The Program on Liberation Technology (LibTech) at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law together with the National Democratic Institute (NDI) will offer a free massive open-online course in 2016 on using technology to promote transparency and accountability. The objective of this course, dubbed ‘Technology for Accountability Lab,’ is to guide democracy activists, software developers and other stakeholders to conceptualize, plan and implement technological tools and advocacy strategies to improve transparency by opening political and governmental processes.
The Technology and Accountability Lab will run for 13 weeks and feature short video lectures by scholars at Stanford and NDI who will be joined by experts from the Sunlight Foundation, Code for India, Code for Pakistan, Creative Commons, My Society, Transparency International and The New York Times.
Course topics will expose participants to both theoretical and practical applications of the field, which include: monitoring corruption at the grassroots; tracking legislators and their bills; using technology to monitor election fraud; tracking money in politics; and designing innovative technology tools.
NDI and Stanford’s CDDRL – who both have a long tradition of working with democracy activists around the world – developed and designed the course in response to activists’ interest in incorporating technology into their work. The course aims to attract a unique set of global participants with a background in accountability movements who can learn more about the tools that can help them to enrich and magnify their work. No previous experience or exposure to technology is required.
Tanja Aitamurto, Stanford University
Phil Brondyke, National Democratic Institute
Greg Brown, National Democratic Institute
Larry Diamond, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford University
Asim Fayaz, UC Berkeley
Cristiano Ferri, Hacker Laboratory, Chamber of Deputies, Brazil
Lindsay Ferris, Sunlight Foundation
Harini Ganesh, Code for India
Marci Harris, Popvox.com
Scott Hubli, National Democratic Institute
Peter Irungu, Ni SiSi
Finnur Magnusson, Product Manager, Meniga
Michael McNulty, Elections Team, National Democratic Institute
Maggie Murphy, Transparency International
Pali Palavathanan, Templo
Ashar Rizqi, Code for Pakistan
Alasdair Roberts, Truman school of public affairs, University of Missouri
Whitney Smithers, City of Calgary
Vivek Srinivasan, Program on Liberation Technology, Stanford University
Timothy Vollmer, Creative Commons
Sarah Welsh, National Democratic Institute
Dave Whiteland, My Society, UK
Derek Willis, New York Times
Terry Winograd, Department of Computer Science, Stanford University
