Innovation: Inside Code4Democracy: liberating public data to strengthen African watchdog media

 The project is being led by Gregory Solik, is a Very simply idea which aims to embed coders into newsrooms. Already established projects such as Code For America saw civic developers make a difference to their local municipalities. Code4Democracy is taking the same idea and applying it to South African newsrooms.

Civic developers will be dropped into newsrooms for between three and six months each to help create solutions which could include projects based around data-driven journalism and digital engagement with audiences.

Code4Democracy will also establish a “central SWAT team” of specialists to support the embedded developers and create a central repository for solutions born in newsrooms.

In a conflict situation, you fly in the troops. If there’s a need for disruption in the news industry, send in the civic developers.

Source :Martin Carstens