thank you for coming to my session uh
I'm very honored to be here for sharing
our story about Civic Tech by the way so
before starting the uh please raise your
hand how many of the people know the
term Civic
tech oh very few good uh so uh I'm
founder of cod for Japan and running
Civic Tech Community in Japan and Civic
Tech is a global movement transform
government transforming government
citizen relationships through technology
and Community the we have both uh two
phases the one phas is for the
collaborate with the government uh to
Foster open government initiatives like
promoting open data or open source
software or or or doing hackathon with
them and to to know that to understand
what kind of Civic innovation is enabl
and also we
have we facilitate citizen Le projects
like uh citizen participation for uh
change for improving the society or
cities uh often uh organize the uh the
kind of the the participatory uh
experimental project with the citizens
it called living loves and also uh
provide some participatory policymaking
platform or something and also uh
encourage we encourage students to start
new projects for solving local issues uh
organizing haathon or or we have
specific projects for solving social
issues like uh gender equality or anti-
disinformation and so on so the key
point is that we use the digital public
goods for or infrastructure for uh for
enabling this PO side Communications and
uh so so digital public goods is created
by the communities and also created by
the government we utilize th those of
the ideas to facilitate Civic Innovation
and in Japan there are four types of
stakeholders like a central government
or private sectors or local government
and
Academia so uh for the central
government uh we work with them uh
through the Outsource uh sometimes we do
outsourced work from the government or
we send some uh Tech developers or
technologist to the become Our member of
the government committees and also there
are private sector it is important uh
and there are big tech companies or
social startups or G Tech startups or
non nonprofit organizations so we ask
funding simply for to this big tech
companies and also we work with the
social startups or nonprofit
organizations and and also also we
promote open source software or open
data to these private sectors and the
local government is really important for
us uh because Civic Tech literally the
citizens can do something with the local
govern government so we facilitate to
build the local communities or uh become
uh some sometimes the the the uh uh
technologist become fellows to the Civic
uh local government and as Academia uh
we uh we provide kind opportunities for
of the students in intercept or use
Civic engagement processes and and so on
so we have those kind of stakeholders
and uh code for Japan's role is uh uh
facilitate Civic Tech in Japan and my
our vision is Sy together create
together and we have three pillars of
activities mainly one uh we Foster uh
digital democracy and we build uh
digital public goods and also we
facilitate Cien n projects and those
three
uh under those P we have many projects
uh and right now we have more than 8,000
members on our SL workspace and also we
have uh more than 20 core members uh
paid staff and also we have n 19 plus
brigades brigades mean the local code
for Community like a code for saporo or
code for Osaka and we have Grassroots
communities
and connect those uh for uh facilitate
the uh to start new things uh I started
Cod for Japan uh 11 years ago and we or
we have been organizing the uh more than
65 times monthly hackathons and we have
multiple government
Partnerships let me show some examples
from the uh digital public goods part
and this is a DDM the soft Ware uh open
source software for the citizen
participation processes the uh this is
created by the originally created built
by the uh Barcelona city government but
this is open source so that we
translated this software into Japanese
and also provide the uh those instances
to the local government uh like City
kakogawa cities or k is City and the the
in Japan citizen engagement tools are
beginning to be used in a wide range of
fields both of the public and private
sectors so right now Cod of Japan is
providing such uh uh for providing those
software for cities to encourage uh
citizens to participate the policymaking
processes and also we have as I said uh
uh we have 19 plus Regional Civic Tech
communities uh each communities have the
different uh format of activities they
organize hackathon with the local
government or local just local
communities or have some experimental
project with them so we connect those
those communities and and and try to uh
create create the digital INF digital
public goods infrastructure
and one of Key activities of us is the
social HCK day this is the monthly hakon
just one day hakon and and we everyone
can join not including non- tech people
uh the in in the beginning of the event
the the uh project owners uh will pitch
their ideas or existing project and ask
