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IRI: Civictech101 Civic/GovTech 101

Civic/GovTech 101


IRI
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About This Course

This course will provide an overview of core skills related to launching, sustaining and scaling a civic or govtech initiative. Designed to educate and upskill actors of all backgrounds and skill levels - from civil society organizations, early tech experts, government officials, etc - this course will equip participants with an understanding of the basics of civic and govtech work. Trainings will be provided by experts from around the world, and the course will include participation in live training sessions, access to supplementary reading materials and recordings of each training session.

Course content will include an introduction to digital governance 101, an overview of how modern tech is built, a session on defining a problem that can be solved by a tech solution, trainings on using data - especially open source data - to build or advance civic/govtech efforts, and many others. At the conclusion of this course, participants will be invited to submit proposals for the funding of the launch, maintenance or scaling of a civic/govtech effort to strengthen governance.

Course material will become available to registered participants on Friday, October 1 with the first class scheduled on October 5th at 11:00am ET. The course will span six weeks with two live trainings held each week (see below for training topic, date and time for the first four sessions).

Requirements

Willingness to ask questions and share your own past experiences and lessons learned in working on or engaging with civic/govtech work.

Course Trainers to Include (Among Others):

Course Staff Image #1

Cyd Harrell

Cyd Harrell is a UX researcher, product manager and author of A Civic Technologist's Practice Guide. Cyd has helped US city, county, federal, and state agencies unlock the power of technology to serve constituents. She has worked independently, with the Center for Civic Design, Code for America, and 18F. Over the years, Cyd has been a mentor and leader to many people in the field, and she is proud to have served as the first chief of staff of 18F.

Course Staff Image #2

Guilherme D. F. Dominguez

Lawyer, professor and entrepreneur. Cofounder and CEO of BrazilLAB, an innovation govtech hub focused on connecting the public sector with B2G startups through its acceleration program. He has more than 15 years of experience in legal business practice, specially with startups, as well as in consulting activities in the public sector.

Course Staff Image #2

Beth Noveck

Beth Noveck is a professor at Northeastern University, where she directs the Burnes Center for Social Change and its partner project, The Governance Lab (The GovLab) and its MacArthur Research Network on Opening Governance. The author of Solving Public Problems: How to Fix Our Government and Change Our World (Yale Press 2021), she is also Core Faculty at its Institute for Experiential AI (IEAI) at Northeastern.

Frequently Asked Questions

What web browser should I use?

The Open edX platform works best with current versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Safari.

See our list of supported browsers for the most up-to-date information.

What other tools do I need to use to participate in this course?

Training sessions will be hosted on Zoom and additional conversations will be held via a supporting Facebook Group. Once you register for the training session, you will be invited to join the Facebook Group.

First Four Training Topics

Scheduled Date/Time

1.  Digital Government 101

To cover:

  • What are the stakes?

  • What is different about governing in an era with pervasive digital technologies?

  • What are the values, outcomes and goals of civic/govtech? How are they different than consumer technology?

October 5th at 11:00am ET

2.  Problem Definition: How to Tell What’s a Good Problem for a Tech Solution and What’s Not

  •   How to define a problem statement

  •  How to understand a problem, including who is affected by the problem

  • How to think about defining a problem by the metrics you can use to determine impact 

October 7th at 11:00am ET

3.  How Modern Tech is Built

  • What is a digital product?

  • What is the stack? What happens at each layer and what skills are involved in each?

  • What is data? How is it collected?

  • What are databases? Websites? APIs, etc?

  • How does modern tech intersect with legacy technology? 

October 12th at 10:00am ET

4. User Research and Human Centered Design (including inclusivity)

  • What is human centered design and why is it so important?

  • What is user research and how can you do it?

  • How to craft design values based on your user research?

  •  How to work with a design vendor (or staffer) to reflect your user research?

  •   Strategies and best practices for piloting and testing what works with your intended users 

October 14th at 10:00am ET

  1. Course Number

    Civictech101

  2. Classes Start

  3. Estimated Effort

    approximately 3 hours/week
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