water Commons data. Among the projects CCIJ decided to support: A photographic examination and data visualization of the environmental causes of land subsidence (literally sinking land) and its impact on one family in Gouda, Netherlands. In another story, CCIJ teamed up with a group of journalists in South Africa that has been scraping data from municipal websites in a bid to better understand the plight of the country’s overwhelmed wastewater infrastructure.

Working directly with journalists has generated a number of weighty questions. Do we include huge datasets, such as the satellite imagery being used to tell the land subsidence story in Gouda? What about other climate change data or information on health care institutions and labs? Would journalists want to measure a community’s access to drinking water by measuring, say, average distance to taps?

Journalists have also told us they want support gathering, cleaning, analyzing and visualizing data. How can we configure the Water Commons to meet those needs? We are now mulling over the need for complimentary online courseware that can offer assistance, along with the many visualization tools we hope to bake into the data repository itself.

What’s next?

Currently, we are in the midst of a massive effort to clean several of the datasets we’ve uncovered during our research and to upload them into a working prototype using the Wazi platform. Datasets must be transformed into collections of specific indicators that are tied to a geographic area; topics, country names and data formats are also appended. In this way, we are distinguishing between global data (more than three countries) and national data (fewer than three countries). Due to our broadened search, we have been able to cover a wide range of water rights’ indicators, from water quality measures, dam levels, water infrastructure assessments and more. But, as one might expect, we are locating data in a plethora of formats, from CSVs and APIs to PDFs and simple web interfaces that require scraping; and the data preparation work has proven to be quite time consuming.

Not only do we need to complete more of this work to make our prototype usable, but the team will need a good plan for how to incorporate more data down the line. And we need to tackle “front-end design” challenges going forward, including a better way to categorize and organize the data for Water Commons users.

And we know there are other interesting ideas we’ll need to discuss; for example, we’re considering the value of creating and adding a virtual Rolodex, if you will, to the Water Commons to help journalists find credible sources and local water activists. Or, if we partner with the miniSASS creators, will we need to modify our work to better target groups like youth in general or Fridays for Future activists. In short, we’ll need to adapt the Water Commons to potentially meet the needs of a very broad audience.

While our Water Commons beta instance is already online, it’ll be clear to visitors that it’s truly a work in progress. With many of the challenges unresolved, ideally, we want to start another round of tests and collaboration with journalists, now with a more substantial tool already at place. As with most projects like this, more funding is needed. But if we get it right, we can build a tool — collaboratively and drip by drip — that helps fulfill the right to water.

Drip by Drip: Creating a Water Commons was originally published in Code for All on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Code for All Newsletter — January 2021

Our bi-monthly newsletter is one of the ways we share updates, resources, and opportunities from within the global civic tech community.

👋 Welcome

After taking some time off at the end of 2020, we’ve started the new year feeling fresh and ready for just about anything. We’ve welcomed in a new team member, making us a small team that’s now spread over 4 continents (Africa, Australia, Europe & North America), and we’ve also been doing a lot of in depth work lately to make our organization more equitable and inclusive. We can’t wait to see where this year takes us, and after the last one, we think we can handle a lot. So here it goes!

⏰ Sixty Minute Sprint

Where you’ll find the stuff that’s most pressing for the network, which won’t ever be more than an hour of your time, total.

• We’ve created a survey that, with your input, may help us better understand what worked well at Code for All last year and what could be improved going forward. Please share your feedback with us here — we’d love to hear what you think!
• To make our 2020 Summit happen, we had incredible help from our Summit Working Group (big thanks to Code for Australia, whose entire team was in the group)! We’re already starting to organize our 2021 Summit (it will be in September!) and we’d like to start gauging interest to find out who wants to join this year’s working group. Please reply to this email or reach out to us on Slack (@lorin) if you’re interested in learning more about it.
• We’ll be revamping our website over the next few months, and will be hiring a contract UX/UI Designer / Front-end developer who is familiar with Wordpress. If you or someone you know would be perfect for this, please let us know! Reply to this email or reach out to Kelly at kelly@codeforall.org.

✨ Code for All Updates

• We’re very excited to announce that we have a new team member onboard! Nonso Jideofor has joined as our new Fundraising & Partnerships Manager. Nonso is also currently working with us as our Equity & Inclusion Consultant — we just can’t get enough of him! Please join us in giving Nonso a big warm welcome to the network.
• We’re also incredibly excited to be working with Lina Patel this year, who’s helping us improve the way we and our 31 member organizations design and deliver online meetings. Learn more about Lina and what she hopes to accomplish with us here.
• With conference season approaching in the coming months, we thought it might be useful to gather some tips and tricks for how to write better conference proposals. If you’re interested in speaking/presenting at a civic tech conference this year, check out what we’ve learned!
• After sharing COVID-19 project highlights from around the globe in April of last year, we decided to follow up with a small handful of organizations to see how their projects have sustained, what challenges they’ve faced, and what advice they would give to other civic tech organizations. Here’s what we found.

📰 Member Updates

Here find updates from a handful of our 31 member organizations.

