Cívica Digital: using open data to combat corruption in Mexico
This article was published in November 2017.
I met Diana D’Herrera, product manager at Cívica Digital, at the trendy offices WeWork has in Colonia Juarez, Mexico. There is a neon sign at the entrance that says, “Do what you love”. In Diana’s case, what she loves is building tech tools to empower civil society.
Civica Digital provides technical support to government and civic organisations that want to get better at digital.
The for-profit business spun out from the civic hacking movement Codeando Mexico. This community of coders came to fame in 2013 for building an open-source legislative app during a week-long hackathon at a fraction of the cost the government was going to pay for it (115 million pesos).
The community secured their first government contract after this. Many more followed, making this an example of the good results of citizen engagement in political processes.
In 2016, some of the members that made up Codeando Mexico decided to create the company Civica Digital. This allowed them to fully focus on building civic tech tools, although the decision was also motivated due to the limitations non-profits have to access funding streams and grow their revenue.
What does Civica Digital do?
First things first, let’s define what civic tech is. It can be described as technologies that are deployed to enhance the relationship between people and government, by giving people more of a voice to participate in public decision making and/or to improve the delivery of services (usually by government) to people.
What Civica does is to build tools for government agencies or for organisations with a social mission that make their day-to-day processes more efficient and transparent. Because they work with government or social entities, this technical optimisation ultimately benefits everyone, as it improves the interaction of people with a public service.
Diana explains to me in detail how the team of 13 that makes up Civica Digital split their time between three types of projects: those that relate to open data and transparency, those that help SMEs thrive through a more efficient use of digital tools, and those that focus solely on technical research.
When we chat about their project portfolio, I had the impression I was sitting with one of those silent heroes who are slowly bur surely transforming the country’s political gears from within.
Some of their most relevant projects to date include creating an Open Contracting portal with Transparencia Mexicana, bringing the app Auto Chilango from Mexico City to Guadalajara and Puebla to improve mobility in more cities with open data, or reviewing air quality datasets with the Global Open Data Index.
While we go through many of Civica’s projects, I’m visibly astonished. Diana picks up on my confusion and says their mission is always the same: “We work to cut the huge digital divide in Mexico by giving civil society tools that make information easier to use.”
In a country where the digital divide is a mirror of poverty, and almost half of the population lives with less than $5 a day, the road of civic tech is long and arduous.
However, Diana is an “incurable optimist”, and so is the team behind Civica.
How Civica works with the Mexican government on Open Data
Civica Digital works hand in hand with a variety of government agencies in open data and digitisation initiatives. The title of technical partners is something they’ve had to earn step by step.
After coding the legislative app as Codeando Mexico, the team of young hackers was entrusted to build an open data repository for the federal government. Today, this is the open data portal of Mexico, which keeps being run entirely by the community of volunteers at Codeando.
“This project helped us gain our first allies in government. They put their trust in technology, and we proved we can make processes more efficient”, says Diana. “It helped us break barriers and establish our credentials”.
After this project, came a string of government contracts where Civica worked as a technical partner along with other private organisations, civic tech entities and public bodies.
“The union of civil society with government and private corporation focused is crucial”, says Diana. “It’s very difficult to do something if you’re alone.”
One of the things that makes them different to other tech solutions´providers, is that they don’t see their customers as clients. They dare to look under the carpet and to design end-to-end solutions where the tech tool is just a component in a process looking for efficiency.
“We are technical partners who give civil society organisations tools to make their products better”, sentences Diana.
Testing the Open Data Charter Anticorruption Guide
The biggest project Civica has been commissioned by the government is to help test the Open Data Charter anticorruption guide.
The guide tells governments what type of datasets they should make available and interoperable to combat this “abuse of entrusted power for private gain” that makes Mexico the fourth most corrupt country in the world after Philippines, India and Cameroun.
So far, Mexico is the only country where the guide, written by a coalition of partners led by the Open Data Charter, is being tested. And the challenges are huge.
“The key aspect of open data is its interoperability. In Mexico, each government department has its own system and they don’t connect”, says Diana.
The anticorruption guide also states this matter very clearly, saying that “whilst recognizing the importance of transparency to inhibit corruption, it is key to go beyond the idea that disclosing data directly equals corruption reduction.”
The challenges arise from the moment data captured. For example, it’s up to each Mexican state to design its own standards to capture information on public works. Jalisco may decide to include information such as the name of the tenders, a declaration of interests and decision criteria, while Chiapas may not capture any of it.
Since there is no shared standard, publishing this data does not allow civic organisations, journalists or curious citizens to cross-compare and spot indicators of corruption.
Then comes the challenge of formats. Even when standards to capture information are the same, if they’re published on different software programmes or formats, it makes them impossible to compare.
“One thing is to publish data. Making it available for the public is a different matter”, explains Diana.
The road testing process kicked-off in August 2017. Civica Digital, Transparencia Mexicana and the National Digital Strategy Office of the Mexican government held a series of sessions with government officials from 20 dependencies to evaluate 30 datasets from the guide.
The next stages are to create clusters among these departments based on how they capture and publish data, so that the team at Civica can organise workshops with them to then build specific capacities that aid them in their journey to combating corruption with civic tech.
The challenges are huge, as Diana very frankly outlined a few days after meeting with the representatives of each dependency for the first time.
However, as every social entrepreneur, she has high hopes in social change and is firmly committed to make this change happen.
“Mexico has many challenges, but that’s why there are also many ways in which we can offer solutions and that’s very valuable.”
“We are fully committed in this. At Civica, we are creating the basis for things to improve with civic tech. It’s not a strong movement now, but we believe in it. Thinking that we are paving the way for others to come and design new solutions with our research and tools motivated us every day.”
“It’s very hard, but when things work, it’s highly rewarding”.
When can we expect to see some results from your work with the Open Up Guide?, I ask
“In three years’ time, things will be very different in Mexico”.
I hope so too.
