Talk:Civic technology

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Tkc21, Katlynshull, Charlesvonrosenberg5, KCGrimes, Emmmayork (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Gandrus100, Bobcatdodger25, Lindsey1024988, HunterRoe, Sidsmall22. This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jross35, Jinnayang, Cheng960816 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Jinnayang, Ishapunja, Kojinglick. This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Mnsutherland (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Kwkenney97. This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Classikhgirl (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Alyssaamoreno. This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 6 September 2018 and 11 December 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Mikekelson12345 (article contribs). This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 14 January 2020 and 28 April 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Zachpiroh23 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Botchedway.

Edits from Texas State University Fall 2015 POSI 3316 On The Way!

A group of undergraduate students from Texas State University will be publishing edits to the Civic Technology wiki page over the next few weeks.

Article Summary:

Civic technology is technology that is used for the betterment of the public. Improvement of public services is often the focus of civic technological advances. The United States will spend approximately $6.4 billion on civic technology in 2015.

Article Analysis:

This article is a Stub because it includes a very basic description of what civic technology is, and very few facts. There are vast amounts of information available on the topic and, therefore, this article needs to be added on to. The article also needs more resources for it to be considered a more reliable source. The article does present the most basic information about civic technologies, however, it is lacking many subcategories that are relevant to the topic. Most of the information currently provided should be left, as it is accurate, but it will need further support through citations. The section entitled “Size of the Civic Technology Space” is slightly out-of-date and needs to be updated to the current year. The article also offers a list of sectors within civic technology, which all need to be elaborated on extensively. Overall, the article is a fairly good outline that simply needs to be expanded upon and filled with more information and citations.KCGrimes (talk) 05:06, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Issue #1 Comprehensiveness a. Content-Had a good lead section

  Key point was good, it explained how technology is uses by government organizations for internal and external purposes.
  Yes there was sufficient information and a reasonable outline.
  Points are well supported with sufficient references.

b. Thesis and analytical focus - It was clearly focused on technology.

  Yes, scholarly support was used with the Knight Foundation reference.

c. Representativeness-Article gave a variety of perspectives and took appropriate tone. Issue #2 Sourcing Claims were supported with appropriate references and they all appeared reliable. Sources were represented accurately, and there did not seem to be any overstatements, language was precise and I saw no un-sourced statements. Issue #3 Neutrality Article is neutral and well-balanced. Issue #4 Readability Article does contain some sentence structure errors such as an incomplete sentence and some jargon. Overall it had good structure and was formatted properly. There were no illustrations, but they did not seem necessary. Feedback It was expanded with much need information and had very good examples. Was not sure what "crowd-funding" meant. Gloria AndrusGandrus100 (talk) 17:46, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Good article overall. The layout and organization of the article makes it very readable. There is also a good amount of information used, and there is also a nice variety of sources and examples used. A good focus and thesis is presented. There is a good degree of neutrality presented in the article. The article is factual, and not many opinions presented. I found a few typos and grammatical errors, but nothing egregious, or anything that really stands out. Some complex language is used, but it is supported well and is easy to understand. Also with the subject matter being Civic Technology, some complex language is to be expected. The article has a clear structure, and is well organized and formatted well. I like the wide variety of sources, also the multiple platforms of technology that are described was very interesting. The future section could be expanded on more, but overall a well done page.Bobcatdodger25 (talk) 18:27, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

1. The article was well written and used good language, however is there a way to shift the tone to reveal less judgement? For example, in writing that technology has made "leaps and bounds", the writer is revealing a notion of technology as being all-good, however a reader may not feel this way, and view this statement as one-sided. Ishapunja (talk) 07:13, 4 October 2016 (UTC) 2. Could there be greater use of citations? For example, the topic of hactivism could be further explained with examples of how this was used, such as in Mexican politics, through Twitter bots. Ishapunja (talk) 07:13, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Suggested Edits to Citations and Additions to Civic Hacking

The second citation comes from New York Times, which is not a neutral, unbiased source. It is a media publication, which usually attempts to show something in a certain light. When explaining the definition of Civic Technology, you should especially stick to unbiased sources. If the definition of Civic Technology comes from an unreliable source, and it is in the first sentence of the article, it makes readers question the legitimacy of the rest of the article. Furthermore, a possible addition to the Civic Hacking section could feature the Princeton Group and how they are able to hack United States Elections through the voting machines. Furthermore, it would be worth mentioning Russia's recent cyberattack on the DNC. The rise of civic technology has also led to the rise of civic hacking.

