The “civic tech” movement was hijacked by the Trump administration’s January 20 executive order rechristening the US Digital Service as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Now, the push to use tech to strengthen democracy has effectively been commandeered to weaken it.
The term civic tech encapsulates the work of a broad swath of activists and public leaders with an ambitious goal: using digital technology to dramatically improve people’s lives. In practice, this means using computation to slice through so-called red tape, boost government efficiency, expand access to critical services and information, and enable participation in our democracy.
Municipal governments in particular have leaned on the concept to establish thousands of useful apps and service improvements, ranging from an open data platform in Cincinnati to a resource for people seeking affordable housing in San Francisco. The national embodiment of the movement was the US Digital Service (USDS), established in 2014 after the Obama administration’s botched healthcare.gov rollout. Since then, USDS has quietly supported an array of life-saving and government improvement functions, from helping to distribute COVID-19 tests to providing critical data analysis during the 2022 infant formula shortage to making veterans’ benefits more accessible.
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