Issues

Just wrapped up a great time at #NYCcamp. NDI hasn't participated in this particular open source hootenanny previously, and I was really impressed. We’ve been long-time supporters of open source software, of course, but it’s fun to see all the people together in action. I was invited down because of our work on Aegir,  the open source platform-as-a-service (PaaS) system that we've been actively using for the last year. I had the opportunity to share some of NDI’s experiences with CiviParty in the DRC (post forthcoming!) and Ukraine and with The Issues in Colombia. 

There’s a lot of clever ways in which the Aegir community was advancing their project, like DevShop, a develop/test/deploy system, and integrating WordPress (!) with it; it's a really vibrant group. Aegir 3 has just dropped, which is really exciting for us. While the system has worked relatively well over all Aegir had its share of bugs and glitches that make things challenging for us, and the move to Drupal 7 is a big leap.

Since 2000, NDI has worked with a broad range of political parties in Colombia to develop effective communication strategies that leverage new technologies to improve congressional-constituent relations. The recent launch of the Ciudadanía y Congresistas (aka Citizen and Legislators) platform is the latest example of such a project, which leveraged our Issues DemTool to strengthen the relationship between citizens and their members of congress.

As a refresher, the Issues DemTool is one of four, open source, online platforms that makes up the Democracy Toolkit, a suite of tools launched by our team last August to address the most common challenges faced by NDI partners: organizing contacts, connecting government with constituents, managing election data, and fostering civic debate. Each DemTool was designed to be easy-to-use and inexpensively deployed to support civic activists, political party officials, election observers, candidates for elected office, and members of parliament worldwide. READ MORE »