Civic Tech Field Guide
Sharing knowledge and productively growing the fieldThe People > Build something > Design > Playbooks and design principles - (72)
Playbooks and collections of design principles give us an opportunity to codify and abstract the way in which we work to help others understand, adapt, and replicate on their own. Martin Wright at mySociety wrote this helpful definition of playbooks: What is a playbook? ‘Playbook’ is a word that’s used a lot these days, by tech and management people. They’ve borrowed it from the world of sports, where the idea of a book telling you ‘how to play’ is a more straightforwardly obvious concept. If you find this terminology a bit too hipster, though, you can think of them by the less trendy terms of ‘manuals’ or ‘toolkits’ — though a playbook does have the advantage of sounding like a lot more fun than a workbook. Whatever the name, what they aim to give you is a collection of repeatable plans and tactics for responding to typical challenges. As such, they can be absolutely invaluable as an internal company tool; and we think they can also help in sharing knowledge between organisations. In either case, a well-managed playbook would be easily available to employees, widely used and regularly updated.
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How would you explain "civic media" to someone who's never heard the term?
[W]e decided to create a field guide to share what we’ve learned about what really sustains a project: its governance.
JusticeBench
Stanford, CADiscover AI projects across the access to justice landscape, understand where they fit in the justice journey, and find data and evaluation tools to know if they work.
The UN Open Source Principles are comprised of eight guidelines and provide a framework to guide the use, development and sharing of open source software across the organization.
Defend and Recruit
North CarolinaDownload the playbook to learn how we built local defense networks, turned fear into power, and organized to step out of the shadows – into the light – to bring about a new day for all of us.
OneTeamGov Canada Pattern Library
Canada 🇨🇦The OneTeamGov Canada Pattern Library is a curated set of design, service and policy patterns and tools to help government teams across Canada deliver services.
Design for Delegation
McLean, VirginiaBeyond Self-Service: Design Patterns for Delegation-based Digital Services
![The [UK] Digital Data and Technology (DDaT) Playbook](https://ctfg-airtable.s3.amazonaws.com/screenshots/Screenshot 2025-09-17 at 3.46.34 PM.png)
The [UK] Digital Data and Technology (DDaT) Playbook
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland 🇬🇧This document sets out key policies and guidance for how digital projects and programmes are assessed, procured and delivered.
Downtown Revitalization Playbook
Appalachian MountainsYou want to support downtown redevelopment but aren’t sure where to start. This playbook is for you.
Digital Identities Decision Guide
194, 2nd C Cross Rd, Stage 2, Domlur, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560071This guide seeks to serve as a comprehensive toolkit to enable different parties to make informed decisions around proposed digital ID systems.
Meaningful Stakeholder Engagement in Public Procurement for Artificial Intelligence
Spain (España) 🇪🇸A playbook commissioned by Participation AI
Focus on Features
ColoradoMinimize digital harms through design, a guide for product managers and lawmakers.
Blueprint on Prosocial Tech Design Governance
United States of America 🇺🇸This Blueprint on Prosocial Tech Design Governance lays out actionable recommendations for governments, civil society, researchers, and industry to design digital platforms that reduce harm and increase benefit to society
The DPI Approach: A Playbook
India (Bhārat) 🇮🇳This DPI playbook is designed as a practical and public resource that low and middle-income countries (LMICs) in particular can utilize in building an inclusive and rights-based DPI.
Community Partnerships Playbook
DetroitHow to Create Equitable Partnerships between Technical and Community Experts
Productive Ways to Use GenAI for Civil Servants
2300 N Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20037This playbook is designed specifically for civil servants, offering practical guidance for using generative AI (GenAI) to help them perform their work more effectively and efficiently.
The Situate AI Guidebook: Co-Designing a Toolkit to Support Multi-Stakeholder Early-stage Deliberations Around Public Sector AI Proposals
Carnegie Mellon UniversityBy Anna Kawakami, Amanda Coston, Haiyi Zhu, Hoda Heidari, Kenneth Holstein
A toolkit for impact practitioners to build products, services & systems that center women.
A design toolkit for USAID staff on how to design inclusive digital technology interventions, written for work on global hunger but applicable in many other contexts.
