
Code for All Dispatch — November 2019 Edition
Our monthly newsletter is one of the ways we keep up with each other and share resources, funding opportunities and challenges. Now, we’re opening it up to our wider community.
👋 Hello friends
Welcome to your November update from Code for All. It’s been a learning-intensive month, with Kelly working on strategy and grant reporting for the network as we move forward, and Lorin learning the communication ropes. We have some exciting news and reports to share, read on for details on each.
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A quick note about this newsletter: Most of our member newsletter is dedicated to facilitating sharing and growth within the network, and so some links and content will be modified here, in the community version. In the spirit of openness, we’ve tried to leave as much as possible to show how we work.
You’ll see [members only] to indicate where a link or document has been removed that is restricted to members only.
⏰ 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’re happy to announce we have a new role opening up at Code for All! We’re looking for a talented Facilitator to take on our upcoming Communities of Practice (CoP) sessions. Take a look at the position description [members only] and see if you might know someone this could be perfect for [10 mins]
- We would love to get some new peer learning sessions on the calendar, and are currently looking for a handful of folks to host an upcoming series on Recruiting within Civic Tech (outside fellowships). Reach out on slack or by email (@lorin / lorin@codeforall.org) if you’re interested or have someone in mind who you think might make a great host [5 mins]
- Kelly and Lorin have been excited to start getting to know members from the network, but are eager to meet some more! When you have a chance, schedule in time to meet with them both (contact @kelly (she) and @lorin on slack) [5 mins]
👪 Code for All Updates
- On March 15th of this year, ePanstwo, Codeando México and SlashRoots sent a proposal to NED “Towards a CfAll Digital Citizen Engagement Focus Area”. Funding was granted and research has now been conducted by Codeando México and SlashRoots. Check out what we’ve learned so far [members only]
- Kelly has done an amazing job wrapping up Q3 of our 2018–2019 NED grant in this summary report [members only]
- Lorin attended Code for America’s 2019 Brigade Congress and gave a lightning talk on Civic Tech Around the Globe, highlighting three Code for All projects. A few Code for America volunteers expressed interest in volunteering on global projects during the event — to connect with remote volunteers or if you are a potential volunteer, be sure to join our new #global-volunteers slack channel
📰 Member Updates
- Code for Africa’s remote sensing initiatives are getting great traction, with Kenya’s environmental regulator NEMA launching its 2nd official inspection into life-threatening air pollution based on data from citizen sensors managed by sensors.AFRICA, while africanDRONE’s push to map the continent’s largest shantytown built on stilts, in the Lagos lagoon in Nigeria, completed its first flights by a new team of women civic drone pilots. Applications have also opened for the African Drone Forum’s new startup challenge ahead of the 2020 Summit in Rwanda.
- Code for Australia have had a new Head of Delivery join the team — Cassitie Galliott. She’ll be helping make sure all our programs are working amazingly. We’ve also completed two Digital Maturity Assessments with governments in the state of New South Wales, built off the framework developed by David Eaves at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. We’re also wrapping up our last Fellowship team of the year, who’ve been working on making a plain language tool with their government partner, Cenitex.
- Code for NL had the kick off for AI with Impact this month, a collaboration between municipalities and the central bureau for statistics to experiment and implement data science and AI in government digital services. We also had a consulting meetup with the internal affairs department to advise them about open source in government, which will be continued soon. For more information on these, please contact johan@codefor.nl
- Code for Canada’s municipal program, Civic Hall Toronto, is hosting a new event series on resident engagement. We’ll be sharing the learnings and outputs from the series, so stay tuned. Our usability testing program, GRIT Toronto, also ran its first test with the federal government, helping Transport Canada test a new Alexa skill!
- mySociety have been doing some research using their own data, looking at deprivation and street fault reporting and how different genders use FixMyStreet differently.
- g0v.tw g0vers have passed amendments to g0v Manifesto, g0v SNS governance and g0v.news governance during the 14th infrathon on October 20. Also, Rentea, an open-source apartment rental service, hosted its 2nd monthly meeting on October 22. In other news, g0v-intl has started a disinformation research group to formulate open & collaborative responses to information operations and manipulation in Taiwan.
