Glossary

Clear definitions of key civic technology, digital rights and open government concepts.

Accountability: The obligation of institutions and officials to explain, justify and answer for their decisions and actions.
AI Governance: The frameworks, policies and practices that guide the responsible, ethical and accountable development and use of artificial intelligence.
Civic Innovation: New ideas, services or approaches — often technology-enabled — that address public problems and improve community life.
Civic Technology: Technology that empowers citizens, strengthens the relationship between people and government, and improves public life through participation, transparency and better services.
Crowdsourcing: Gathering information, ideas or reports from a large group of people, often used in civic tech to map incidents or collect citizen data.
Data Protection: Legal and technical safeguards governing how personal data is collected, stored, used and shared, giving people control over their information.
Digital Democracy: The use of digital tools and platforms to enhance democratic processes such as deliberation, voting, consultation and civic participation.
Digital Divide: The gap between those who have access to digital technologies and the internet and those who do not.
Digital Government: The design and delivery of public services and operations using digital technologies, data and user-centered practices.
Digital Inclusion: Efforts to ensure everyone has equitable access to digital technologies, connectivity and the skills to use them.
Digital Rights: Human rights as they apply online, including privacy, freedom of expression, access to information and protection from surveillance.
Disinformation: False information created and spread deliberately to deceive, distinct from misinformation, which is shared without intent to harm.
E-Participation: The use of digital channels to involve citizens in information sharing, consultation and decision-making with public institutions.
Encryption: Encoding information so that only authorized parties can read it; end-to-end encryption protects messages in transit from everyone but sender and recipient.
Freedom of Information: The right of the public to access information held by public bodies, a cornerstone of transparency and accountability.
GovTech: The use of technology by, or on behalf of, governments to deliver public services more efficiently, transparently and inclusively.
Hackathon: A time-bound collaborative event where people rapidly design and build prototype solutions, often to civic or social challenges.
Metadata: Data about data — such as who contacted whom, when and from where — which can reveal sensitive patterns even when the content itself is protected.
Open Data: Data that anyone can freely access, use, modify and share for any purpose, typically published in machine-readable formats.
Open Government: A governing approach based on transparency, citizen participation and accountability, often supported by open data and digital tools.
Open-Source Software: Software whose source code is publicly available to inspect, modify and share, enabling transparency, collaboration and local adaptation.
OSINT (Open-Source Intelligence): The practice of collecting and analyzing publicly available information for research, journalism, human rights and verification.
Participatory Budgeting: A democratic process in which community members directly decide how to spend part of a public budget.
Privacy: The right of individuals to control their personal information and to be free from unwarranted surveillance.
Public Interest Technology: The application of design and technology expertise to advance the public interest and serve the common good.
Surveillance: The monitoring of people's communications, movements or behaviour by states or companies, which can chill free expression and association.
Transparency: The principle of making information about decisions, spending and operations openly available for public scrutiny.
VPN: A Virtual Private Network routes internet traffic through an encrypted tunnel, helping protect privacy and bypass network censorship.