Issue 3: Access to Democracy

For January 2026, this issue we focused in projects we had in Civic Tech Toronto during 2025. Also projects related to them.

This month we had 5 cases, 1 analysis and 1 best practices added to the knowledge base. 3+ articles under review.

7 Days free trial access to all content: https://the-blueprint.ghost.io/charge7th

Field Trip 🔭

Civic Spark
Conference is not a easy thing.
Civic Spark was organized during this "civic tech winter," energy was low in both Canada and the United States. This article gives you a high-level overview of how the event happened and how the core organizers worked together to organize it.

Weekly Open Call about Deliberation Tool
Making impact can be easy.
A grassroots movement around digital democracy tools, showing an unconventional path of community-building through weekly open calls. What emerged was not a planned project but an organic collaboration where people connected through shared values around citizen engagement and sensemaking, forming a loose network that spread ideas globally.

Coris (Backstory)
Adapting professional project management in volunteer management.
A volunteer team in Toronto started with excitement and good intentions but got stuck in endless discussions for months. What changed everything was treating volunteers like valued partners, adapting professional project management for volunteer realities, and focusing on reducing friction rather than adding more process.

Civic Dashboard
Assessible City Hall is important so our solution is important.
Civic Dashboard is a website created to make City Hall way easier for everyone to understand and use. The site features simple tools to search for information, contact local leaders, and learn how the city actually works. After a year of planning and testing, the project officially launched in December 2025 and continues to grow today through constant feedback and new experimental ideas.

Councilmatic Chicago
Being a third party is not a bad idea.
Councilmatic Chicago is a website that helps people understand what their city government is doing. Unlike its sister project in New York City (which shut down), Chicago's version is still running today. But "still running" doesn't mean "problem-free."

Analysis 🔬

Going Public: Launch Strategies and Partnerships
"Big, loud launches" offer instant visibility, but a "small, learning launch" is recommended.

Practices 🔍

Regular Practice: Blockchain Community Co-working Session
Community co-working sessions create sustained engagement through regular, low-pressure gatherings. Here is how the Blockchain community did it.

📣 Teaser for Next month

1. We will find more information about the Civic Tech movement and their communities in the United State as request by our reader.
2. As suggested by community members we will dig into details of conference logistics.

Blueprints for the Blueprint

• We had a call with UofT in community partnership, providing value to both community and research projects.
• We had conversation with Orbital Studies Magazine, they are artists and inspiring magazine creators.
• We are checking venues in Toronto History Museums and writing proposal to use their space for our quarterly meetups. Feel free to mutate our idea or add your comments here: [ Google doc ]
  • We want to make sure that if one person learns a lesson, the whole world learns it too.
  • We will create a event page for RSVP and this process should also be on our event run sheet.
• Experimental:
  • We are experimenting the idea about recruiting Chroniclers for projects to record events weekly through AirTable form in format of [ what is carried out to handle a "why" and how it happened under what background with what result ] then make this list of records searchable
    • The experiment: AirTable form
    • If it works, we will integrate the form to our Contributor Portal and the searchable interface to our Reader Portal and Newsletters (such as this one you are reading)
  • To make project self-report easier, we are developing and testing an AI interviewer
    • The experiment: https://huggingface.co/spaces/npc0/survey
    • Feel free to help us find more bugs when the AI interviewer is available (availability reset at every 9pm):
    • Once it is mature, we will integrate it to our Contributor Portal
  • We can make project experience more accessible with graph algorithm and visualization, also by providing project planning tool that integrates our knowledge base
    • This idea is at very early stage with our very limited bandwidth but we are seeking impact investors and angel investors to make it happen, we are also happy to see any open source competitor who makes the world even better than we do
• We had an editor contributor worked with us at this stage, this is great.

On the internet

City of Toronto is seeking local movement artists, community groups and organizations looking for space to come together, collaborate and create at Toronto History Museums under the 2026 theme: Gather in Toronto.

Toronto History Museums are Calling for Proposals

Grant Access to the Blueprint

Find our earlier Newsletters

Newsletters - The Blueprint

Monthly issues of newsletter

The Blueprint