Collaborative Data Patterns
Open Data Institute, 3rd Floor, 65 Clifton Street, London, EC2A 4JEThis guidebook helps people design and run projects that involve the collaborative maintenance of data
Civicspace.tech
Washington, DCA collection of approachable but well-researched primers on emerging tech and potential benefits and risks
UN HABITAT Digital Cities Toolkit
58 Victoria EmbankmentAn open source Policy Toolkit for cities to develop digital policies that put citizens at the center, tackle Sustainable Development Goals and make Governments more open, transparent, and collaborative.
Smarter Together
BrusselsVetted methods, key principles, inspiring stories and experts from around the world
GOV.UK Design System
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland 🇬🇧Use this design system to make government services consistent with GOV.UK. Learn from the research and experience of other service teams and avoid repeating work that’s already been done.
We provide resources to reimagine project-restricted giving
The Participation Playbook is an interactive guide to help you successfully advocate for and implement a participatory program for your government or community. It is a tool for people who want to open up government to meaningful and equitable community participation.
Improve your team's data knowledge and skills
Prosocial Design Network
New York City (NYC / New York, NY)A library of design interventions to encourage prosocial behaviors online
How local governments can serve people better through effective communications and digital services.
Corporate Civic Playbook
United States of America 🇺🇸A first-of-its-kind resource that defines corporate civic engagement, providing clear tools to help more companies become active players in strengthening the resiliency of our democracy
We designed Tactical Data Engagement to help cities go beyond a policy and portal, and facilitate opportunities for the community use of open data to improve residents’ lives.
18F Posters
GSA (General Services Administration), F Street Northwest, Washington, DCWell designed posters to hang in your gov office
California Design System
CaliforniaThe Design System makes it easy for state digital teams to build accessible, consistent, and performant services and products to meet Californians’ needs.
東京都オープン・ソース・ソフトウェア公開ガイドライン. Contribute to Tokyo-Metro-Gov/tokyo-oss-guideline development by creating an account on GitHub.
Principles for Digital Development
United Nations FoundationA set of guidelines that help development practitioners integrate established best practices into technology-enabled programmes.
A crowdsourced collection of personal stories, how-to articles, and resource lists on four major topics: Funding, People, Mission, and Operations + Tech.
Toolkit Navigator
EuropeThe Observatory of Public Sector Innovation's compendium of toolkits for public sector innovation and transformation, curated by OPSI and our partners around the world
A guide to engaging with your local civic tech community
Civic Tech Data & Collaborative framework
United States of America 🇺🇸The Civic Tech and Data Collaborative is a project of Living Cities, the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership, and Code for America that brought together local government officials, civic technologists, and local data intermediaries across seven communities.
A compilation of reflections, tools and methodologies with the capacity to program and activate Collective Intelligence processes with impact on the Territory.
Guides, case studies and resources for government & civil society on the "what, why & how" of open data.
Smart Colombus Playbook
Columbus, OHAs the winner of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Smart City Challenge, we’ve been offered a unique opportunity: $50 million in grant funding from the USDOT and Paul G. Allen Philanthropies to discover how we can accelerate human progress through open mobility.
Discovery Sprints
Washington, DCA “discovery sprint,” is a short, intense period of problem investigation.
A resource that provides guidance for designing ethically humane digital products through patterns focused on user well-being.
Open Internet for Democracy
455 Massachusetts Ave, NW, 8th Floor, Washington, DC 20001The Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) are facilitating an initiative to identify and promote internet norms and principles essential to democratic governance.
In this Playbook, we explore the evolution of the procurement function’s missions, from its original cost reduction role to risk management and to contribution to growth as a strategic partner.
US Web Design Standards
GSA (General Services Administration), F Street Northwest, Washington, DCDesign and build fast, accessible, mobile-friendly government websites backed by user research.
The ODI's Open Standards for Data Guidebook
Open Data Institute, 3rd Floor, 65 Clifton Street, London, EC2A 4JEOpen standards for data are reusable agreements that make it easier for people and organisations to publish, access, share and use better quality data. This guidebook helps people and organisations create, develop and adopt open standards for data.
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Civic Tech Field Guide