New mySociety research: Parliament & The People - How digital technologies are shaping democratic information flow in Sub-Saharan Africa

[Gemma Moulder]

**Apologies for cross-posting**

Hello everyone, 

Here at mySociety we have just published our latest research report: 

Parliaments & The People: How digital technologies are shaping democratic information flow in Sub-Saharan Africa

Access the report in various formats here. 

Over the past two decades, Civic Tech has been seen as a panacea for low democratic engagement — but what works in one culture or landscape doesn’t always translate to another. Simple, avoidable errors, such as making websites that are too heavy for the average citizen to access on limited mobile data packages, can be the making or breaking of an expensive project.

This report sets out important considerations for all those funding or building digital tools for parliamentary monitoring and democratic engagement, to ensure that they achieve the social impact they hope for.

Based on interviews with 65 politicians, civil servants and activists involved in democratic engagement across Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda, we make six headline recommendations:

1 - Conduct thorough scoping exercises in-country before committing to fund, build or implement a specific solution, and use the intelligence gathered to inform the final product.

2 - Work with in-country partners that have a good working relationship with their parliament, and ensure the digital tool is integrated into both their regular work and future discussions with parliament about improving civic engagement

3 - Make peace with solutions that aren't necessarily replicable, because a good digital platform that is built to be specifically appropriate to each country's unique governance structure will likely be better used and have greater longevity than platform structures replicated wholesale from other jurisdictions.

4 - Ensure that comprehensive, good quality, data sources are identified before trying to build anything, because poor or inconsistent data is one of the most common issues that threatens the operability of digital tools for parliamentary monitoring.

5 - Ensure ongoing, stable funding for maintenance and growth, and ensure this encompasses both development and non-development work, as without this, the platform will rapidly become out of date, and is likely to fall into obsolescence.

6 - Integrate digital tools as much as possible with relevant social media platforms, as shareable and user-friendly content is likely to be disseminated much more widely through these channels, than through visits to the tool itself.

We'd love to hear any comments or feedback on the research, so do feel free to share that with us. 

And a reminder - if you've done research on civic tech projects we'd love to hear about it at our annual The Impacts of Civic Technology Conference (TICTeC), which will be in Paris on 19th and 20th March. Our call for proposals/session proposals is open now until 11th January 2019, so do please submit your research and ideas and join us! 

All the best,

Gemma. 

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Gemma Moulder (née Humphrys)

Events Manager / Alaveteli Partnerships Manager 

mySociety | mysociety.org