mySociety DUPE

UK Citizens Online Democracy, or mySociety, provides technology, research, and data to help people to be active citizens in over 40 countries. mySociety will develop and deploy three technology platforms that enable citizens to submit freedom of information requests, seek responses from their legislative representatives, and make service requests of their local governments. Additionally, mySociety will explore the role of civic technology to address the climate crisis.

UK Citizens Online Democracy, or mySociety, is an organization that develops technological solutions to improve how governments respond to citizens. The organization has been operative for more than ten years and their tools are being used throughout Europe, Africa, and Latin America. This grant would contribute to developing increased in-house capacity for research, evaluation, and learning. The research would help refine how mySociety operates and would also be shared with the field to inform similar initiatives that seek to use technology as a tool to improve how citizens engage with governments.

This grant to UK Citizens Online Democracy, or mySociety, builds on previous research on the effects of civic technologies on behaviors of citizens and public officials. During this grant period, mySociety will focus on inclusive participation and government responsiveness to requests from citizens, using platforms like Alaveteli, which tracks access to information requests, and FixMyStreet, which enables municipal governments to track and respond to service delivery complaints from citizens.