- The Code for Pakistan team from Islamabad and Peshawar attended the Digital Youth Summit 2019 in Peshawar, where our KP Government Innovation Fellows also showcased some of the applications they have developed in collaboration with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Information Technology Board (KPITB). For a recap, read our latest blog post.
- Ciudadanía Inteligente joined forces with women at the table to fight against biased algorithms that hinder women’s possibilities to be hired, impede their access to certain products and services, and threaten their liberties.
- Code for Poland is working on an offer for the Environmental Protection Bureau of the City of Warsaw. We want to test the concept of crowdsourcing for counting trees in the capital city and provide residents with a number of tools to monitor urban forest in their neighbourhood. We are at the stage of first quality interviews. In less than two weeks, our leader from Łódź during Warsaw Hacknight will share his experience from six months of working with Code for Australia. For more information on these, please contact kontakt@kodujdlapolski.pl
🔭 Funding Opportunities
This is where we share opportunities we’ve stumbled upon lately.
- [Global South] The Security and Human Rights Implementation Mechanism (SHRIM) — The Security and Human Rights Grant
- [Global] Democratic and Inclusive School Culture in Operation (DISCO) — Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education (EDC/HRE)
- [Australia] IMPACT Philanthropy — 2020 IMPACT Philanthropy Program
- [Ukraine] Council of Europe — Strengthening Democracy and Building Trust at Local Level in Ukraine
💻 Job Opportunities
This is where we share current job opportunities we’ve found within the network.
- Code for Canada is seeking a new Communications Coordinator! Apply by November 6, 2019
- Code for Africa is hiring an Investigations Manager (East Africa), a Verification Project Manager (Kenya), Disinformation Researchers (Kenya, Nigeria & South Africa) to join our iLAB team to fight disinformation and expose corruption using OSINT. We’re also hiring the launch team for a new integrated marketing/communications studio, CivicSignal, that will help amplify civic tech pioneers in Africa
- Current job openings at Code for America
- For an array of civic-tech-related opportunities in the US, check out the Code for America Public Interest Tech Job Board
🌍 Events around the world
This is where we share upcoming events within the civic tech world.
- Digital Rights Awareness by the IO Foundation will be taking place November 9–10 in Kuala Lumpur (MY)
- g0v-jothon is hosting their Year-End Banquet on November 16th in Taipei City (TW)
- Design in Government Conference is taking place November 18–20 in Rotterdam (NL) At this event there will be a Design Systems Hack Space to continue working on NL Design System and other international government design systems
- Smart City Expo is taking place November 19–21 in Barcelona (ES) @SensorCommunity will be participating at this event
- IOPD Conference centered around participatory democracy and right to city will take place December 7–10 in Iztapalapa, Mexico City (MX)
- g0v-intl & g0v-jothon are co-organizing a Facing the Ocean Meet & Hack on December 20–22 in Tainan City (TW)
- FOSDEM is a free event for open source software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate, taking place February 1–2, 2020 in Brussels (BE) @SensorCommunity will be participating at this event
- Code for America’s 2020 Summit will be taking place March 11–13, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (US)
🐰 That’s all folks!
If you’re hungry for more, here’s how you can find out what Code for All is working on and get involved.
- If you want to see what Code for All are working on, head over to Trello for our working notes or drop an idea for us here [members only]
- Our weekly planning calls and monthly retros are open for any to dial in to observe and provide feedback. Click here to see what’s coming up [members only] for the month and add yourself to the invite.
- Or read through and leave feedback on our latest ExCo minutes from October 7th [members only]. The current ExCo members are g0v, Codeando México and Open Up.
To get in touch with Code for All and tell us what your organization has been up to, hit reply to this email or find us on Slack (@kelly (she) and @lorin).
Lastly — if there’s someone from your organization who’s not getting these updates, but should be, you can subscribe them here.
Until next month — keep up the good work!
Team Code for All
(Kelly & Lorin)

