Tech 4 Engagement
In 2010, Knight Foundation funded a group of civic tech organizations working to spur citizen engagement, improve cities and make government more effective. Network Impact partnered with Knight to support the evaluation work of several of the Technology for Engagement grantees and to explore promising practices in civic tech evaluation. Network Impact’s research and engagement with leaders in the field yielded two publications with lessons and approaches for improving the evaluation of civic tech platforms. This included a focus on the impact of digital platform use on individuals, their organizations and the communities in which they work. Key civic tech outcomes that emerged from the research, include:
Stronger place-based social capital
Increase in civic engagement
Promotion of deliberative democracy
Support for open governance
Fostering of inclusion and diversity
The first publication, Assessing Civic Tech: Case Studies and Resources for Tracking Outcomes, presents an overview of key methods for evaluating each outcome listed above and includes case studies of initiative grantees as examples.
The second publication, How to Measure Success: A Practical Guide to Answering Common Civic Tech Assessment Questions is designed for practitioners and goes a level deeper to provide civic tech project teams (project leads, tech developers, graphic designers, online coordinators and partners) with guidance for measuring their platform’s performance using tools and approaches that are both effective and practical.
You can read more about this project on Beth Kantor’s blog, including grantee perspectives, here.
Project engagement: 2012-2015