#code for all

If you are passionate about using technology to make a positive impact on your community, civic tech is a great field to explore!

What is Civic Tech? Civic Tech enhances the relationship between the people and government with software for communications, decision-making, service delivery, and political process.

Here's the full Notion List ❀

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Links are taken from sifting through: Code for All & Code for America Find your local Code for America Brigade here

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New to civic tech? You’re not alone!

Over the past week, we’ve spent a lot of time reviewing documents, talking to teams inside and outside of the division, and mapping out the process and pain points as we understand them. We jammed on the issues that we’d identified so far and turned them into a succinct problem statement. 

What we’ve realized is that the state of many applications as they are first presented to MSP is that they are not yet fund-able ideas, but they contain “nuggets” of promise that catch MSP program staff’s interest. Then, a lot of important (and valuable!) work goes into bringing those ideas from “nugget” form to a state where they can meet all standards necessary to receive funding.

The problem seems to be that the already-intensive process of bridging the gap between nugget and fully-fledged idea. With no centralized system for documenting and storing information, the level of support that gets offered to applicants may differ based on the program consultants’ workload, the frequency/quality of communications, and their access to up-to-date information. It makes the process arduous and difficult to do at scale.

So: How might we make the process of bridging the gap between “nugget” and “fully-fledged, ready-to-fund idea” more consistent, intentional, and efficient without losing the co-creation experience? 

Our problem statement will certainly evolve as we dive deeper into our user research, particularly with applicants, who we haven’t had a chance to engage yet - but we think it’s a good start!

The highlight of this week was most certainly the opportunity we had to celebrate our colleagues in the second cohort of fellows at the 2019 Code for Canada Showcase.

On Wednesday, July 24, Code for Canada convened hundreds of folks from the civic tech and government space for a conversation about the power and responsibilities that come with technology, how we can best develop ourselves as agents of change, and - of course - the amazing things that Cohort 2 accomplished during their fellowships.

Lane Becker kicked off the evening with what he called “cheerful nihilism” - essentially, demonstrating the awesome and sometimes apocalyptic power of technology to shape the world and relations around us. Setting the tone for the night, he reminded us of our responsibility to build and use technology in ways that keep ethics, justice and equity at the forefront.

We heard several inspiring lightning talks that further fleshed out our responsibility to use technology to serve the public good, and how we could best do this. Then - the most exciting part - a demonstration of what our colleagues achieved. My brief recaps are below (yes, I live-tweeted it), but we’ll share when the full videos are posted. Hard to believe this will be us in 8 months!

It was exciting (and a bit nerve-wracking?) to see what is possible to achieve in the span of a fellowship. But what was most special about the night, for me, was a chance to connect with so many people working in the #civictech movement. The people working in this space are amazing: highly skilled individuals who care deeply about serving others and “using their powers for good”. The space is welcoming and friendly, where people with fancy titles and years of experience engage with greener folks like myself in a way that signals they truly believe they have as much to learn from you as you do from them. 

The vibe is open, critical, and curious - go figure that this is what it feels like when you get a bunch of do-gooder empaths in the room! I, for one, left the afterparty beaming that I am fortunate enough to get to learn and grow in this space.

Other exciting things that happened this week: 

- We planned our current sprint, which consisted of setting high level goals around finalizing our UX research plan and beginning to action it, as well as starting to really dig into the technical considerations of the project.

- We presented to a group of representatives from the IT Solutions team to start building our relationships with the people who will be continuing the building and management of our product after our fellowship is over. It was well-received and we’ve already got some exciting knowledge exchange and capacity building engagements planned!

- We met with the man/myth/legend that is Sean Boots at the Canadian Digital Service, to learn more about the challenges of product development in government and get some advice to help us mitigate blockers we may encounter. We’ve also got several meetings planned with other supporters like Sean in the upcoming weeks.

Thanks for following along! Happy weekend!