DemTech: Our Blog
The [not so] Secret Ingredients to Tech-Enabled Programs
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The Golden Triangle
I've written a related post on this topic before, but my recent talk at …
Democracy: A Googley Sort of Value?
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Jared Cohen, the new director of Google Ideas, stopped by NDI this week. He's been something of a perpetual motion machine of late, zipping around the country and world,…
Read MoreYou See Names, We See Data
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A few months ago I visited Haiti to learn about opportunities for NDI partner organizations to use mobile phones in community organizing, and met with volunteers…
Read MoreData for the Decisionmakers: Afghan Election Edition
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NDI does some cool stuff, but for real influence you can't top good ol' Uncle Sam. One of the most important audiences for NDI's AfghanistanElectionData.org visualization tool is policymakers at the State Department, USAID, and on Capitol Hill.…
Read MoreTech-Enable Your Ground Game - Avoid Tech-Driven Approaches
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At NDITech, we use the term "tech-enabling" our democracy programs in contrast to what we sometimes see as “tech-driven” approaches.
A tech-enabled program uses technology as an enabler by combining with effective traditional program…
Speed Matters – Another look at Afghan Elections
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Preliminary Results for the Wolesi Jirga Elections are now up.
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Read MoreYouTubeing Human Rights Violations
As I was saying, YouTube can be a great way to share video of human rights abuses among all the dreck of cats on treadmills. I wanted to… Read More
Tech Leapfrogs Citizen Engagement - but Weakens Democracy?
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A couple weeks ago I accompanied our Governance Director, Scott Hubli, to the International Council for Information Technology in Government Administration (ICA) conference…
Read MoreData Envy
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The Uganda Election Commission recently launched their National Voters' Register Online system - with the assistance of our friends over at IFES - that allows citizens to…
Read MoreYouTube is not for activists. This is a good thing.
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YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms are not exclusively - or primarily - a tool for political activism, despite the sense you'd get from folks like us writing about them. This is a good thing. People living in closed societies are mostly just… Read More