DemTech: Our Blog

Afghanistan Election Results Site Raising Questions - As Designed

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One of the key goals of our AfghanistanElectionData site is to make the election process more transparent. The site combines raw election results with data from several sources, then provides…

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No More Smoke-Filled Backrooms: Leveraging Tech for Transparency & Accountability

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Black and white photo of people sitting around small card table.

In many parts of the world, countries are taking first-time steps to make their governments more open and accountable. Yesterday, NDI had the opportunity to host participants under the auspices of the Department of State's International Visitor…

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It’s 10:00. Do you know where your data is?

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So you wanna secure your organization. You’ve thought about the appropriate balance of security and complexity for your team. You’ve taken steps to clean up your computer and lock down your network. Whew! Mission Accomplished, right?

Sadly…

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Are "Sustainable" TechDev Approaches Actually Hindering Development Partners? A Mini NDI Case Study

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My visit to Macedonia last week for the eDemocracy conference presented an opportunity to check in on a long term project that our NDItech team has been involved with since 2005 - a little Access database…

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Internet at Liberty 2010: NDItech goes to Budapest

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Internet at Liberty 2010

For the past 3 days I’ve been in Budapest at the Google/CEU ‘Internet at Liberty 2010’ conference, learning from and talking to some very clever people working…

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Is Tech a Postive for Democracy?

There is a lot to say about the role technology plays in democracy and democratic development. The US State Department's focus on internet freedom and the wider 21st Century Statecraft initiative that Secretary Clinton announced in January 2010,…

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HTML: The Universal Language

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Just back from a trip to Erbil, Iraq. NDI is working with the Iraqi parliament on a new project, and one of my main roles was finding local coding wizards to build the software.

I was impressed…

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Leadership on the Lake – Macedonians Win with Tech Cooperation

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When introducing IT initiatives into legislatures or about any other organization, the importance of good leadership and "buy-in" from the top is widely recognized as a key to successful adoption. It certainly was a recurring theme by several of…

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The Challenges of High Tech, e.g. Bikes

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Nicholas Kristoff wrote a good story in the Grey Lady on the power of bikes to transform lives in Africa.

It's a nice Kristoff-style human interest piece. What really intrigued me was his comment on…

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Broadcast is Technology Too

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When we talk about technology for development, older technologies tend to get lost in the shuffle. Radio and television just aren’t sexy the way that mobile and mapping are – we know them too well to get exercised about the possibilities. Too…

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