--Jinnayang (talk) 00:43, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Going to make these changes using 9 credible sources:

Civic hacking is a creative and often technological approach to solving civic problems. Often civic hacking involves the use of government data to make governments more accountable, but the goals of civic hacking are as diverse as those who might call themselves hackers. Civic hackers can be programmers, designers, data scientists, good communicators, civic organizers, entrepreneurs, government employees and anyone willing to get his or her hands dirty solving problems. Some civic hackers are employed by nonprofits, such as Code for America and projects such as mySociety work at the intersection of civic technology and hacktivism. Some work for innovative for-profit companies, such as the geospatial software provider Azavea in Philadelphia. Others are civic hackers only by night.

Numerous federal agencies coordinate a day dedicated to civic hacking. National Day of Civic Hacking is a nationwide day of action where developers, government employees, designers, journalists, data scientists, non-profit employees, UX designers, and residents who care about their communities come together to host civic tech events leveraging their skills to help their community. Thousands of people join to use their hacking skills for good, brought to you by Code for America, Brigades, Secondmuse, and U.S. Small Business Administration.

Code for America Code for America is a non-partisan, non-political 501(c)(3) organization founded in 2009 to address the widening gap between the public and private sectors in their effective use of technology and design. The organization believes for our government to truly serve the people in the 21st century, it must do three things: Be good at digital. Digital skills must be embedded at all levels of government, and owned by the people responsible for delivering programs and services to the public. Ensure policy and implementation work together, and are centered around the needs of the people. Linear processes, moving from policy, to implementation to stasis, must transform into iterative cycles where policy and implementation are informed by each other and are focused on people's needs. Be a platform for civic engagement and participation. Government must learn to incorporate productive contributions from the public, so that everyone can help make government work.

mySociety mySociety is an e-democracy project of the UK-based registered charity named UK Citizens Online Democracy.[2] It began as a UK-focused organisation with the aim of making online democracy tools for UK citizens.[3]

Princeton Group Hackings Princeton University Professor Andrew Appel set out to prove how easy it was to hack into a voting machine. He and a graduate student, Alex Halderman, purchased a voting machine, and Halderman picked the lock in 7 seconds. They removed the 4 ROM chips and replaced them with modified versions of their own: a version of modified firmware that could throw off the machine’s results, subtly altering the tally of votes, never to betray a hint to the voter. It took less than 7 minutes to complete the process.

Appel wrote a testimony for the Congress House Subcommittee on Information Technology hearing on “Cybersecurity: Ensuring the Integrity of the Ballot Box”, suggesting to for Congress to eliminate touchscreen voting machines after the election of 2016, and that it require all elections be subject to sensible auditing after every election to ensure that the systems are functioning properly and to prove to the American people that their votes are counted as cast.

References

Mnsutherland (talk) 15:35, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Edits by Digital Humanities class from the CRI Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity

A group of masters students from the CRI, Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity (Paris, France) will be publishing edits to the Civic Technology wiki pages during the months of November and December 2016 as part of a Digital Humanities class project. The scope of these contributions will include:

editing/adding content to the pages in English, French, and Spanish

adding pages for Civic Technology in Albanian, Chinese (Mandarin), Estonian, Hebrew, Norwegian, Russian, Swedish, and Tamil

adding current and relevant references/citations

adding/standardizing category key words (located on the bottom of each wiki page)

Coffeeismylife (talk) 15:11, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

Editing/Contributing to Civic Technology Article

Hello, I am a new user/contributor to Wikipedia. I just want to inform the editors of Civic Technology that I will be contributing information to this page very shortly. I will add my work to the page soon. If you have any questions or concerns about my material, you can refer back to my sandbox and talk page. Thank you!

