Technology Tools

KoboToolbox is a free and open source platform for the collection, management, and visualization of data.

Decidim is an open-source citizen participation platform that allows governments to empower people to participate in the policy process. The platform was first used in Barcelona and has since been utilized in over 30 countries. Decidim is a complex platform with a wide variety of features. It can be configured to allow citizens to suggest policy proposals, comment on pending legislation, vote on implementing initiatives. It can also be used to host meetings, conduct surveys, facilitate participatory budgeting processes, map issues, and organize citizen assemblies.

Polis is a platform for facilitating discourse on an issue. It was designed to help overcome disagreements and find consensus by mapping out the positions of different groups and finding common ground while highlighting the main areas of dissent. Users go through and agree or disagree with a series of statements, with the ability to submit their own statements afterwards for others to agree or disagree with. The platform then uses artificial intelligence to analyze users and organize them into several main groups based on their responses, and it identifies the questions on which there was the most agreement or disagreement. Polis is ideal for governments or civic organizations looking to facilitate discussion and gather information about citizens' views on a policy or issue is a constructive way. It has also been used as a precursor to in-person policy discussions by allowing facilitators beforehand to identify the main groups and factions around an issue. The tool is easy to set up without any technical expertise and new “conversations” can be created for free on the https://pol.is website. Conversations can then be embedded on other websites if desired.

Your Priorities is a tool for citizen engagement designed to gather feedback on a variety of different topics. It allows users to post and vote on different ideas, and can be used in a variety of ways from identifying problems for the government to fix, to brainstorming ideas for new policies and initiatives to implement. The tool can be used by a government, political party, or civil society organization to gather citizen feedback and facilitate discussion and deliberation on policy issues.

ODK Collect is an Android data collection app used for collecting structured data. The app uses an open data standard which means it can be used with various databases (for example ODK, KoboToolbox, or Apollo). Administrators set up a form or questionnaire in the database using question types such as multiple-choice, open-ended, image, or geolocation. Users then download the app, connect with the database by inputting their credentials and database’s url, and are then able to download copies of the forms from the database. They can then fill these forms out, edit them, and when completed submit them back to the database where they can be counted and analyzed.

Bitwarden is a digital password manager. Such systems allow you to set up secure vaults to store long, unique passwords for all your accounts without needing to remember them each individually. If properly secured and used, this allows individuals and organizations to enhance their account security by using strong passwords overall. Bitwarden is an open-source tool that has a good free-tier, but also offers paid plans with additional features for experienced users and teams/organizations.

A crowdmapping system that empowers citizens to flag problems in their communities. NDI hosts Fix My Streets for partners through its DemCloud cloud-hosting service. The NDI-hosted version of Fix My Streets is sometimes called Fix My Community because it can be used to report more than just problems with streets.

OpenEdX is an open-source learning management system (LMS). The platform allows administrators to create digital courses for online and remote learning.

A contact relationship management (CRM) platform that has the ability store, track and segment large volumes of contact data and use it to take actions, like send messages via SMS and email. NDI hosts CiviCRM (or Civi for short) for partners through its DemCloud cloud-hosting service.

Many organizations rely on information collection in their work, whether in the form of notes and images or structured data collected using forms. Tella provides a data collection app designed for security from the ground up, making it an excellent choice for those doing human rights abuse documentation, working in sensitive environments, or who are particularly concerned about privacy. Tella can be connected to a cloud-based server for automatic uploading of information when online.