Democracy is going digital. Let’s explore the implications during Civic Tech Month

This year, you might’ve filled out the census online, registered to vote online and paid a water bill online. Notice a common thread? Government services are increasingly tech-enabled.

Civic tech can be a nebulous term, but we think of it as the ways technology and tools are used by local governments to better serve their constituents. This Civic Tech Month — September’s theme of our 2020 editorial calendar — will see Technical.ly reporters diving deep into topics like open data, civic hackathons, 311 apps, smart cities, online voter registration and public-private collaboration.

Some big questions we’ll seek to answer through our reporting this September: How are Code for America brigades connecting volunteer devs to meaningful civic engagement work during a time of such urgent need? How do concerns about census data collection play out locally? What are local governments’ tech stacks? How can open data be better leveraged by communities? How are local governments working to ease the digital divide, especially as many students start the 2020-21 school year virtually? And why would a technologist choose to work for their city over a privately owned tech company?

And some related stories we’ve published recently:

• CompStat helped lower Wilmington’s crime rate — but what the heck is it, exactly? (Delaware)
• HACK Baltimore and Code for Baltimore are partnering to create a framework for civic tech success (Baltimore)
• City gov is looking for tech-enabled solutions to promote tap water use (Philly)
• Digital equity funding may get cut in DC. Here’s what you need to know (DC)

Have an idea for a story, or an impactful initiative we should look into, or a report we should read, or an expert we should talk to this month? Want to write a guest post on a relevant topic? Let us know:

Heads up: This month, we’ll also be hosting our reimagined, all-virtual Philly Tech Week 2020 presented by Comcast from Sept. 21 through 25. Check out the latest event updates here.