So, here is my draft (thus far) of the Contribution to the Civic Technology Article: (Under the section of 'Span of the civic technology space')

Within the political realm, the most current presidential administrations (Clinton, Bush, and Obama) have sought out initiatives to further openness of the government, through either increased use of technology in political institutions or efficient ways to further civic engagement. Recently though, the Obama administration has pursued an Open Government Initiative based on principles of transparency and civic engagement. This strategy has paved the way for increased governmental transparency within other nations to improve democratically for the citizens' benefit and allow for greater participation within politics from a citizen's perspective. Certain technologies, including social media, have allowed for increased civic participation in forming decisions on matters attaining to the government for the sake of implementation and for increased transparency within governmental institutions. The transparency imposes a greater accountability on the government to take responsibility for initiatives that they take in order to improve efficiently and democratically.

Technology that is designed to benefit the citizenry places the governments under pressure "to change and innovate the way in which their bureaucracies relate to citizens." E-government initiatives have been established and supported in order to strengthen the democratic values of governmental institutions, which can include Transparency, along with improving the efficiency of the legislative processes to make the government more accountable and reactive to citizens' concerns. These will further civic engagement within the political spectrum for the sake of greater Direct representation and a more democratic political system.

References

Jross35 (talk) 23:43, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

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Civic technology around the world

A template was added to the section today, this section needs expansion and could incorporate more historical aspects better. Some "government-led initiatives" could include adding in the links to various branches of government involved with civic tech and explaining their roles. Jooojay (talk) 21:25, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Peer Review

Hello! This article does a great job at providing information related to civic technology. It provides an array of categories and examples to explain civic tech; however, the important parts/definitions of this article seem to get lost among random facts and examples. The definition section could use reworking because essentially by its title it is meant to serve a similar purpose as the lead section. This section relies too heavily on sources as it uses the Knight Foundation extensively to define civic tech and its purpose. In this sense, this section is written like a research paper as it primarily lists facts and attempts to leave an analysis. I think it may be useful to break up this "definition" section into multiple parts to define civic tech in terms of social media, modern businesses, relationship with citizens, and so on. I especially think there should be an entire section dedicated to social media's engagement in civic technology that is broken down into Facebook, twitter, instagram, etc instead of having this topic dispersed throughout the article–as a read it will be easier to follow this way. This section also mentions voting insecurity briefly and provides examples of digital voting advancements; this seems a bit out of place maybe consider moving part of this to the section on civic hacking. As well, the "civic technology around the world" section relies too heavily on its sources to intro this topic. It also provides too many example countries to be relevant. It might be useful to organize this section by "citizen-led initiatives" and "government-led initiatives" and then placing countries under these categories. Overall, the information and sources are there but I think the article needs to be reorganized to provide a better flow of information. The language of the article at times is too argumentative; perhaps consider making it have a more consistent neutral tone throughout. Alyssaamoreno (talk) 06:16, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Organization of "Civic Technology Around the World"

Hello fellow wikipedians! My name is Simran Kaur and I am an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley working on improving the organization of the section "civic technology around the world". The way it is currently organized, it doesn't quite flow and its hard to find information. I've thought of organizing all the countries in a chart, including the country name, the initiative name in that country, and whether it's a "citizen led initiative", "government led initiative" or "other". Does anyone in the community have any other ideas the content could be organized ? Classikhgirl (talk) 08:13, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

I am sorry, I don't understand. Are you talking about creating an infographic for the article? What does "other" mean in this context (what would be in that category)? Have you seen other articles with what you are proposing? Jooojay (talk) 07:30, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes! I mean creating a chart that has every country mentioned and all the initiatives that have been talked in this article labeled in their respective country. On the main space, underneath every country the previous author has labeled initiatives as "citizen led" or "government led" initiatives- meaning that the initiative had been started by a government or was it started by a citizen. I think the inclusion of an "other" category might not work, you're right. Classikhgirl (talk) 21:37, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Could this chart get updated? The current state of this article has not had the section "civic technology around the world" fully filled out or cited. Jooojay (talk) 05:54, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Civic Technology Corrections and suggestions

I found that reference 6 is not working at all and that reference 40 is a blog post. 6.) "Knight Foundation" 40.) "Le blog de la mission Etalab | Service du Premier Ministre chargé de l'ouverture des données publiques et du développement de la plateforme française OpenData" Citations Bracken, John, and Megan Zimroth. “Building a Better Democracy with Civic Tech.” Knight Foundation, www.knightfoundation.org/articles/building-better-democracy-civic-tech.

