This was presented by Kate Krontiris (Omidyar
Network, USA) at the Impacts of Civic Technology Conference (TICTeC2016) in Barcelona on 27th April. You can find out more information about the conference here: https://www.mysociety.org/research/tictec-2016/
SOQL 201 for Admins & Developers: Slice & Dice Your Org’s Data With Aggregate...
The State of Civic Tech Impact in the US
1. The State of Civic Tech Impact
in the United States
TICTeC 2016 || Barcelona || April 2016
Kate Krontiris || on behalf of the Omidyar Network Governance and Citizen Engagement Initiative
4. If you had a great idea for
improving civic life in the
United States, how would
you know if it had ultimately
succeeded?
5. About the Project
In the fall of 2015, the Omidyar Network's Governance & Citizen
Engagement team wanted to understand more deeply:
● how different civic tech constituencies conceptualize their
impact,
● what indicators they use to measure that impact, and
● which data sources they use for measurement.
6. Research Purposes
● Internal: to improve the way Omidyar is measuring progress
and impact within its own civic tech portfolio
● External: to share what we learn with others in our
community, so that we may have shared insights into our
work
7. Research Questions
1. How do civic tech entities in the U.S. measure their own impact?
○ What problems do they see themselves solving?
○ What goals do they hold in addressing those problems?
○ What activities are they implementing to achieve those goals?
○ What outcomes are they tracking as indication of progress?
○ How do they define “impact” in their work?
○ What metrics are they using to measure that impact?
○ What data sources are they using for their metrics?
2. What gaps exist – both for these organizations individually and at the sector
level – between indicators we would want to be measuring and indicators we
are actually measuring?
8. Methodology
Literature / Best practices review Interviews with 65 people at 42
organizations; SF, NYC, Boston,
Virtual
9. Many thanks to our participants
Foundations
Hewlett
Goldhirsh
Knight
MacArthur
Ford
Democracy Fund
Rita Allen
Non-Profit
Practitioners
Tumml
Code for America
Public Agenda
SIM Lab
Fuse Corps
mySociety
Center for Technology
and Civic Life
Democracy Works
Sharp Insight
Public Policy Lab
ioby
Smart Chicago
Collaborative
Ciudadano Intelligente
Government
18F
Boston MONUM
Large City Technology
Official
Tech Companies
Google - Social Impact
Partnerships
Microsoft - Civic
Engagement
Anonymous
A large technology
company
Venture Capital
Andreesen Horowitz
Union Square Ventures
Dundee Venture Capital
Urban.us
New Media Ventures
Issue Experts
New American Foundation
Deliberative Democracy
Consortium
Urban Institute
MIT Media Lab
CIRCLE, Tufts
Huffington Post
Pew
NYU Gov Lab
For-Profit
Practitioners
Brigade
Change.org
Aunt Bertha
Civic Hall
9
12. What might help
● Help organizations “see” each other’s
frameworks
● Program discussions of impact in civic tech
convenings
● Facilitate peer learning across the sector
13. #2
It is hard to deliver
impact and measure it
at the same time
14. What might help
● Invest in organizations to do impact research
● Make research resources available to smaller
organizations via “research capacity fund,”
akin to the Knight Prototype Fund
16. What might help
● Support coordinating bodies to draw connections
between problems, approaches, solutions – to chart
larger system change
● Facilitate open dashboard of organizational metrics,
sharing learnings, publishing case studies
18. What might help
● Convene stakeholders to reflect on values
and develop shared, standard, practical
measures of impact
● Encourage funders to be more transparent
about their processes, initiatives, and
investments
19. #5
More discernable impact will
emerge when the field aligns
itself more clearly in service
of societal goals
20. What might help
● Experiment by narrowing to specific
verticals (ex. “health,” “safety and
justice”)
21. Moving forward, we need ...
Peer learning opportunities
Long-term perspective
More robust impact capture
and communication