Earlier this month, the National Democratic Institute rolled out a great set of online tools for political activists around the world. They designed this comprehensive update to their open-source Dem Tools package with organizers in the developing world in mind, meaning for instance that they took a mobile-first approach. The tools include:
- A CiviCRM package for supporter communication and management
- A data-manipulation and visualization package
- An elections-monitoring package
- A citizen petition feature, built on the model of the White House’s We The People platform
- A system to view politician’s views on issues
- A community-improvement module for citizen reporting of problems — a classic fix-my-pothole application
Great stuff, and it should help people across the globe take advantage of the kind of digital organizing that’s become commonplace in the U.S. To promote the launch, the NDI tech team held an event in DC on December 9th, with speakers including Howard Dean and Rep. Anna Eshoo. They also included a panel discussion with folks from Sunlight Labs, the White House, Amazon web services…and me!
Check out the video below to watch the event — I was a big fan of Dean’s section myself. Our panel covered a bunch of good topics, including a couple of questions that weren’t easy to answer. The panel kicks off soon after the 53 minute mark in the video below:
Look for more soon about the NDI political technology project I mentioned — we’ve had quite a few interesting developments here in the e.politics bunker that I haven’t had a chance to tell you about yet. Soon!
– cpd