We’ve moved! — Hello loyal readers! We’ve just launched a brand new website which is where all of our new blog posts will live from now on. Please check it out here. Existing blog posts will remain up on this Medium page, but all future content will be posted exclusively on our website. You can also: ⌨️ You can join our Slack stay up to date on other opportunities, projects and initiatives. 🏠 Come to one of our Open House events to see what we’re working on and meet others from the civic tech community.

Today, 8th March is International Women’s Day, and we’re taking this opportunity to speak with three amazing women working in civic tech. We hear from Kyreena Hay, a Developer and Service Designer who has worked in the public sector as well as for various NGOs; Michelle Cabanela — Principle Product Manager at Service NSW, and Cassitie Galliott, Code for Australia’s Head of Delivery and People. — Despite the fact that some of the earliest programmers were groundbreaking women, there is still a huge disparity in the amount of women working in the tech sector. …

To round out the end of the year, we’re highlighting some of the amazing civic tech projects that have caught our eye. — It’s been an amazing time in civic tech. As a result of the pandemic, we’ve seen a huge rise in interest in how technology and civic duty and communication intersect, and we’ve also witnessed more people take creating and maintaining solutions into their own hands. This episode serves to highlight…

To say 2021 was hard on public servants would be an understatement — from long hours to the collective burnout many people felt, it was a tough year on all of us. …

In the latest episode of our podcast, we speak with Lisa McClean, CEO of NSW Circular and Cate Turner, Manager Data Insights & Intelligence at Sustainability Victoria about government initiatives in the circular economy space. — Lisa McClean is the CEO of NSW Circular, a a NSW government-funded body with environment, economic and social goals embedded into their work. Lisa provides great context and definitions about what circular economy is, why it’s the way of the future and some ways consumers can get involved.

Here are some of our favourite activities you can run with your team to improve their communication skills and help them get the most out of their work. — At Code for Australia, we run a number of regular workshops with our teams to help them in their careers. Some of these workshops are technical (Writing Good Bug Reports, Accessibility 101) while others are centred around what many refer to as “soft skills” — communication, organisation etc. …

We asked five incredible women to share their thoughts on transitioning into tech, getting a promotion, what a healthy workplace looks like and more. — We recently held a Women in Design and Tech panel event in which a few things became clear. Firstly, there’s a huge appetite for conversations about what it means to be a women in these spaces. …

In the latest episode of our podcast, we speak with Damon Rees, the Chief Executive Officer of Service NSW, an executive agency within the Department of Customer Service that provides a one-stop access to government services online, over the phone and in-person. — Damon has led his team through some unprecedented times, from the horrific bushfires that have swept our nation, through to the current pandemic. All the while Service NSW have managed to innovate their ways of working and share their learnings along the way. …

In the latest episode of our podcast, we’re talking about design in government: how it can be implemented, what the benefits are, and how it can de-risk projects. — We speak to Sarah Hurcombe, who was most recently Director of Human-centred design in Commissioning New South Wales, and has been a change agent within various government bodies here in Australia as well as in the United Kingdom. …