Comparison of civic technology platforms

Civic technology is technology that enables engagement and participation, or enhances the relationship between the people and government, by enhancing citizen communications and public decision, improving government delivery of services and infrastructure. This comparison of civic technology platforms compares platforms that are designed to improve citizen participation in governance, distinguished from technology that directly deals with government infrastructure.

Platform types

Graham Smith of the University of Southampton, in his 2005 book Beyond the Ballot, used the following categorization of democratic innovations:^[1]

• Electoral innovations – "aim to increase electoral turnout"
• Consultation innovations – "aim to inform decision-makers of citizens' views"
• Deliberative innovations – "aim to bring citizens together to deliberate on policy issues, the outcomes of which may influence decision-makers"
• Co-governance innovations – "aim to give citizens significant influence during the process of decision-making"
• Direct democracy innovations – "aim to give citizens final decision-making power on key issues"
• E-democracy innovations – "use information technology to engage citizens in the decision-making process"

Comparison chart

Platform Name	Founder	Dates Active	Corporate Structure	Geography	Parent Company	Party Affiliation	Technology Used	Open Source	Platform Type	Software License	Primary Funders
CitizenLab	Wietse Van Ransbeeck, Aline Muylaert, Koen Gremmelprez[2]	September 2015[3] - Present	For profit[citation needed]	Brussels, Belgium[4]			Proprietary software	No	E-democracy innovation, Consultation innovation
Pol.is	Colin Megill, Christopher Small and Michael Bjorkegren	-Present	501(c)3	Seattle, WA				Yes	Deliberative Democracy	AGPL v3
Countable (app)	Bart Myers, Peter Arzintar[5]	July 2014 – Present[5]	For profit	San Francisco, California, United States		Non-partisan
Loomio	Ben Knight[citation needed]	Nov 1, 2012[citation needed] - Present	For profit[citation needed]	Wellington, New Zealand[citation needed]			Ruby, Javascript[6]	Yes	Deliberative Innovation	AGPL v3[7]	Crowdfunding[8]
DemocracyOS	Pia Mancini, Santiago Siri[citation needed]	2012[citation needed] - Present	Non profit[citation needed]	Palo Alto, California, United States[citation needed]	Democracy Earth Foundation	Net Party[9]	JavaScript[10]	Yes	Direct Democracy Innovation	GPL v3[11]	Y Combinator, Teespring[citation needed]
VotingWorks	Ben Adida	2018-Present	501(c)3	San Francisco, CA	n/a			Yes	Open-source voting system
GovTrack	Joshua Tauberer[12]	2003[13] - Present		Washington, District of Columbia, United States[citation needed]	Civic Impulse, LLC[14]		Django[15]	Yes			Crowdfunding
NGP Van	Mark T. Sullivan, Nathaniel Pearlman	1997–present[citation needed]	For profit[citation needed]	Washington, DC, United States[citation needed]		Democratic and Progressive Campaigns[citation needed]	Proprietary software	No	E-democracy innovation
OpenGov	Joe Lonsdale, Mike Rosengarten, Nate Levine, Zac Bookman[citation needed]	2012–present	For profit[citation needed]	Redwood City, California, United States			JavaScript, Ruby, Java, Python[citation needed]	Yes			Emerson Collective[citation needed]
Hustle	Perry Rosenstein, Roddy Lindsay, Tyler Brock[citation needed]	Dec 2014[citation needed]	For profit[citation needed]	San Francisco, California, United States[citation needed]			Proprietary software	No	Electoral Innovation		Social Capital (venture capital)
Resistbot	Jason Putorti, Eric Ries	2017–present	501c4	Saint Petersburg, Florida, United States[16]	Resistbot Action Fund	Non-partisan	Python, Amazon Web Services, RapidPro, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL	Yes[17]	Electoral innovations, Consultation innovations, Co-governance innovations, E-democracy innovations	CC0
LiquidFeedback	Andreas Nitsche, Jan Behrens, Axel Kistner and Bjoern Swierczek[18]	November 2009[19]		Berlin, Germany[20]	Public Software Group, Interaktive Demokratie, FlexiGuided GmbH[19]		Lua (programming language), PL/pgSQL	Yes	Deliberative Innovation	MIT License
TurboVote	Kathryn Peters, Seth Flaxman[citation needed]	2010–present [citation needed]	For profit[citation needed]		Democracy Works[21]		Proprietary software	No	Electoral Innovation
We The People	Obama administration	September 2011 – Present	Government Agency	Washington, DC, United States		Democratic Party	JavaScript, PHP, CSS[22]	Yes	Co-governance Innovation	GNU General Public License[22]	United States Government
Voatz	Nimit S. Sawhney[citation needed]	2014–present[citation needed]	For profit[citation needed]	Boston, Massachusetts, United States[23]			Go[24]	No	Electoral Innovation		Medici Ventures[citation needed]
Helios Voting	Ben Adida	2008–present[25]	Non profit				Python, JavaScript, HTML[26]	Yes	Direct Democracy Innovation	Apache License[26]
U Report	UNICEF Innovation[27]	May 2011 – Present[28]	Non profit	New York, United States	UNICEF		Python, HTML, CSS[29]	Yes	Consultation Innovation	GNU Affero General Public License[29]
Maji Voice	Water Services Regulatory Board (WASREB)	2012–present[30]	Government Agency	Nairobi, Kenya	Water Services Regulatory Board (WASREB)		Open Source[30]	Yes	Consultation Innovation	GNU General Public License[31]	World Bank Water and Sanitation Program[30]
Democracy 2.1	Karel Janeček	2013–present		Prague Municipal District, Czech Republic			Proprietary software	No	Direct Democracy Innovation
Secure Vote	Max Kaye, Nathan Spataro[32]	2016–present[32]		New South Wales, Australia[32]			Python, HTML, Shell,[33] Blockchain[32]	No	Direct Democracy Innovation	MIT License
Brigade	James Windon, Jason Putorti, John Thrall, Matt Mahan, Miche Capone[citation needed]	Jun 11, 2014[34] - May 1, 2019[35]	For profit	San Francisco, California, United States[36]	Brigade Media		Proprietary software	No	Electoral Innovation, Deliberative Innovation		Marc Benioff, Ron Conway, Sean Parker[37]

See also

• Politics portal
• Internet portal

• Comparison of Internet forum software
• Liquid democracy
• Open government