NDItech | DemocracyWorks: A Blog of the National Democratic Institute

Choose Your Adventure: Hackathon Helps Build Smart Games for Democratic Development

Developers at AWS hackathon burn the midnight oil to create prototype games to teach democratic lessons.

Over 18 grueling hours, more than 200 developers at the ReInvent Conference in Las Vegas hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS) worked to solve tech challenges submitted by four non-profit organizations: UNICEF, NPR’s Marketplace, Donors Choose and NDI. NDI’s challenge to “design a framework for building story-driven text-based games that convey lessons in an engaging ‘choose your own adventure’ format,” drew more participants than any other project.

Throughout the hackathon -- an event in which a large number of people meet to engage in collaborative computer programming -- five teams worked to deliver functional prototypes of a game system. When it was all over, “Team 29” was declared the winner. The winning team and several other participants committed to bring the demo version to a fully-functional product in the coming months, which NDI will be able to use to enhance its programs.

“The Medium is the Message” for Relaunched NDItech Blog

Website design blueprint for redesigned NDItech blog.

On the NDItech team, one of our goals is to share what we learn and highlight the accomplishments of our partners. Our blog -- NDItech.org -- is our primary platform to accomplish that, but it is also a testing ground for improving the accessibility of online platforms across the Institute.

From Strategy to Tactics - Assessment and Planning Tips for Technology-Enabled Programs

NDI meets with staff of OutBox Hub in Kampala, Uganda.

The goal of a planning a technology program assessment trip is to produce a detailed plan to meet program objectives and a shared vision between key stakeholders -- including the DC office, the partners, the field office team and other collaborators -- on how to make it all happen. We also need to be able to make sure that the partner's priorities and needs are matched to the appropriate tools.

The Floor is Yours: Bosnia's New Online Citizen Engagement Platform

NDItech, NDI’s Technology Programs team, sat down via Google Hangouts with NDI’s Asja Kratovic, resident program officer in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), to discuss the recently released Imate Rijec website. The site brings together the voices of politicians and citizens on some of Bosnia’s most pressing social and political issues.

A Renewed Vision: DemTools 2.0

DemTools are a set of open-source solutions developed by NDI’s Technology for Democracy team (NDItech) to address some of democracy’s most common problems. The tools, which were released in August to NDI partners, the development community and general public, focus on scalability – providing advanced technologies to make their work more effective, while reducing maintenance and sustainability burdens. NDI recently received a renewed National Endowment for Democracy grant for the continued development and expansion of DemTools. In deciding where and how to allocate these funds, we reviewed current features and updated our roadmap for product development and version release timelines. We determined that better support, enhanced multilingual capacity and increased usability were priorities across all of the tools.

Q&A: Democracy, Technology and Young African Leaders

On Feb. 10, I took part in a three-day Facebook #YALICHAT with young African leaders – President Obama’s signature effort to invest in the next generation of African entrepreneurs, educators, activists and innovators. After introducing myself and my work in a blog post, I took questions and comments from the YALI Network centered on the role of technology in democracy. Topics included: bridging gaps between youth and politicians online; how technology can improve transparency and government accountability; taking political action; online security; election monitoring; and using technology to empower people to become more involved in politics.

Using New Technologies to Strengthen Democracy

A Tech Needs Girls volunteer conducts a lesson in writing computer code with girls in Accra. Credit: R. Agyare

Chris Spence, NDI's chief technology officer, offers this preview on issues he can discuss with YALI Network members in a February 10-12 #YALICHAT.