April 18, 2018 by Beth Simone Noveck

With rates of trust in government at all-time lows, the legitimacy and effectiveness of traditional representative models of urban lawmaking, typically dominated by political party agendas and conducted by professional staff and politicians working behind largely closed doors, are called into question. But technology offers the promise of opening how lawmaking bodies work to new sources of expertise and opinion and of making lawmakers accountable to the public more than just on Election Day. …

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April 14, 2017 by Andrew Young, Stefaan Verhulst

The term data collaborative refers to a new form of collaboration, beyond the public-private partnership model, in which participants from different sectors (including private companies, research institutions, and government agencies) exchange data to create new public value and solve public problems. Several of society’s greatest challenges — from addressing climate change to public health to job creation to improving the lives of children — require greater access to data, more collaboration…

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February 02, 2017 by Geoff Mulgan

Collective intelligence is a newish term for an old topic. It describes how intelligence functions at large scales: how teams or meetings do or don’t make the most of their members, through to how whole societies solve problems. The phrase was first used in the 19th century but has been given much greater prominence recently thanks to the spread of digital tools. There’s relatively little literature on collective intelligence as such, but there is a very broad literature of related topics, f…

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December 07, 2016 by Erik Johnston

Policy informatics is the transdisciplinary study and application of how computation and communication technology leverages information to better understand and address complex public policy and administration problems and realize innovations in governance processes and institutions. Rapid advancements in information, computation, and communication technology continue to proliferate society and become increasingly embedded in our everyday activities, transforming how we learn, communicate…

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December 07, 2016 by Rebecca Rumbul

mySociety’s vision is for citizens around the world to feel empowered to interact efficiently, effectively and meaningfully with their governments and decision-makers using low cost and user-friendly civic technology. We want to enable citizens to communicate through accessible means, to solve their problems and to get what they are entitled to from institutions.

We believe that strong democratic accountability and a thriving civil society are vital to our common welfare, and that these cann…

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