The Technology for Transparency Network [1] is thrilled to announce the start of the publication of our second phase of research. Beginning with five cases — Accountability Initiative [2] in India, Amatora mu mahoro [3] in Burundi, Democrator.ru [4] in Russia, Excelências [5] in Brazil, and Mam Prawo Wiedzieć [6] in Poland — we will be posting approximately 30 new cases over the coming weeks.
We're also excited to announce a new feature on the Technology for Transparency site: over the summer, we've revised the way we categorize our case studies to make exploring the site and browsing the interviews more engaging. The projects we interviewed are complex and multifacted: for example, Dinero y Política [7] (Money and Politics) in Argentina focuses on campaign finance; however, because of the type of technological tools it uses and its approach to financial data, it could also be considered an example of budget monitoring.
Our new categorization system lets visitors to the site explore the case studies through four different lenses:
- The actor(s) whose actions the projects target (for example, the legislative branch of government).
- Donors [8]
- Executive Branch [9]
- Judicial Branch [10]
- Legislative Branch [11]
- Media [12]
- Political Parties [13]
- Private Sector [14]
- The function(s) said actors perform (for example, elections, budgets, or government service delivery).
- Budgets [15]
- Elections [16]
- Extractive Industries/Natural Resource Governance [17]
- Government Services [18]
- The type of technology tools they use (for example, mobile tools or data collection tools).
- Data collection [19]
- Data visualization [20]
- Connect and engage (social media) [21]
- Mobile [22]
- Traditional (print and broadcast) [23]
- The project's scale (national, municipal, etc.).
- Neighborhood [24]
- Municipal [25]
- Sub-national [26]
- National [27]
- International [28]
The “Quick Look” section at the top of each case study lists the categories for that case — have fun clicking around to see what other projects fall into those categories!
The Quick Look feature at the top of each case study lets you browse our case studies by multiple categories.
We welcome your feedback on these cases, and the cases we'll be publishing throughout the month. Please feel free to leave comments on individual interviews, to message us on Twitter (in @techtransparent [29] in English; @transparentech [30] in Spanish/Portuguese), or to drop us a line on our Facebook page [31]. We look forward to hearing from you!
Next week: new cases from India, Russia, the Philippines, and East Africa!