Say hello to the App Marketplace

highlighting good tech for the civic space

Lincoln Network turns four years old this year. What started out as a monthly hang out among policy-minded Silicon Valley types is now a national organization advocating for better tech in all areas of civic life.

As Lincoln grew, we kept hearing the same apprehensive armchair quarterbacking from causes and campaigns of all shapes and sizes. The root of the problem is a lack of understanding of the needs of a modern political organization and the expected outcomes of technology. This information asymmetry prevents causes and campaigns from making a rational choice on technology. We have seen it all — small nonprofits and local campaigns using an out-of-date website builder, to nation-wide organizations distracted by the glitz of custom-made tech only to ignore out-of-the-box inexpensive technologies that solves the same problem.

There is a solution. It is to capture the experience locked up in the various campaigns and causes around the nation; it is the knowledge held by technologists who geek out on civic tech. We seek to open up this wealth of knowledge and experience for the world to see.

Today, we are unveiling the App Marketplace as part of our education platform, Telegraph, aimed at solving these problems. The App Marketplace makes it easy to find, compare, and understand the differences between common technology products in the advocacy space. The App Marketplace identifies technologies utilized throughout the space and provides a review on how the technology performed.

There are a two tensions in writing reviews — exhaustiveness and authority. Our approach was to optimize for a non-technical reader, to provide a resource for easily comparing reviews from individuals with a wide breadth of experience using these applications.

Scoring Technology

The hardest task before us was the judging criteria. We went through several versions with our expert editorial board and ultimately landed on the following rubric.

• User Interface — How easy is the technology to use, from design to customer service
• Cost — How much does it cost to implement and run the technology
• Differentiation — How unique is the product compared to substitutes and rivals
• Effectiveness — How well does the app accomplish its said mission

Each bucket is scored on a 0–25 points basis. All four buckets are then summed up for a final total, with the maximum score being 100 points.

Of course implementing and utilizing any technology is somewhat of a bespoke affair. Needs vary across organizations based on objectives, funding, team, and location. In spirit of this wisdom, we encourage user to recognize that lower rated technologies could be perfectly suited for some organizations (see our digital campaign guide to know the difference). We see technology as solving a specific problem, not a catch-all for success or failure. Therefore, every review includes detail regarding implementation, use-cases, and limitations, captured in a full-page review. This part of the review is summarized and editorialized based on written feedback from chosen experts.

Reviewing & Authorship

We expanded our expert editorial board to include a wider net of experience from both the issue advocacy and technology world. Both perspectives are needed because each originate from very different places of knowledge and experience. More often than not, advocates and operatives aren’t tech-savvy enough to understand the differences in products. At the same time, technologists aren’t skilled in the day-to-day of policy change to see the core needs. Technology changes rapidly but the means of policy change hasn’t. Both perspectives are included to form a well-rounded review.

One of the paradoxes of reviewing anything is the most knowledgeable individual of a product is the creator, not necessarily the end user. However, the creator is most incentivized to tell the rosiest story. To compensate, we allow reviewed companies to submit a response to our editorial team. Also, all reviews are written in collaboration with more than one expert who has experience with the technology in disparate implementations.

Going forward

To our team at Lincoln and to our community, we view this as a first step, not the last. We welcome feedback. We are on this journey with strong opinions, loosely held.

Check out the App Marketplace — http://telegraph.joinlincoln.org/app-marketplace/

With our expert editorial board, we will review a handful of new technologies every week and update existing reviews on a rolling basis. If you have an app or technology you would like to be reviewed, drop us a note — telegraph@joinlincoln.org.

If you have feedback or comments related to any review, please reach out to us — telegraph@joinlincoln.org.

Necessity is the mother of invention; iteration is the father of improvement.