Talk:Civic technology/Archive 1

Edits from Texas State University Fall 2015 POSI 3316 On The Way!

A group of undergraduate students from Texas State University will be publishing edits to the Civic Technology wiki page over the next few weeks.

Article Summary:

Civic technology is technology that is used for the betterment of the public. Improvement of public services is often the focus of civic technological advances. The United States will spend approximately $6.4 billion on civic technology in 2015.

Article Analysis:

This article is a Stub because it includes a very basic description of what civic technology is, and very few facts. There are vast amounts of information available on the topic and, therefore, this article needs to be added on to. The article also needs more resources for it to be considered a more reliable source. The article does present the most basic information about civic technologies, however, it is lacking many subcategories that are relevant to the topic. Most of the information currently provided should be left, as it is accurate, but it will need further support through citations. The section entitled “Size of the Civic Technology Space” is slightly out-of-date and needs to be updated to the current year. The article also offers a list of sectors within civic technology, which all need to be elaborated on extensively. Overall, the article is a fairly good outline that simply needs to be expanded upon and filled with more information and citations.KCGrimes (talk) 05:06, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Issue #1 Comprehensiveness a. Content-Had a good lead section

  Key point was good, it explained how technology is uses by government organizations for internal and external purposes.
  Yes there was sufficient information and a reasonable outline.
  Points are well supported with sufficient references.

b. Thesis and analytical focus - It was clearly focused on technology.

  Yes, scholarly support was used with the Knight Foundation reference.

c. Representativeness-Article gave a variety of perspectives and took appropriate tone. Issue #2 Sourcing Claims were supported with appropriate references and they all appeared reliable. Sources were represented accurately, and there did not seem to be any overstatements, language was precise and I saw no un-sourced statements. Issue #3 Neutrality Article is neutral and well-balanced. Issue #4 Readability Article does contain some sentence structure errors such as an incomplete sentence and some jargon. Overall it had good structure and was formatted properly. There were no illustrations, but they did not seem necessary. Feedback It was expanded with much need information and had very good examples. Was not sure what "crowd-funding" meant. Gloria AndrusGandrus100 (talk) 17:46, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Good article overall. The layout and organization of the article makes it very readable. There is also a good amount of information used, and there is also a nice variety of sources and examples used. A good focus and thesis is presented. There is a good degree of neutrality presented in the article. The article is factual, and not many opinions presented. I found a few typos and grammatical errors, but nothing egregious, or anything that really stands out. Some complex language is used, but it is supported well and is easy to understand. Also with the subject matter being Civic Technology, some complex language is to be expected. The article has a clear structure, and is well organized and formatted well. I like the wide variety of sources, also the multiple platforms of technology that are described was very interesting. The future section could be expanded on more, but overall a well done page.Bobcatdodger25 (talk) 18:27, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

1. The article was well written and used good language, however is there a way to shift the tone to reveal less judgement? For example, in writing that technology has made "leaps and bounds", the writer is revealing a notion of technology as being all-good, however a reader may not feel this way, and view this statement as one-sided. Ishapunja (talk) 07:13, 4 October 2016 (UTC) 2. Could there be greater use of citations? For example, the topic of hactivism could be further explained with examples of how this was used, such as in Mexican politics, through Twitter bots. Ishapunja (talk) 07:13, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Suggested Edits to Citations and Additions to Civic Hacking

The second citation comes from New York Times, which is not a neutral, unbiased source. It is a media publication, which usually attempts to show something in a certain light. When explaining the definition of Civic Technology, you should especially stick to unbiased sources. If the definition of Civic Technology comes from an unreliable source, and it is in the first sentence of the article, it makes readers question the legitimacy of the rest of the article. Furthermore, a possible addition to the Civic Hacking section could feature the Princeton Group and how they are able to hack United States Elections through the voting machines. Furthermore, it would be worth mentioning Russia's recent cyberattack on the DNC. The rise of civic technology has also led to the rise of civic hacking.

--Jinnayang (talk) 00:43, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Going to make these changes using 9 credible sources:

Civic hacking is a creative and often technological approach to solving civic problems. Often civic hacking involves the use of government data to make governments more accountable, but the goals of civic hacking are as diverse as those who might call themselves hackers. Civic hackers can be programmers, designers, data scientists, good communicators, civic organizers, entrepreneurs, government employees and anyone willing to get his or her hands dirty solving problems. Some civic hackers are employed by nonprofits, such as Code for America and projects such as mySociety work at the intersection of civic technology and hacktivism. Some work for innovative for-profit companies, such as the geospatial software provider Azavea in Philadelphia. Others are civic hackers only by night.

