Civic Tech Field Guide
Sharing knowledge and productively growing the fieldTag: Format > books - (105)
Showing 105 Results
What Makes an Assembly? Stories, Experiments, and Inquiries
Belgium (België / Belgique / Belgien) 🇧🇪Weaving together the anthropological, aesthetic, and political aspects of assembly-making, What Makes An Assembly? explores the potential of assemblies to reimagine the way democracy is practised in contemporary societies.
Did you know hundreds of scientists have researched what makes activism effective?
Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better
United States of America 🇺🇸A bold call to reexamine how our government operates—and sometimes fails to—from President Obama's former deputy chief technology officer and the founder of Code for America.
This book analyzes how mainstream and new parties are building their digital platforms and transitioning from traditional (offline) organizations into the digital world
"From the historian Dan Bouk, a lesson in reading between the lines of the U.S. census to uncover the stories behind the data."
In an era of corporate surveillance, artificial intelligence, deep fakes, genetic modification, automation, and more, law often seems to take a back seat to rampant technological change.
In this groundbreaking work, Haochen Sun analyzes the ethical crisis unfolding at the intersection of technology and the public interest.
"Reclaiming Participatory Governance offers empirical and theoretical perspectives on how the relationship between social movements and state institutions is emerging and developing through new modes of participatory governance."
Research Methods in Deliberative Democracy is the first book that brings together a wide range of methods used in the study of deliberative democracy.
Deliberative Democracy in Asia
Australia 🇦🇺Book edited By Baogang He, Michael Breen, James Fishkin (2021)
The Wildcard Workbook
758 8th Ave Suite 300, New York, NY 10036The Wildcard Workbook: A Practical Guide for Jokering Forum Theatre is a resource for facilitators of all kinds looking for new ways to bring fun, creativity, and critical thinking into their work!
Hack Your Bureaucracy: Get Things Done No Matter What Your Role on Any Team
United States of America 🇺🇸In this "deeply empowering and practical book"(Cecilia Muñoz), two technology and innovation leaders reveal dozens of tactics that enabled them to accomplish seemingly impossible reforms in organizations of all types and sizes
Sobrevivendo nas Redes: Guia do Cidadão
Brazil (Brasil) 🇧🇷A free book on how to survive on social media networks
The Turing Way: Community-led guides for data science and open research
The Alan Turing Institute, Euston Road, London, UKAlan Turing has long proved a subject of fascination, but following the centenary of his birth in 2012, the code-breaker, computer pioneer, mathematician (and much more) has become even more celebrated with much media coverage, and several meetings, conferences and books raising public awareness of Turing's life and work.
The Propagandists' Playbook: How Conservative Elites Manipulate Search and Threaten Democracy
United States of America 🇺🇸How Conservative Elites Manipulate Search and Threaten Democracy, by Francesca Bolla Tripodi
Reorganise: 15 stories of workers fighting back in a digital age
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland 🇬🇧"In only a decade, the labour market has changed beyond all recognition - from zero-hour contracts to platform monopolies - meanwhile union memberships are at historic lows."
A collection of essays edited by Ana Brandusescu and Jess Reia featuring essays from participants of the AI in the City: Building Civic Engagement and Public Trust symposium that took place remotely on February 10, 2022.
Critical Media Literacy and Civic Learning
MassachusettsInteractive Explorations for Students and Teachers, by Robert W. Maloy, Torrey Trust, Allison Butler, & Chenyang Xu
In Close Up at a Distance, Laura Kurgan offers a theoretical account of these new digital technologies of location and a series of practical experiments in making maps and images with spatial data.
How to take advantage of technology, data, and the collective wisdom in our communities to design powerful solutions to contemporary problems
"US governments struggle to keep pace with rapidly advancing technologies and with the expectations of the public for governmental service delivery akin to what they experience in other aspects of their normal daily lives."
The hidden costs of artificial intelligence, from natural resources and labor to privacy and freedom
Book by Sarah Williams -- How to use data as a tool for empowerment rather than oppression.
A revealing look at how user behavior is powering deep social divisions online—and how we might yet defeat political tribalism on social media
The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook: Fully Integrating Online Service into Volunteer Involvement
Fully Integrating Online Service Into Volunteer Involvement
By Christopher Whitaker Edited by Daniel X. O'Neill
This book takes a close look at civic apps and general-purpose tech platforms and services.
A New City O/S: The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Governance (Brookings / Ash Center Series, Innovative Governance in the 21st Century)
A bold reassessment of "smart cities" that reveals what is lost when we conceive of our urban spaces as computers, by Shannon Mattern
Community Rules: Simple Templates for Great Online Communities
United States of America 🇺🇸A free e-book covering common patterns in open project governance
Julien Carbonnell's thesis, featuring case studies in Taiwan, Israel, and Estonia
The United Nations, Australia Post, and governments in the UK, Finland, Taiwan, France, Brazil, and Israel are just a few of the organizations and groups utilizing design to drive social change.
Get unprecedented access to thousands of databases. It's called Open Data, and it's revolutionizing business.
An anthology of visionary science fiction and speculative fiction written by organizers and activists.
Putting Technology in Its Place to Reclaim Our Urban Future
Opening the Government of Canada
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, CanadaThe Federal Bureaucracy in the Digital Age. By Amanda Clarke
A rallying cry for revolutionizing democracy in the digital age, Citizenville reveals how ordinary Americans can reshape their government for the better.
Edited by Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider: Ours to Hack and to Own, the rise of platform cooperativism, a new vision for the future of work and a fairer Internet.
Democracy for Realists assails the romantic folk-theory at the heart of contemporary thinking about democratic politics and government, and offers a provocative alternative view grounded in the actual human nature of democratic citizens.
Citizen Science: Innovation in Open Science, Society and Policy
Gower Street, London, UKIf you are a professional researcher who wants to learn more about how to get started with designing your citizen science project, this is a good place to start
Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons
487 Central Avenue, Mountain View, CA 94043“Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons” showcases over a hundred sharing-related case studies and model policies from more than 80 cities in 35 countries.
The Internet & Racial Justice, from the AfroNet to Black Lives Matter
This book is meant for public servants and people working inside government who want to connect with innovators and technologists outside of the bureaucracy.
Embracing Our Humanity to Maximize Machines
A powerful investigative look at data-based discrimination—and how technology affects civil and human rights and economic equity
2018 Book by Susan Crawford
This book is a resource for (and by) practitioners inside and outside government—from the municipal chief information officer to the community organizer to the civic-minded entrepreneur.
In a world in which fear and insecurity are being twisted into hate, and inequalities, xenophobia and authoritarianism are on the rise, a renewed municipalist movement is emerging to defend human rights, democracy and the common good. Fearless Cities is the first book written by and for the global municipalist movement.
by Hollie Russon Gilman. Democracy Reinvented is the first comprehensive academic treatment of participatory budgeting in the United States, situating it within a broader trend of civic technology and innovation.
How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass
Get email updates
Helpful Links
Reach Out
A project of
With support from
National Endowment for Democracy
Founding Organization
Civic Hall
Technology partner
Civic Tech Field Guide