Today we published the result of a recent, very productive, focus week: 🇧🇬 #Bulgaria 🎉 Many thanks to the dedicated #Wikidata editors with local knowledge making this possible!

The first release includes ministries, state agencies, executive agencies, administrative structures, oblasts, municipalities, kmetstvos, municipal districts and specialized local administrations. Over 3,600 organizations!

govdirectory.org/bulgaria/
#CivicTech
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Govdirectory

Govdirectory is a crowdsourced and fact checked directory of official governmental online accounts and services.

^{www.govdirectory.org}

I really feel sorry for the public sector employees working on meeting this #a11y deadline for PDFs.

"PDFs are where services go to die."

No doubt the people working on this will be super under-resourced, and actually meeting this deadline won't be seen as much of a win by anyone, but not meeting it has legal and dire consequences.

To be clear more #a11y is good! Under-resourcing teams is not!

deptcivicthings.substack.com/p…

#Government #PublicInterestTech #CivicTech

The elephant in the new accessibility law: PDFs

If your government agency is typical, you have a lot of PDFs. Probably thousands. They are probably not accessible.

^{Rebecca Woodbury (Department of Civic Things newsletter)}

Enjoying the #g0vSummit @summit today. Lots to learn about #CivicTech & #DigitalGov from here in Asia.

My presentation went well and you can see the presentation with links here docs.google.com/presentation/d…

The Value of Open Source in Furthering Accessibility Goals - Public.pptx

The Value of Open Source in Furthering Accessibility Goals Mike Gifford, Senior Strategist 5/4 04:10 ~ 04:40 @ R2 Open source has the potential to play a key role in supporting a more inclusive society.

^{Google Docs}

Report from the UK's Institute for Government says "chronic short-termism is harming service performance in key public services" instituteforgovernment.org.uk/…

#civictech #govtech #digitalservices

Short-term policy making has trapped public services in a ‘doom loop’

Chronic short-termism is harming service performance in key public services.

^{Stuart Hoddinott (Institute for Government)}

GovInsider wrote a profile about my work in public service (and mentions Mastodon): govinsider.asia/intl-en/articl…

#civictech #govtech

"if we don’t regroup as a civic tech community and reengage on meaningful procurement reforms, I’m pessimistic that we’ll make much progress on improving the quality of government digital services." civic.io/2023/05/16/requiem-fo…

#CivicTech #DigitalServices #Procurement #CfASummit

Requiem for Procurement Reform

Much of the work that is done to build, deliver, and support government digital services comes from private vendors. It’s naive to think that we’ll ever improve these services as much a…

^{Civic Innovations}