“Le Blog D'Etalab.” The First French Collaborative National Address Database Is Now Online, and Freely Accessible. | Le Blog D'Etalab, www.etalab.gouv.fr/.

Many of the links on this page are primary sources about this subject, which leads to showing bias depending on the link. I feel that there should be more hyperlinks to other wikipedia pages or other non-biased and informative websites in order to keep the bias-free look to our audience. Mikekelson12345 (talk) 19:54, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Hello Mikekelson12345, feel free to replace the citations with better sources you find, or work on improving the article. I believe the article is already tagged re: primary sources. Also dead links are sometimes replaced by a bot with a web archived version of the link - if you tag them for dead link. Jooojay (talk) 19:57, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Latin America: The Rise of Civic Technology

At the center of this revolution, companies such as Omidyar Network and Fundación Avina have partnered to provide money and resources to support 26 individual civic technology projects in nine Latin American countries. Other programs that are partaking in this revolution are; A Tu Servicio in Uruguay, which educates and updates its citizens about their public health care services, Caminos de la Villa in Argentina, and TEDIC. These programs are looking to inform its citizens and educate them on the benefits of civic engagement and the helpfulness of civic technology. Mikekelson12345 (talk) 21:40, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

This is a suggestion and was looking for any other help to improve what I put. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikekelson12345 (talk • contribs) 21:42, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

References

I think your idea is good, but your using a lot of external linking (which is something we try to limit on WP, so within the actual article we would not add this, see Wikipedia:External links). The citations your using are self published by these companies Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources, which is something we are wary of at WP because of bias of information. Are you not able to find any related news articles or books? Jooojay (talk) 08:34, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Tag

@Chris troutman: You added the primary sources tag to this article a while back. Can you identify which sources are problematic? ---Another Believer _(Talk) 21:57, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

@Another Believer: Most of them are problematic; the section about Code for America is sourced to Code for America. The section about Kenya is sourced mostly to MajiVoice and the World Bank, the two organizations the text discusses. The section about Italy is entirely sourced to the entities therein being discussed. The same is true about the France section. The section on Estonia has only two sources, only one of which is independent of the subject. The section about Spain has three sources, only one of which is reasonable while another is Reddit (which fails SPS). Fewer than half the sources in the UK section are independent of the subject. Further, even the independent journalistic sources are primary sources because they were written contemporaneous to the subject. The good academic sources which provide secondary analysis are used in the top part of this article which addresses civic technology as a subject, rather than the bottom section of projects claiming this moniker. Fully half of this article should be deleted, in my opinion. Chris Troutman (talk) 15:24, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Civic Technology Article Evaluation

Zach PirohZachpiroh23 (talk) 23:55, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia Article Evaluation This article on Civic Technology looks like many others on Wikipedia. It seems to follow the proper rules and regulations for posting on Wikipedia and there are many citations throughout the article. The citations, however, are a bit dated and the article could be difficult to understand depending upon your prior knowledge of Civic Technology.Zachpiroh23 (talk) 23:55, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Citations -Citation ONE is a video that is no longer available for viewing. It was a panel of 4 CEO’s-a director of media ventures from New York City and a Google partner. This citation was irrelevant because it couldn’t even be viewed. This was also true of citation #7 in which the site is no longer available.Zachpiroh23 (talk) 23:55, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