Numerous federal agencies coordinate a day dedicated to civic hacking. National Day of Civic Hacking is a nationwide day of action where developers, government employees, designers, journalists, data scientists, non-profit employees, UX designers, and residents who care about their communities come together to host civic tech events leveraging their skills to help their community. Thousands of people join to use their hacking skills for good, brought to you by Code for America, Brigades, Secondmuse, and U.S. Small Business Administration.

Code for America Code for America is a non-partisan, non-political 501(c)(3) organization founded in 2009 to address the widening gap between the public and private sectors in their effective use of technology and design. The organization believes for our government to truly serve the people in the 21st century, it must do three things: Be good at digital. Digital skills must be embedded at all levels of government, and owned by the people responsible for delivering programs and services to the public. Ensure policy and implementation work together, and are centered around the needs of the people. Linear processes, moving from policy, to implementation to stasis, must transform into iterative cycles where policy and implementation are informed by each other and are focused on people's needs. Be a platform for civic engagement and participation. Government must learn to incorporate productive contributions from the public, so that everyone can help make government work.

mySociety mySociety is an e-democracy project of the UK-based registered charity named UK Citizens Online Democracy.[2] It began as a UK-focused organisation with the aim of making online democracy tools for UK citizens.[3]

Princeton Group Hackings Princeton University Professor Andrew Appel set out to prove how easy it was to hack into a voting machine. He and a graduate student, Alex Halderman, purchased a voting machine, and Halderman picked the lock in 7 seconds. They removed the 4 ROM chips and replaced them with modified versions of their own: a version of modified firmware that could throw off the machine’s results, subtly altering the tally of votes, never to betray a hint to the voter. It took less than 7 minutes to complete the process.

Appel wrote a testimony for the Congress House Subcommittee on Information Technology hearing on “Cybersecurity: Ensuring the Integrity of the Ballot Box”, suggesting to for Congress to eliminate touchscreen voting machines after the election of 2016, and that it require all elections be subject to sensible auditing after every election to ensure that the systems are functioning properly and to prove to the American people that their votes are counted as cast.

References

Mnsutherland (talk) 15:35, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

The reference to the $25.5 Billion of which the government spends on external information technology seems to be out of date- the article cited is from 2016. It would be preferred to add a more up to date figure. Additionally the precise way that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected government spending in this sector and/or if civic hacking became less of a problem in this period. In addition, the article in footnote 22 uses language that may hint at potential bias on the topic. VillusionV (talk) 00:49, 16 September 2020 (UTC)VillusionV

Edits by Digital Humanities class from the CRI Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity

A group of masters students from the CRI, Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity (Paris, France) will be publishing edits to the Civic Technology wiki pages during the months of November and December 2016 as part of a Digital Humanities class project. The scope of these contributions will include:

editing/adding content to the pages in English, French, and Spanish

adding pages for Civic Technology in Albanian, Chinese (Mandarin), Estonian, Hebrew, Norwegian, Russian, Swedish, and Tamil

adding current and relevant references/citations

adding/standardizing category key words (located on the bottom of each wiki page)

Coffeeismylife (talk) 15:11, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

Editing/Contributing to Civic Technology Article

Hello, I am a new user/contributor to Wikipedia. I just want to inform the editors of Civic Technology that I will be contributing information to this page very shortly. I will add my work to the page soon. If you have any questions or concerns about my material, you can refer back to my sandbox and talk page. Thank you!

So, here is my draft (thus far) of the Contribution to the Civic Technology Article: (Under the section of 'Span of the civic technology space')

Within the political realm, the most current presidential administrations (Clinton, Bush, and Obama) have sought out initiatives to further openness of the government, through either increased use of technology in political institutions or efficient ways to further civic engagement. Recently though, the Obama administration has pursued an Open Government Initiative based on principles of transparency and civic engagement. This strategy has paved the way for increased governmental transparency within other nations to improve democratically for the citizens' benefit and allow for greater participation within politics from a citizen's perspective. Certain technologies, including social media, have allowed for increased civic participation in forming decisions on matters attaining to the government for the sake of implementation and for increased transparency within governmental institutions. The transparency imposes a greater accountability on the government to take responsibility for initiatives that they take in order to improve efficiently and democratically.

Technology that is designed to benefit the citizenry places the governments under pressure "to change and innovate the way in which their bureaucracies relate to citizens." E-government initiatives have been established and supported in order to strengthen the democratic values of governmental institutions, which can include Transparency, along with improving the efficiency of the legislative processes to make the government more accountable and reactive to citizens' concerns. These will further civic engagement within the political spectrum for the sake of greater Direct representation and a more democratic political system.

References

Jross35 (talk) 23:43, 5 December 2016 (UTC)