Goñi, I. (2026)
Paper we co-authored with Maggie Hughes and Stuart Lynn on the need to consider 'second-order' civic technologies that go beyond simply putting out new individual projects. Soon to be presented at the great conference of ACM FAccT (the leading conference of Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency in tech)
Participatory and deliberative democracy is full of people and organisations trying to build better ways for citizens to participate, but our digital tools often work like isolated islands.
This paper argues that if we want healthier democratic ecosystems, we need to pay attention to the "connective tissue" (aka second-order tech) between those tools, including the standards, data sharing, and collaborations that allow them to work together. And we need critical eyes on those as well. Technical standards, professional associations, and this sometimes invisible connective tissue of technology are where gatekeeping can take place, where generative friction is dulled, and where hierarchies of people and practice are established.
In other words, democracy needs not just better apps or specific projects (first-order technology), but better relationships between them (second-order technologies).
As we see it, this also has very practical implications for how emerging policy initiatives like the EU Civic Tech Hub should take place, but also, more generally, for how we think about the future of civic technology.