• Code for Germany 🇩🇪 + OpenUp 🇿🇦 + Code for Africa 🌍 In the last few months, we’ve been working with the Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism to set up a Water Commons. Many of you supported us with water data and information from your regions and shared your own water-related projects. Now, we would like to share with you all what has become of this. In a short webinar we’d like to introduce the project to you, present our results and discuss our findings and future engagement. Join us here on February 4th, 3–4 PM CEST (convert to your timezone here).
• Codeando México 🇲🇽 + Code for Australia 🇦🇺 We’ve wrapped up our Tech for Non Tech exchange, which you can read about here in English, and here in Spanish!
• Civic Tech Sweden 🇸🇪 We have launched a new forum! You can also read about upcoming civic tech related events and subscribe to our calendar on our website.
• Code for Africa 🌍 After a summer break, we’ve started the new year running. Our partners, DFRlabs, uncovered suspicious accounts and pages on Twitter and Facebook attempting to manipulate public opinion before the Ugandan elections that took place on 14 January. Our fact-checking unit, PesaCheck also covered the elections, debunking misinformation that emerged both before and after the country took to the polls. Continuing their fight against fake news, PesaCheck has also launched a WhatsApp tipline, allowing citizens to report dodgy information.
• Code for Australia 🇦🇺 We’ve kicked off the year strong! We have a brand new Fellowship kicking off in early February where our Fellows will be working on a ‘Rules as Code’ project wherein they’ll be translating rules in legislation, regulation & policy into code so they can be consumed and interpreted by computers. We’re also setting up some Communities of Practice and we’d love to hear from other network members who have done so successfully. 2021 will see us dream up some new products which we’re incredibly excited about, as well as settle into some existing offerings. Finally, we’d love to hear from people in our global civic tech community in our community survey!
• Code for Canada 🇨🇦 We’ve officially kicked off the search for our next Executive Director. We’re looking for an inclusive and accomplished leader who’s passionate about civic tech and capable of building strong teams and partnerships. If that sounds like someone you know, encourage them to apply. Thanks!
• Code for Japan 🇯🇵 The winner of the Civictech challenge Cup U-22,*Civichat* participated in a session at g0v summit with a high school intern of Code for Japan. They shared about the project and introduced the demonstration experiments with local governments.
• Code for Pakistan 🇵🇰 We closed out 2020 on high note, organising our first ever online and global Civic Hackathon. We had fun exploring new tools to engage with participants and learned a lot about running a virtual event. In total, we received 700+ applications, from six countries (Pakistan, Canada, Finland, Saudi Arabia, the UK and the US), and from 90+ towns/cities within Pakistan. Out of 43 projects submitted, 12 were shortlisted and three winners were selected. During the virtual Closing Ceremony, Chief Guest Asad Umar, Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives, shared a special message for the participants as well.
• mySociety 🇬🇧 It’s been a busy start to 2021, being in the middle of a new lockdown (not what we wanted! Hope Covid will disappear this year!). We’re working on a fault reporting discovery project for NHS hospitals alongside prioritising our climate work. We’re also hiring!
• Sinar Project 🇲🇾 We shared a talk on Rapidly Building An Extensible Corruption Tool And Publishing Platform Using Open Data Standards in Plone Conference 2020 Online. Together with partners Perludem Perkumpulan untuk Pemilu dan Demokrasi and Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, we’ve started publishing open data for election monitoring in Southeast Asia at Datatalk.asia. We’ve been working with Internews Malaysia and Data-N with support from the EU to organise a second Data Journalism Workshop, which will be held in February 2021, currently open for applications until 4 Feb.

💻 Job Opportunities

This is where we share current job opportunities we’ve found within the network.

• mySociety Project Manager, SocietyWorks
• Code for Pakistan Country Director and Storytelling/Outreach Manager
• Code for Africa All Openings
• Code for America All Openings

🌍 Events around the world

This is where we share upcoming events within the civic tech realm.

• [Jan 28] Launching of Datatalk.asia: The Trends of Democracy, Open Data and Data Journalism in Southeast Asian Elections
• [Feb 04] Water Commons Webinar (tune in between 3–4pm CEST)
• [Feb 19, 20, 26, 27] Supercharge Your Reporting: Data Journalism Workshop 2.0
• [March 06] Open Data Day
• [March 08–21] Mozilla Festival
• [September] Code for All Summit (More details coming soon!)

📚 Reading Room

Here’s a list of some of our latest and most-read articles.

• Introducing our Meeting Magician: Lina Patel
• Introducing our Equity & Inclusion Consultant: Nonso Jideofor
• 5 tips to make your conference proposal shine
• A beginner’s guide to civic tech
• The Summit that wasn’t and the Summit that was
• Black Lives Matter — Statement from Code for All
• 8 Months Later — Civic Tech Takes on a Pandemic
• Civic Tech Takes on a Pandemic

🐰 That’s all folks!

To get in touch with Code for All, hit reply to this email or find us on Slack (@kelly she/her, @sofia, @lorin).

Also, if you know anyone else who might want to subscribe to our community newsletter, they can sign up to receive updates here.

Until next time — keep up the good work!

Team Code for All

(Kelly, Sofía & Lorin)

Code for All Newsletter — January 2021 was originally published in Code for All on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.