I’ve been involved in social justice activism for all of my adult life. Striving for an accountable and transparent government needs an informed and active citizenry … know our rights, understand how these should be realised and taking personal and if necessary community solidarity action to realise our rights. Holding power to account, both government and private, is essential for a just and equal society. Civic technology offers the means and helps us to do this work in a sexy way. My first encounter with civic technology was while working for the Black Sash on one of its Community Based Monitoring projects – monitoring SASSA services in partnership with several Community Based Organisations. OpenUp helped us to develop the civic technology for this CBM project. Many years ago I worked on a social audit with women farm workers in the wine industry. If only we had access to civic technology then!