help uh for the to by the participants
so each participant can choose which
project they you want to join and and
after joining uh forming the teams that
team will work together and and at the
end of the event uh they will uh share
what uh what what Improvement has done
on the event and this is the legary uh
regular hakon so that people don't need
to build the new new new projects every
time they just they can bring their
existing project and people join and
help to improve this is uh this
hackathon is not a competitive hackathon
that collaborative hackathon and from
that activities there we have so many
projects uh this is part of the project
list our project list and I
at on this stage I I don't have time to
explain details but uh uh uh some of the
projects are very active but some of the
projects are already quiet and some of
the some of the projects have been
released uh publicly so uh so this uh
from this uh so from the hackathon event
we uh some citizens create the projects
and uh some projects uh
uh actively developed and but still we
have uh many challenges as a uh Civic
Tech Community uh sustainability is
issue or and also impact and adapt
adaption is also issues and and also
technical social issues like uh uh yeah
we have uh funding model is very
difficult uh currently the in Japan uh
there is not much uh uh Foundation
helping the this kind of the uh new uh
form of activities so that so we earn
revenue from the government and spend
those revenues to the community side and
so creating sustainable Civic Tech EOS
system
is very important challenge to solve and
also growth management is difficult uh
maintaining quality with scale uh it's
very uh difficult for to manage by the
voluntary just voluntary groups so we
need some kind of solution
for gloss managing managing growth and
also impact side the the government
integration we is still uh still
difficult uh bureaucratic resistance to
open source is strong in Japan and and
the procurement system is not does not
fit with this uh kind of open- source
software and Civic engagement and we
there are digital literacy gaps between
Generations or sectors and Technical
problem is uh technical challenges also
we have uh yeah recently technology
evolution is quite rapid so we have to
catch up to uh to understand the new uh
new uh challenges like AI governances or
privacy protection so and also social
Innovation side we have to uh we need to
uh have a way to measure real social
impact this is very important to uh to
expand uh our community to the other
stakeholders but and also we have uh we
we can see the future Trend and
opportunities uh for example AI can be
used for uh making better policy
discussions and the right side images uh
from the uh recent election in Japan uh
the some uh
researchers uh Illustrated visualized
and clustered opinions from the uh
citizens and all so that this kind of
soft Ware is widely used in Japan uh not
widely used started by started you uh
yeah this uh for example talk to the
city or police is the software uh that
we used and also we maybe we can enhance
a policy participatory platform like
this and so second one is a perfect
perfectly match with this conference so
we want we have been building the uh
digital public goods so maybe uh
connecting to web3 ecosystem we can
build some some of sustainable funding
models or com how we can enhance
communities work by uh creating
incentive mechanisms and also we can uh
find we want to expand the Civic Tech uh
close border collaboration so maybe from
this uh conference maybe we can uh have
new uh projects together let me show
some examples of our project
and we uh organized a matching donation
Sy project using simple Grant this is
the open source software uh for uh doing
the uh qu quadratic funding uh donation
so uh we we selected the 18 Civic Tech
project projects from community and
listed uh this those projects and asked
funding from the to to uh the publicly
and the result uh we uh we prepared uh
$615 us as a matching pool and and we
collected uh ,200 us do from uh around a
100 unique donors this is not uh this is
still small amount of the donation but
we uh we understand how the CTIC funding
Works uh and and Next Step would be uh
we can we will run more rounds and we
want to expand stakeholders uh like uh
government people and and also uh we uh
we accept we want to merge the the this
mechanism with the token donation the
simple grants is uh using the credit
credit card donation so uh we want to
expand this more
and last uh project I want to share is
toang uh this is uh the kind of the Dow
tool simplest way for contribution
recording and RSE distribution and key
challenges from our activities from da
Dow
daish Civic Tech communities uh we have
three
main programs like uh track tracking our
works it's annoying actually uh
track so Civic Tech Community is a Civic
Tech project is U mostly the uh open
open source uh Community like uh work so
uh contribution measurement is bit
difficult uh if it is only the
