On December 9, NDI will unveil DemTools 2.0, which upgrades and expands NDI’s existing suite of tools that promote democratic practices through the Internet, along with three innovative new applications for managing government petitions, crowdsourcing community problems, and open data, mapping and visualization.

If you are in Washington, D.C., we would like to invite you to join us for this event. RSVP here.

NDI Board Member Howard Dean, the former Vermont Governor and a pioneer in the use of technology in U.S. politics, will make remarks at the event.

The DemTools toolkit is designed to help empower civil society organizations, political parties and legislatures around the world by applying technology solutions to common problems:

• involving citizens in government decision-making;
• helping civil society groups organize in a digital world;
• better connecting elected officials with constituents;
• managing election data; and
• fostering civic dialogue through social media.

This new open-source initiative frees organizations and institutions from the time-consuming and costly effort of creating and developing their own technology solutions or using expensive commercial products. The scale and impact of DemTools project is virtually limitless.

The first generation of DemTools has been deployed by 82 organizations in 16 countries around the world in the last year. For example, political parties have used NDI’s Civi DemTool to manage contacts and improve their outreach to party members. DemTools are delivered with comprehensive training and support materials; and a recently published NDI guide, “Technology: A Planning Guide for Political Parties,” supplements DemTools 2.0 by providing practical advice on common pitfalls that political parties experience and potential pathways for success when implementing technology projects.

The tools have been tested in a broad range of country contexts. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, Belarus and Colombia, NDI’s Issues DemTool brings together the voices of politicians and citizens to discuss pressing social and political issues online. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Macedonia, and Ukraine, the CiviParty DemTool is used to assist the organizing effort of political parties.

We hope you will join us for the launch of this software toolkit that can impact democratic organizing in the digital age.

Don’t forget to RSVP at https://events.dem.tools.