This Surgery is part of mySociety's TICTeC Labs programme, which aims to discuss and tackle some of the biggest challenges facing the global civic tech/digital democracy sector.

Making civic tech as accessible to as many people as possible is always a consistent, common challenge amongst the civic tech sector. Therefore, this topic has been identified by the TICTeC Steering Group as something the TICTeC Labs programme should tackle, so as a global community we can help each other improve our services.

During this Surgery, we will hear about the challenges of ensuring civic tech tools are accessible and inclusive from practitioners from across the world, as well as their solutions and ideas to tackle these. There will be ample opportunity for attendees to also provide their feedback on issues they have faced, and their solutions and ideas.

The Surgery will also feature reflections from civic tech researchers, to give perspectives on any existing evidence or research ideas on the topic that might be beneficial. These insights will then be used by the subsequent TICTeC Action Lab on the topic, which will work together to commission work to help tackle common challenges.

After not being able to meet as a global community in-person since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the aims of Civic Tech Surgeries are to build on TICTeC's history of bringing the global civic tech community together and facilitate the exchange of relevant and timely research, lessons learnt, successes, failures, ideas and code amongst the civic tech sector globally, so ultimately, civic tech tools are more effective.

What is TICTeC?

TICTeC stands for ‘The Impacts of Civic Technology Conference’, and since 2015 mySociety has convened an international cohort of researchers, practitioners, policymakers, philanthropists and tech giants to examine the effectiveness of digital interventions to enhance public participation, democracy, transparency and accountability.

TICTeC started as an in-person conference once a year, but has now expanded into a year-round programme of activities and events to discuss and tackle some of the biggest challenges facing the global civic tech/digital democracy sector. The aim of the TICTeC Labs programme is to grow the civic tech evidence base, address issues and challenges facing the sector, and enhance the effectiveness and potential impact of civic tech projects.

Who is this event for?

Anyone interested in the use and effectiveness of digital tools to enhance public participation, democracy, transparency and accountability.

We think the event will be of particular interest to civic tech practitioners and researchers, elected government representatives, civil servants, technology companies, funders and software developers.

Further info

Joining instructions (we'll be using Zoom) will be sent with your confirmation email once you register. Please direct any questions about this event to Gemma Moulder at gemma@mysociety.org.

Attendees may need to register for a free Zoom account and download their software. To understand more about how Zoom uses your data, please read their Privacy Policy in advance.

This online event is guided by our Code of Conduct. By registering for this event, you agree to abide by this Code of Conduct. Should anyone violate this they will be removed.

The event will be recorded.

By registering, you consent to receiving communications from mySociety about this event, both before and after, and you agree to the sharing of your name, organisation & title with the organiser mySociety.

The information you provide when registering for an event will be retained by mySociety and will be used to record attendance at the event. To understand more about how mySociety uses your data, please see our Privacy Policy.

For details of future TICTeC events, please see sign up for updates.

Accessibility & inclusion

Captioning & Slides: The event will take place on Zoom, with automatic captioning through Otter.Ai.

Recording: The event will be recorded and published on the TICTeC website and our YouTube channel after the session. The recording will include subtitles.

Minutes of the meeting will be published on the TICTeC website after the session.

If you have further access needs to fully participate in this event please email gemma@mysociety.org and we'll do our best to support this.