-Citations 3,6,10,12, &13 had a good amount of information and were complementary to the article/definition and the information within it. Two were blogs within a credible edu site or journal. There were discussion points posted and the Knight Foundation, citation #6 posted a Civic Technology Data Report mapping the trends in Civic Tech. Citation 13, was broken down into sections and examples of what it is, common facts, and how Civic Tech is used. I would also give credit to 'https://www.govtech.com/civic/What-is-Civic-Tech.html.' This site gives a condensed, fluid version of what Civic Technology is and how it is being implemented around the globe. Citation 17 was its own article within a reference the cite https://opengovdata.io/2014/civic-hacking explains what “hack” really means when used in this context. It explains where the word hack came from and how civic hacking is actually a positive thing. Lastly, I did not find any plagiarism within the article.Zachpiroh23 (talk) 23:55, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Relevance -Everything in the article is relative to the topic, however it may not be presented in the best way. The only thing I find distracting in the article is all the highlighted blue words. They draw my eye to them and then my thoughts become unorganized. I felt there was a lack of structure to the material presented. The article begins with a vast definition, which has several references included, and states that there are four different kinds of Civic Tech. It also and to a few different foundations that provide Civic Tech data. It is good information, it just takes a lot of time to review in order to grasp how Civic Technology is being implemented around the nation. It sort of leaves me wondering if these things are changing right now as I am reading them. They probably are.Zachpiroh23 (talk) 23:55, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Neutrality

-As I already said, the first section of the article is the Definition, however, it leads to many other topics within that section. The Definition should be short and then there should be subtopics underneath to address how we use Civic Technology, who it helps, and how we can enhance it going forward. I liked the cites with graphs like https://www.govtech.com/Microsoft-Civic-Graph-Charts-the-New-World-of-Civic-Tech.html. However I feel that Wikipedia put too much information into one section in this article. While reading each reference it is understandable that one can get confused or overwhelmed. Additionally, some of the informational resources are from the New York Times or other news outlets that aren’t exactly unbiased or neutral when presenting information to the public, however, in this instance the resource was factual, not opinion.Zachpiroh23 (talk) 23:55, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

-At the end of the first section there is a short write up on the Worldwide use of Civic Technology. The article then breaks down how Civic Technology is used in various regions and several countries around the globe. Each country shows government-led initiatives and citizen-led ones. Obviously not all countries are equal in how much they use Civic Technology depending upon the region and the access to tablets, computers, smartphones, WiFi etc. by its citizens. Overall the article is in favor of Civic Technology use and how it is ultimately supposed to better the relationship between the government and its people.Zachpiroh23 (talk) 23:55, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Reliable References and Sources

Everything in the article is relevant to the article's topic. There is nothing that distracted me. Each fact is referenced with appropriate, reliable references. The article is neutral (it discusses many regions, thus it provides a global perspective). There were no claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position. The citation links work, and the sources support the claims in the article. The information comes from reputable websites such as the country's official Government website, public & official company statements, and reputable global non-profit organizations. These are neutral sources and are not biased.Rachelkmoy (talk) 06:56, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

@Rachelkmoy: are you specifically referring to someone or something? This article has a history of issues with primary sourcing, and if you are using the government website to talk about the government product/tool - that is an example of a primary source. We don't encourage primary sources on Wikipedia due to bias. Jooojay (talk) 17:54, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

As I checked the citation of the sources, it includes two sources from Reddit and Github, which are not reliable sources. Reddit is a platform where anyone are able to share their opinions on a certain topic without any prior evidence. Therefore, it is a way to share an opinion without any factual sources to explain their reasonings. This emphasizes how citation 68 from Reddit and citation 79 from Github are not credible sources. To translate, readers must be aware of the citation from the article because not all are considered nobility. Yenxle (talk) 17:27, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

General Article Evaluation

Organization: Generally, throughout the article your structure was consistent and organized. For example, each continent was separated into its countries and its specific government-lead or citizen-lead initiatives. This consistency made it easy to follow along and reference. However, I felt the definition portion of at the top could've been structured differently. You mentioned a lot of different information that drifted from the actual definition of civic technology. As a result, a suggestion for a possible breakdown would be: Background, Controversies of the Definition, and Future of Civic Technology.Other than that, the last section on the effects of civic technology was also well-presented as well.

Underrepresented details: Although most of this information is up-to-date and recent, I think you could include some more recent examples of civic technology. For example, topics like voter suppression, Blockchain, or civic tech startups like Popvox that are involved with this industry.

Citations: Some citation links are broken. Within the first 10, links 1 and 7 seem to result in a server error. Lots of you references about the initiatives in different countries also tend to be from primary sources but I realize it might be harder to find sources on those specific topics. Ryanliou (talk) 04:44, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

See WP:LINKROT, for how to handle dead links. Jooojay (talk) 06:18, 15 September 2020 (UTC)