February Newsletter | What’s next for civic tech?
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We send a monthly update on what our team is up to, share our latest blog posts, and offer curated must-reads about civic tech. If we’re hosting an Open House, a Summit or Showcase, you’ll be the first to know.
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Welcome to our February newsletter! 👋
We’ve been thinking a lot about transition.
Last month, we witnessed the tumultuous inauguration of a new U.S. president. The violence that marred what should have been a peaceful event shocked us. But it also strengthened our resolve. As our friends in the U.S. remind us, there are many reasons to find hope.
We’re also in the midst of our own moment of transition. In case you haven’t heard, we’re looking for a new Executive Director to join, and lead, our team.
We’ve been thinking about role of civic tech as we (hopefully soon) transition to a post-COVID world. Since the pandemic started, we’ve been inspired by civic tech groups across Canada who’ve worked together to build civic tools, such as a pandemic relief guide or an emergency food service. And as fans of iterative and agile processes, we’ve been re-examining our programs and asking, how can we better serve our communities?
Lastly, I’m transitioning into the role of newsletter producer, content writer, and all-round civic tech aficionado. If you have a civic tech story you want to tell, reach out to me at jennifer.kou@codefor.ca.
See you next month,
Jen
We’re looking for our next Executive Director 🍁
If someone you know (yourself included) is a respected leader, excited about civic tech, and capable of fostering strong teams, relationships and partnerships, then let them know! It’s an exciting and impactful time to work in civic tech, so come join us!
On the MOVE 🚴
On Dec. 8, 2020 at 2:16pm, MOVE Version 1.0 went live! ✨
What began as a Code for Canada fellowship in 2018 has led to a generational upgrade of the City of Toronto’s traffic data systems. Thanks to MOVE, staff at Toronto Transportation Services can now leverage more — and better — data when deciding on interventions to reduce traffic-related deaths and injuries. And due to a slew of process improvements, they can also respond to resident concerns about road safety much quicker.
We’re really excited to share the story of MOVE’s development through regular blog posts from MOVE’s core team, including City officials and former fellows.
In March, we’ll be hosting an Open House where you can talk to the team behind the project — stay tuned for the details!
Voices from the team 📣
🌿 Over on our blog, Marzie Aghdaee continues her exploration of the digital divide in Canadian cities. In her latest post, she talks to the team from Toronto Mesh about what a community network is and why it resembles a community garden.
💻 How do you develop robust connections on a virtual team? C4C fellows at the Canada Energy Regulator used a three day sprint and goal setting to build strong team dynamics.
🌐 “Make all information machine-readable. Why? Because assistive technologies are machines.” Ian, a developer fellow at the Canada Energy Regulator, shares his tips for designing and developing for web accessibility.
🚀 How can we use design to address emergent challenges and opportunities? Code for Canada fellows at Employment and Social Development Canada are running a speculative design sprint to create a user-tested prototype… from the future.
Civic technologists … Assemble!
💊 When athlete and advocate Jimmy Choi shared his struggles on TikTok with taking his Parkinson’s medication, it inspired the online community to design, improve and create 3D printed, accessible and Parkinson’s-friendly pill bottles. Best of all? The design is open source.
😷 “Now I see an evolution where hackathons are targeted around data sets … like addressing COVID solutions.” Calling on the local community, Anchorage, Alaska’s Chief Innovation Officer crowdsourced 3D-printed PPE to make over 250 masks for medial workers.
🏥 “The recent COVID-19 pandemic has amplified shortcomings in the healthcare system…but it has also demonstrated how effective and agile some emerging digital technologies can be in fixing some of those problems.” To address backlogs and delays, BC healthcare teams broke down silos and formed superclusters to coordinate and better serve patients.
The Code for Canada spotlight ☀️
“GC Notify’s journey began after we saw a need to create a simple, flexible service to help government departments keep the public informed.”
Bryan Willey and Clementine Hahn are part of the team that created GC Notify, a free, open, and cloud based tool that provides a simple way for government departments to integrate notifications into their services.
Since 2019, GC Notify has helped send over 8.8 million notifications! Now, GC Notify is officially moving from Alpha to Beta, providing more stable, reliable and secure services to governments at all levels across Canada.
➡️ Follow Bryan and Clementine on Twitter
Bonus: Clementine was also a panelist during our 2020 Summit, sharing her expertise on service design in government.
Do you know a digital government champion or civic technologist who deserves the spotlight? Let us know, and we might feature them in our newsletter.
Required / inspired reading 📚
🏛️ What’s next for civic tech? Angelica Quicksey, a desiger at NavaPBC, predicts increased specialization, better maturity models for digital services and a renewed focus on the machinery of government.
💉 The U.S. CDC spent $44 million dollars on a vaccine management system built by Deloitte that is so bad, local governments are refusing to use it. Check out Dan Hon’s Twitter thread where he breaks down the complexities and problems of government tech contracts.
📵 “If your laptop and phone both got stolen — how easily could you conduct online life through the worst browser you have?” Check out this blog post on why HTML is the one coding language to rule them all when it comes to public service websites.
Let us know what you think 💡
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We’re Code for Canada, a national non-profit working to build digital capacity in government and civic capacity in Canada’s technology and design community. In other words, we help people use tech and design for good!
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