Where to find single-purpose tools
/Where to find single-purpose tools
While this guide provides a deep dive into participation platforms offering suites of tools, there's also an extended world of special purpose products built for more specific use cases. Many participation platforms include these features, as well, but sometimes you might want a simple tool. The Civic Tech Field Guide inventories all manner of participatory engagement tools, which you can find pointers to in the table below.
| Tool/Platform Category | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Civic forums | Online discussion platforms built to foster civic conversation and debate. | Consider.it |
| Communicating with the government | Digital communication channels between constituents and representatives, trying to improve the feedback loop. | Bogotá ta escucha |
| Communicating with the people | Tools and platforms that share official communications and democratic processes. | Common Measurements Tool |
| Debate | Tools that help map, enhance, and facilitate democratic debates. | Rhetoric |
| Deliberation | Platforms that assist participants in deliberating together over decisions. | DECID |
| Digital peacebuilding | Digital peacebuilding leverages technology to prevent conflict, promote social cohesion, and support peace processes through online platforms, data analysis, and digital communication tools. | Phoenix |
| Hotlines | Public service hotlines are dedicated phone lines provided by government agencies or nonprofit organizations that citizens can call to access various services, report problems, get information, or receive immediate assistance on a variety of issues, enhancing accessibility and responsiveness of public services. | Féministes contre le cyberharcèlement |
| Ideation | Platforms that invite citizens and residents to contribute their ideas, creativity, and perspectives to the governance process | Cap Collectif |
| Interactive Voice Response (IVR) | Interactive voice response (IVR) is a technology that bridges analog and digital experiences by allowing humans to interact with a computer through their voices and dialpad entries. It's used in many ICT4D projects where smartphone and desktop devices are not yet prevalent. | SEMA |
| Issue reporting | A subset of crowdsourced data collection, issue reporting platforms enable residents to notify their government(s) of items in need of attention, often municipal. | SeeClickFix |
| Kiosks | Interactive digital terminals placed in public spaces, which allow citizens to access various public services, provide feedback, obtain information, and engage with government initiatives, thereby enhancing public participation and service delivery while contributing to narrowing the digital divide. | Digital Neighborhood Bulletin Boards |
| Mapping tools | Tooling and utilities for making civic maps | SketchMap Tool |
| Meeting tech | Tech to facilitate and improve outcomes from interpersonal meetings, whether face to face or remote. | meet.coop |
| Neighborhood forums | Digital venues that promote conversation within geographically-defined communities. | smalltown |
| Online forums | Digital conversation hubs for conversations of civic import. They are often designed to facilitate constructive dialogues, but sometimes fail by attempting to creating new destinations rather than embrace existing community hubs. | Ethelo |
| Participatory budgeting | Collaboratively raising and allocating public funds | Danes Je Nov Dan |
| Participatory budgeting tools | Tools and platforms one can use to run participatory budgeting programs, where citizens and residents can decide how to allocate public funds, and co-develop projects. | CONSUL Democracy |
| Platform interoperability | There's no open data standard for participation platforms yet, but more and more platforms are experimenting with interoperability. Rather than rely on a single platform for your entire participation process, you could 'chain' together multiple tools to use each in a phase of a single program. That way you can leverage their unique strengths without being locked into a single solution. | Comhairle |
| Polarization | Projects that seek to reduce perceived political polarization through a variety of methods, like guided exposure to alternate viewpoints. | The Bridging Dictionary |
| Surveys & polling | Surveys are used to gather input, measure public opinion, and establish baseline understanding of demographics and other information about residents. | Civic Echo |
| Urban planning | Tools that seek to improve urban planning processes by digitizing them and making them more accessible to residents. | GAMA Platform |