Civic tech: Sharing learnings and documenting innovation
Editorial
How can new technologies improve governance and accountability? How can we bridge digital divides and support service delivery? How can new technologies be used to monitor or provide feedback to government? How can they make cities work better? These are all questions about ‘civic tech’.
There are many initiatives in South Africa that are working on these questions, and working towards solutions. The National Treasury recently launched municipalmoney.gov.za that publishes information on local government budgets and spending. One of the oldest social justice organisations in South Africa, Black Sash, has developed new approaches to local community monitoring of government services. Some cities have started open data portals. Codebridge in Cape Town, the new Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct in Johannesburg and other tech hubs are supporting this work.
There are many innovations and many innovators — in the public sector, in civil society organisations, in tech hubs, and elsewhere. We think there’s an opportunity to extend and improve how we share experience and ideas, distribute research, and strengthen the links between innovators, researchers and others, in order to make innovations work better and spread further.
So welcome to the first Civic Tech Innovation Network newsletter and magazine. We hope you will participate in the network through reading the newsletter and our Medium.com publication, contributing on our Facebook page and following us on Twitter (@CivicTechAfrica). Over the next few months we will be sharing new research and innovations in Africa and elsewhere, especially from the global South. We want to bring together a community of practitioners — from public and private sector — to promote quicker, smarter innovation that enables accountability, governance, and citizen participation. We will also be holding events at the new Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, and hope to support events in other cities too.
Who are we?
The Network has been initiated by the Network Society programme at the University of the Witwatersrand and Gauteng Cities Regional Observatory, with Making All Voices Count. The Network Society programme has been conducting Internet research for the last six years. Our recent work includes a study of how organisations in Kenya and South Africa chose technologies for transparency and accountability and a new study on the demand for open data in South Africa. The GCRO is a partnership between Gauteng Provincial Government, the Universities of Johannesburg and the Witwatersrand, and local government in Gauteng. It produces research to support policy-making in the Gauteng City-Region.
The CivicTech Innovation Network newsletter and online magazine have been produced in partnership and collaboration with Making All Voices Count (MAVC), as part of its learning programme for 2017. MAVC has supported over 25 civic tech initiatives in South Africa and over 170 initiatives in 12 other countries in Africa and Asia over the last four years. The research and practice reports that are being published about these initiatives are an important resource that we aim to make use of in the Network.
The South African organisations that have received MAVC support have convened a Community of Practice which has met regularly since 2014. As the MAVC programme comes to an end this year, some of participants have been discussing how to continue to enable shared learning on a sustainable basis. We hope and believe the Network is a step towards meeting that need. We have also made links with innovation networks within government including the Economies of Regions Learning Network and the SA Cities Network.
Our goal is to produce and deliver actionable learning for South African organisations and people active in or interested in innovation in government, transparency, governance, and accountability processes.
Join us
Get in touch via email civictech@journalism.co.za , Twitter, or join our Facebook page community to participate in conversations and to hear about forthcoming events.
Published by Network Society, University of Witwatersrand and Gauteng Cities Regional Observatory in partnership with Making All Voices Count.
