# Five trends to watch in #civictech in 2020

> There’s never been a more important time to be good at what we do

URL: https://abhinemani.com/essays/2020/06/02/Five-trends-to-watch-in-civictech-in-2020/
Published: 2020-06-02
Author: Abhi Nemani
Tags: Civic Tech, Insights

---

!["2020: a look back and ahead" title slide](https://abhinemani.com/img/1____TI__8yaflBfo2bwXpmz2og__2x.jpeg)

I recently was asked to give a talk to [Code for Milwaukee](https://codeformilwaukee.org/) on their first anniversary. This happened to also by [my 10th anniversary](https://stlresponse.org/) in civic and government tech.

In honor of both, I put together my 5 top learnings from the last decade in the areas of technology, open data, community engagement, and service delivery.

A brief summary is below, and [the full deck is available on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/abhinemani_5-trends-for-civictech-govtech-in-the-activity-6673753214921293824-S8j8).

#### Low Code

![Slide: what are other low-code ideas? Airtable, Office 365](https://abhinemani.com/img/1__6c7ZEKoi__RD232ZN3__VF4A__2x.jpeg)

Focus on building tools that enable non-technologists (aka “poor man’s hackers) to get the job done. This means building not just an app — to say — map a set of open data, but a simple framework where anyone with enough enthusiasm could use your code to spin up their own.

Tools like [Jessica Lord’s SheetSee.js](http://jlord.us/sheetsee.js/) and [Derek Eder’s Map Template](https://derekeder.com/searchable_map_template/) have — in my anecdotal review — proven to have far greater utility, far wider adoption, and much deeper impact than most open source civic apps.

> Be better makers for the next generation of hackers.

![Sheetsee.js diagram: a spreadsheet feeding website tables and maps](https://abhinemani.com/img/1__igbzq77GSQPufSSPRy0BNQ__2x.jpeg)
![Derek Eder's searchable map template](https://abhinemani.com/img/1__Zc51tqa7Wc7uKfF36d9euw__2x.jpeg)

#### Open Data Beyond City Hall

![Slide: "If you build it they will come," crossed out](https://abhinemani.com/img/1__wCDfySfo5NBJ7kn8vdfFzg__2x.jpeg)

Find and highlight data coming from NGOs, businesses, and universities, leveraging the government’s role as a platform to rethink open data portals for a wider open data ecosystem.

The local government’s Open Data Portal has an oftener underutilized non-technical function: it can confer trust and reliability of community-sourced data.

And looking forward, there’s a new breed on open data technologies that serve less as “spreadsheets on the internet” and more as a platform, or middleware, bringing together all the data players in a “smart city.” ([Stae.co](https://stae.co/) is a good example of this new vision.)

![NBC LA article: lawyer warns of immigration scams after the DACA announcement](https://abhinemani.com/img/1__WY__K2XHGq3HuLIazYrs70Q__2x.jpeg)
![Map of immigration workshops in Los Angeles on Socrata](https://abhinemani.com/img/1__vaPgqIRJRqcvJ4MuDwhnyA__2x.jpeg)
![Immigration workshops dataset on the LA open data portal](https://abhinemani.com/img/1__McZCXnqnYAhYlT1D2qk__xw__2x.jpeg)

> Q: Where does the data people need live? NGOs? Universities? Business?… Everywhere.

#### Open Data Beyond City Limits

![Slide: (Better) open data, part 2: think regionally](https://abhinemani.com/img/1__zXc5RWHAbVvXPUYFEh__r7A__2x.jpeg)

Look towards enhanced regionalism for open data — as interagency coordination becomes even more regent in a COVID World — remembering that residents think of their lives and problems, not the city open data portal vs the county vs the state…

Not only do these regional data programs — such as those in [Western Pennsylvania](http://www.wprdc.org/) and [St. Louis](https://stldata.org/) — save the jurisdictions money, time, and staff time, they enable more broadly useful application development. (See the [STL COVID portal](https://stlresponse.org/) built by the STL Alliance.)

![Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center homepage](https://abhinemani.com/img/1__Aq__rYlWZOL7Gi__lm__U2dqg__2x.jpeg)
![St. Louis Regional Data Alliance "Our Story" page](https://abhinemani.com/img/1__n1jAQCqsEdGeBDwMgP9Bkg__2x.jpeg)

Pulling these two threads together — community data and regional programs — we can see a new model for open data that puts the **citizen experience** first, first for developers and designers, first for government officials and local business, and first for the communities they all serve.

#### Hacks & Hackers (Redux)

![Slide: Hacks and Hackers, rethink the fourth estate](https://abhinemani.com/img/1__QhQIyQ5THxQDokvC87dERA__2x.jpeg)

Collaborate with local journalists — or follow their lead — as the data rich projects both civic hacking groups and local news outlets as both share goals and limited capacity; make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

These collaborations can take the form of news outlets building their own civic apps (eg the [COVID resource finder by Chicago’s City Bureau](https://covid.citybureau.org/)), civic data scientists creating visualizations for data driven reporting, or civic-minded blogs and other publications shining a spotlight on the civic tech community.

> Hacks and hackers are fundamentally in the storytelling business.

![Chicago COVID resource finder](https://abhinemani.com/img/1__0KtCkOwKGZobWHncYtq9KQ__2x.jpeg)
![New York Times Learning Network: exploring the math of the coronavirus](https://abhinemani.com/img/1__1s8qiP__vKSbAg__qIGudSJA__2x.jpeg)
![Civic storytelling logos: Technical.ly, Civic Hall, StartupSac and Civicist](https://abhinemani.com/img/1__UBljWTClAYNO__rvksdWSow__2x.jpeg)

#### Digital Services as Default

![Bell curve: most governments sit between COBOL shops and digital service teams](https://abhinemani.com/img/1__Ni85MmU0tND99rCMEWlklw__2x.jpeg)

Few cities can afford a digital services team and very few actually have the hyperbolic antiquated systems outsiders decry: most fall somewhere in the middle.

Recognize that in-person service delivery is harder now more than ever, and use that as an opportunity to prioritize digital service delivery.

Governments can leverage the host of off-the-shelf tools (such as [CityGro.ws](https://citygro.ws)) and the internet’s wonderful ability to [loosely join, small pieces](https://medium.comsmall-city-pieces-loosely-joined-5202fb5a93e3) for a big impact.

![Slide listing digital services: 311, pet registration, parking permits and more](https://abhinemani.com/img/1__BB__KBtgJ__8mTvq__9k3__QAQ__2x.jpeg)

And in doing so, it’s vital to remember that governments do not have the luxury of catering to just one demographic or user type: it has to work for all of us.

#### It’s up to us.

![James Madison quote rendered in binary code, from Code for America](https://abhinemani.com/img/1__zBMRkZ03ZAumGEuoYqnw0Q__2x.jpeg)

There are a myriad of projects, insights, and learnings already from how civic technologists are playing a vital role already this decade; the Coronavirus demanded it. I will defer to those on-the-ground for their more informed points of view.

Instead I’ll close with a line from The West Wing I can’t get out of my head these days:

> There’s never been a more important time to be good at what \[we\] do.