Core Values

1.1 User Centered and Inclusive

Put the needs of community members at the heart of every project. Ensure that solutions are accessible, equitable, and grounded in user needs. In civic tech, we try to build with not for our communities.

Being user-centered and inclusive means designing solutions that work for all members of the community, regardless of their background, abilities, or tech-savviness. This principle ensures our projects start with real needs or challenges, and create value for the community.

Why it matters for project success:

Having real users in the community – whether individuals or organizations – is a key ingredient for successful civic tech projects. They can validate whether you’re solving a real problem and provide knowledge or relationships to drive your work forward. Connecting with your users helps you focus your efforts or decide your next step when your project (inevitably) gets a bit stuck.

What it means in practice:

  1. Doing User Research: Engage with a wide range of community members, including underrepresented groups, using various research methods.
  2. Designing for Accessibility: Create solutions that are accessible to people with different abilities, devices, and levels of digital literacy.
  3. Measuring Inclusivity: Set inclusivity goals, monitor usage data, and seek qualitative feedback to ensure your solution benefits all intended users.

Resources to help:

import FilteredResources from “@site/src/components/FilteredResources”;

1.2 Open and Transparent

Embrace openness in processes, data, code and content. Foster trust and collaboration by sharing knowledge and inviting participation. Strive to be ‘open source’ not only with your code, but also with your ideas.

Openness and transparency are cornerstones of civic tech. They involve sharing our work, processes, and decision-making openly with the community, fostering trust, collaboration, and shared ownership of civic solutions.

Why it matters for project success:

Being open is one of the best ways for civic tech projects to scale their impact. When we share code, ideas and findings publicly, we make it possible for others to use and adapt that knowledge for future projects. And even if your project doesn’t launch, your early findings and code can help someone else pick up where you left off!

Working in the open also creates opportunities for more people to engage with your project, and can surface insights from valuable – if unexpected – places.

What it means in practice:

  1. Open Source Development: Make your project’s source code publicly available and encourage community contributions.
  2. Open Data: Use and produce open data, ensuring it’s accessible and understandable to the public.
  3. Open Collaboration: Create opportunities for diverse participation throughout the project by working and communicating in open places.

Resources to help:

import FilteredResources from “@site/src/components/FilteredResources”;

1.3 Iterative and Responsive

Always be learning and adapting. Listen to and respond to community feedback by regularly testing and refining solutions.

Being iterative and responsive in civic tech means continuously learning, and adapting our solutions (if you work in tech, you might be familiar with “agile”). This principle emphasizes flexibility, regular feedback loops, and small, but frequent improvements to meet community needs.

Why it matters for project success:

Being iterative and responsive can help you both start and finish your civic tech project. Early, it gives your project momentum by delivering something small that you can build on. Later, showing your work to users and stakeholders will reduce the risk that you’re building the wrong thing. And having lots of smaller tasks on the go makes it easy to onboard new members to your project and give them something meaningful to do.

What it means in practice:

  1. Start Small: Projects that are too ambitious or vague often fail to take the first step (maybe you’ve heard of “boiling the ocean” or “scope creep”). Instead, focus on something small and tangible that you can deliver quickly.
  2. Prototype and Test With Users: Once you’ve built something small, you can show it to your users and build the next iteration based on their feedback. Then, rinse and repeat!
  3. Flexible Planning: Project roadmaps are a great tool for keeping things moving, but don’t get too attached to them. Otherwise, it’ll be harder to pivot when you (inevitably) learn new things.

Resources to help:

import FilteredResources from “@site/src/components/FilteredResources”;

1.4 Sustainable and Scalable

Where possible, design solutions with longevity and growth in mind. Create projects that can be maintained, expanded, and replicated to increase your long-term (and long-tail) impact.

Creating sustainable and scalable solutions in civic tech means designing projects with longevity and growth in mind. This principle emphasizes building solutions that can be maintained over time, expanded to serve more people, and potentially replicated in other contexts.

Why it matters for project success:

Projects don’t end at launch; the most successful civic tech projects are ones that continue to deliver impact over time, get handed off to new teams and inspire others to do similar work. Taking time at the start of a project to think about the end of a project helps teams prepare for those milestones.

What it means in practice:

  1. Long-term Thinking: We encourage teams to start with ‘minimum viable’ projects, while also thinking about scaling up. What resources – technical or otherwise – will you need? What relationships would be beneficial? Is there a potential business model for your project? Would an organization or government department be able to take the project on in the future?
  2. Documentation: Create clear, comprehensive documentation about as much of your project as possible – this isn’t just about documenting code, but also research findings, learnings about project planning and more. You never know who might find that information useful in the future!
  3. Knowledge Transfer: Documenting your project is crucial, but how will you share that knowledge? Look for opportunities to connect with stakeholders and pass on your learnings, your hopes and your documents – you can start by presenting about your project at a hacknight!

Resources to help:

import FilteredResources from “@site/src/components/FilteredResources”;