development side uh maybe the we can
track record by the uh GitHub commit
report commit record but the uh Civic
Tech Community Civic Tech project
requires many tasks other than the
development so uh and also we often
forget to report completed work and also
uh reward for long-term contribution uh
is uh important for making sustainable
Community uh which makes people to
motivate uh to be motivated and but uh
it's hard to secure funding if the
project is on the early stage uh and
also chores go unnoticed there are so
much unvisible work and how can we
reward those
efforts it is is uh that is one one
point I want to we want to solve and
also on boing rather is uh also ke key
and so many people can join easily
because it's it's open but actually it's
difficult to join without help
understanding the community uh
understanding the community is uh takes
time so uh we need to uh create uh we
need to have a better uh onboarding
processes and yeah so uh that why we
started toban toban is a role based
reward system so uh the those features
we toan has this kind of features uh it
offer offers effective Ro management
this is not a task based system Ro based
uh project owners can assign and manage
responsib the effect efficiently and
also track contributions from the uh
contributors use P2P token transfers to
record even small
contributions and and we said uh toban
can uh be uh used by to set fair re uh
determine RS based on role and time
engaged and also quick distribution toan
can distribute rers swiftly uh to large
groups we use the we are using the hats
protocol uh like this and so uh the
roles can be distributed to some people
uh and also that people can that
assigned uh that people can assign their
role to the this to
subgroups so that uh the role will be
distributed to the contributors and
after getting some rewards uh like a
treasury or or revenues from the uh
project uh the project owners can
distribute that the uh rewards to the uh
contributors so uh this this can be used
not only for the cic communities we we
for example the uh so maybe toan can be
used for The Residency program
housekeeping or essential workers
additional bonuses so uh yeah uh but
this is just beginning uh if you are
interested in please join us uh there we
have the GitHub report and and we
started TG group and there is a lead
developer so please talk to us and
yeah that's all mainly but we have many
use cases let's solve real world
problems with us thank you very
much all right uh do we have any
questions for hell uh in the
audience we do have some time to take a
few questions
you have any
question you can use Mic you
guys okay we do have one how you tackle
the crossborder payment oh it's good
question so uh I think this is for the
uh simple grants program uh we accept
right now current currently we just
accept credit credit card uh donation so
but uh maybe we we can expand our
program to the Token donation so so that
to crossb uh donation uh to to enable
crossborder donation and also uh we uh
want to uh yeah uh we actually we uh
participated uh to the G Bitcoin around
and maybe we can mix that kind of the
solutions all right uh we do have one
question
here hi um this is matali I actually
wanted to ask you how one of the
challenges you mentioned was
bureaucratic resistance to open source
MH and say especially in countries that
have authoritarian governments how how
do you propose um one can like navigate
through these
challenges good question thank you very
much so we
have yeah we have been uh convincing
them the government people to use open-
Source software uh but the we need to
explain the the value uh about uh using
open source software not only the
technical side but also the uh why uh
they have to care about this so and one
of the reason they uh accepted is the
the efficiency cost cost efficiency
because in Japan there are uh
1,741 local government cities and if
each city is built the uh their Solution
by scratch
it takes so much cost but it's happening
in Japan so I explained uh and
demonstrated to build the software as a
uh some uh to we we actually we built
the covid-19 dashboard for Tokyo
Metropolitan government and we published
that source code on the on GitHub and
accept the uh issues and pro requests
after that many people contributed to uh
the improving the soft to improve
software uh and and also other
prefectures uh used the software and
same software and using their data uh to
visualize the covid-19 situation so so
such kind of demonstration was really uh
useful to explain why government have to
uh choose open source
license all right I think we can take
these two questions are there any
advices or hard-learned lessons you want
to share to people who want to establish
this kind of initiative
oh so hard Lear lessons could
be
people uh it's very very difficult to
keep uh long contributions from everyone
uh people have no time to uh keep
contributing to the
uh Civic Tech Community actually I'm a
founder of cod for Japan but no
one still working with me uh as the
initial uh members