In May, nearly 80 journalists, activists and researchers participated in a webinar where they learned how to monitor and report on the municipal finance in South Africa — In May this year, Makhanda suffered two big water outages as the town’s waterworks failed. Some areas went for days without water. …

Evictions can be granted during level 3 but tenants will not be forced to leave their homes until level 2 lockdown — On 1 June, South Africa transitioned into level 3 of lockdown. While the curfew has been lifted, travel restrictions have lessened and more businesses are opening again, many people have lost their jobs, experienced salary cuts and are struggling to pay rent. With landlords demanding their money, eviction threats are…

The online budget portal has contributed to South Africa ranking first in budget transparency and oversight — In a time where our economy is more vulnerable than usual, it is important to reflect on our country’s processes of openness and transparency. How much information is the government sharing with the public? Does the public have access to this information, and what can we do with it? One…

On our quest to rebrand all things OpenUp, we came to understand how we want to be viewed by the rest of the world Your identity is so much more than who you are. It is also about what it means to be you, and how this is linked to your values and beliefs. How do you view yourself and how are you viewed by the rest of the world? …

OpenUp’s JD Bothma teaches the team a thing or two about using agile in the civic tech space — In April this year, we held a screencast for the whole team on agile and scrum at a small scale, focusing on how to use these principles and methodology in the civic tech space. Recently, we’ve gone through some changes. From a reduction in team size to a new brand…

Vulekamali encourages users to engage with the data available on the budget portal, and offer analyses of their own — This year, the first part of Vulekamali, our budget portal project with National Treasury and civil society coalition IMALI YETHU, came to a close. Project manager Adrian Kearns has already spent some time reflecting on all that has been achieved over the past two years, since Vulekamali was first launched.

This week we’re launching our brand new website and we couldn’t be more excited for what the future at OpenUp holds The next time you go to openup.org.za, you might be surprised to find that things look a little different. There’s a new logo, the layout has changed and we’ve…

Open Courts provides the public with access to high court records from around South Africa We all have the right of access to the courts, to observe how matters will be decided, and to obtain court documents relating to those cases. The South African court system sees thousands of cases…

The CodeBridge Youth Participation Guide aims to get young people more involved in by encouraging digital participation in events and communications Even though the rules around lockdown eased on 1 May 2020, it is likely that things won’t go back to ‘normal’ for the foreseeable future. One of the biggest…