Organizing in Your Community: Easy Tech for Civic Engagement

Presidential elections are not the only time to get involved in politics or government. In fact, it’s the very events around and decisions by your local government that can also have a dramatic impact on your immediate community. There are plenty of ways that tech projects can make civic participation easier through mapping or just displaying information in an accessible way. Here’s a collection of projects that can serve as inspiration or blueprints in your neighborhood .

If you want to participate in your local government, the first thing you’ll want to do is keep track of the activities of a city council or other elected officials. Jenn Schiffer made a simple app that documents some of that for Jersey City using a Google Spreadsheet. She also provides instructions on how to make your own version of the app for your city. What’s extra helpful is that Glitch apps can be easily embeddable, so you could theoretically send what you make to your local government to on their websites, too.

One annoying part of living in a metropolitan area is that it can be difficult to get rid of specific kinds of waste, like electronics or furniture. You may not know where to drop it off, and you may not have access to a car. “London Waste”, a project created by the Mayor of London’s office, alleviates some of this problem with a map that shows all of the different locations for waste disposal in the city of London. By 2026, London is seeking to have no biodegradable or recyclable waste will be sent to landfill, a project that pairs nicely with this app.

Unfortunately information about your city can be difficult to obtain. Even for the digitally literate, local governments have not been known for having easy-to-navigate web pages. One useful solution to that is another project from Beckley, “SF Restaurant Scores” which shows a map of San Francisco with their health inspection scores and the ability to access more detailed information. Look how convenient it is to have that data at the touch of your fingers.

Speaking of maps, getting involved in political efforts may mean knowing activist campaigns in your area, too. “Campaign Locator” created by cartographer Victoria Beckley displays the various rent control campaigns happening in California housing activist groups and tenant unions.

*If you want to save any of these apps, check out our collection here. If you’re interested in another story about creating technology for civic engagement, check out this post from a Glitch engineer who made a simple extension that would help people support online protests.

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