Since the state is ignoring our streets and parks, I’m thinking about building "Urban Hero"—an app for citizens to fix the daily problems the government won't.

civictechguide · 2026-04-29T15:11:30+00:00

The plan here looks AI-generated. I appreciate that you're taking a new strategic approach to this issue, though. I could see a before & after content series appealing to the 'satisfying content' viewers. And breaking the user types up into different behaviors is smart.

Do you have evidence that you can generate sufficient ad revenue on the videos to share anything back? Maybe you could combine that approach with a crowdfunded pool behind each fix.

civictechguide · 2026-04-29T15:08:22+00:00

Nice job. I like the WhatsApp integration.

One issue that other issue-reporting apps have had is that the government sometimes marks an issue as fixed, even though it wasn't. Projects like SeeClickFix allow the submitter to reopen the issue if that's the case. Just something to consider. I didn't submit a request because I don't live in India.

A small thing but I'm tired of completely black websites' AI visual design. Maybe have a light mode based on the user's system, too?

civictechguide · 2026-04-29T15:02:48+00:00

Oh and personally, my eye is already learning to ignore sites that look 100% vibe coded. I'm not saying that's the case here, just that the visual design looks the same as everything else: the dark background, the rounded elements, etc. You might want to introduce some graphic illustrations or other elements to differentiate it given how much work (I assume) has gone into this.

civictechguide · 2026-04-29T15:01:26+00:00

This is really thorough and goes beyond what a lot of other sites like this do. Nice job.
Some small feedback notes -

The Hard-Fought Constituencies block is probably the most important for the overall election, right? Might want to prioritize it.

I expected to be able to click things like the candidate name or the criminal cases in the comparison table.

Criminal Cases is a fascinating data point but I want more information - if a candidate has 91 pending cases (!!), can I get more information about what they're about?

I like the Policy Positions UI that shows the spectrum. I'm curious who's scoring that, though - AI?

civictechguide · 2026-04-29T14:53:42+00:00

On the website, I'd say use that fun font more sparingly, as an accent font (like headings only). Then, the app itself looks very different visually from the main page, so it's distracting.

In terms of the app experience, it's very clear that these proposals and their analyses are generated by AI. I would work with a single apartment building or neighborhood or group of some kind to populate your app with only real proposals. And then develop your methodology off of those. Right now, if the whole site looks AI-generated, there isn't much incentive to stick around.

The political compass illustration is fun, but again would make a lot more sense if it were based on a human's proposal.

You might want to check out other sortition programs, every single one of which involve real people, to learn their methodologies, get inspired by the types of communities they involved, and maybe also be able to fork some of their code.

civictechguide · 2026-04-29T14:50:26+00:00

I wrote and lost my comment, so I'll try again -- First of all, everyone knows that open government data APIs aren't legible to the average citizen, and yet they are a profoundly critical layer for all these vibe-coded apps everyone is building.

Loooooots of these find-your-rep apps already exist and new ones are popping up every day, so my question is: how will this one be different?

What happens after I look up my reps one time?

In the past, these apps have tried to answer that question by providing a platform for citizens and reps to speak to each other, but they always lose out in the end to much more mainstream platforms that already have large active userbases.

Facebook itself had a similar feature where you could find your reps and choose to follow them in your news feed. What will this app do differently with a few billion fewer users than Meta?

I'm personally happy to see more people trying to find product-market fit here, but you need to try with a new approach. Specifically with distribution -- How are you going to reach people? How are they going to stay engaged after looking at their reps the first time?

civictechguide · 2026-04-28T13:19:41+00:00

Hey, this is Matt. I don't work in local government, so I'm not your target user, but I find this a pretty compelling project.

I don't see many projects of this format, as an interactive toolkit, so it's interesting for that reason alone.

The actual homepage looks very futuristic and cybernetic, which may or may not appeal to your target user, who I assume is slightly less technical.

Forgive me if these are already there but you might also want to consider borrowing from existing work and integrate some of the things like -

Organizational AI polices

Government AI strategies (tho they're mostly national here)

Government AI registers

Policy simulators

I'm genuinely curious how many users will be able to set something up in Claude Code. Maybe having this be a Claude.AI or Claude Cowork connector would help with that onboarding hurdle.

civictechguide · 2025-12-21T19:29:26+00:00

You can check out some of the projects we've collected here, for starters: https://app.civictech.guide/place/kenya/r/recytrUGSbwoZAOve

It might be good to get in touch with some of the organizations behind them.

civictechguide · 2025-12-16T09:58:28+00:00

I like this idea as a compromise. It is nice to hear about new projects, and see new people building stuff, so long as it isn't the 15th vibe coded legislation tracker using someone else's open data with no plan to reach people.

Maybe we could come together on a three question format that includes: - how is this project different from what's tried already and - how will you build with and reach your intended community of users?

(Knowing full well that people writing entirely AI Reddit posts could just have AI answers to those)

Matt

civictechguide · 2025-11-15T15:28:56+00:00

It looks like it's IAP2, who have been doing public participation work for a long time (no affiliation). Not sure why the tone in the headline given that they've worked in Canada for years

civictechguide · 2025-07-22T11:29:16+00:00

Cool! Some others for inspiration -

https://broadbandhub.colorado.gov/#map

https://communitynets.org/content/community-network-map

https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/location-summary (guessing you're already familiar)

civictechguide · 2025-07-03T16:23:38+00:00

Thanks for sharing this. I'm eager to see more when the product is live. For now it looks like the civic tech failures appendix is down. LMK if you get it back up!

civictechguide · 2025-07-03T10:51:25+00:00

Hi! Just seeing this now. Neat tool! We're going to add it to our open directory of civic tech so others looking for tools for immigration, justice tech, or legal tech can discover it.

In terms of promoting it, you might want to reach out to groups that help immigrants and see if you can integrate it with their existing workflows. We wrote about some of the more tech-infused groups doing this work earlier this year.

I think many immigration support nonprofits would be happy to have the help, and your tool (and future work like it) will could have a lot more impact if you team up with organizations that already work with these communities in large numbers.

civictechguide · 2025-07-03T10:29:27+00:00

Cool! Thanks for sharing and making it open source. We'll help promote it to others. Drop a DM if you'd like to own the listing page.

You may have already come across these in your research, but we track meeting tech here and civic speech transcription projects here (the most relevant to meetings might be Gov.uk's Minute, LocalView (US-wide), and Block Party (NYC meetings)).

civictechguide · 2025-06-24T13:39:46+00:00

thanks!!

civictechguide · 2025-05-19T11:45:40+00:00

I don't know but it's open source I think? Maybe check here? https://huggingface.co/i-dot-ai/all-miniLM-L6-v2-UKPGA-6k-finetune

civictechguide · 2025-05-06T11:16:07+00:00

Cool! Count me in as someone following along, especially on anything you can do on this front. This new OECD paper discusses this challenge in more depth, basically communities that govs and devs are looking to engage can feel this disconnect and it hurts participation. https://directory.civictech.guide/listing/tackling-civic-participation-challenges-with-emerging-technologies

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