By Emelia Williams, Civic Voice Archive Fellow This blog explores some of the political concepts and context, like legitimacy, trust and governance and their intersection with information and data systems so that we can situate the role of a Civic Voice Archive . United States democracy undeniably suffers from a…

By Lorelei Kelly, Georgetown University Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation With civics making headlines every day, Americans cannot help but notice that elections power the direction of leadership in our democracy. The current moment — during a contested presidential transition — is a good time to remember that…

By Elizabeth Tyson, Lorelei Kelly and Shannon Dosemagen The vision for a Civic Voice Archive (CVA) is to strengthen our democratic resilience, trust and governance muscles. It is nestled among the goals of modernizing congressional information flows , providing more legitimacy-via-information , and improving the impact of public commentary. The…

Written by Kevin Lunzalu, Country Coordinator of the Kenyan Youth Biodiversity Network This blog is part of the ongoing series “The Anatomy of Environmental Decision-Making”. The effectiveness of any strategic environmental law and its contribution to the achievement of intended objectives is only as good as its formulation process. Data…

Written by Adam Calo, PhD James Hutton Institute, Scotland, UK This blog is part of the ongoing series “The Anatomy of Environmental Decision-Making”. Public participation in science may deliver democratised understanding about what is happening on the land, but often struggles to account for who ultimately has the power to…

Introduction The creation of environmental policy is based on formative research about environmental problem areas. This policy then guides how decisions are made in reference to natural resources, environmental protection and mitigating environmental damage. While there has been a rise in environmental data, collected by and about people who are most…

Written by Ahou Rachel Koumi, Centre de Recherches Océanologiques Abidgan Pour lire cet article en français, veuillez visiter: https://www.openenvironmentaldata.org/blog/dchets-plastiques-afrique-de-louest This blog is part of the ongoing series “The Anatomy of Environmental Decision-Making”. Plastic wastes which pollutes and degrades the environment, ecosystems, rivers and the ocean is a critical problem in…

Written by Alandra Kahl, Penn State This blog is part of the ongoing series “The Anatomy of Environmental Decision-Making”. In late 2014, I received an unusual voicemail. The person on the other end was a fisherman, and wanted to know about the health of the local waterway. He had found…

Written By Alandra Kahl, Penn State This blog is part of the ongoing series “The Anatomy of Environmental Decision-Making”. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has a history as the city of steel. As a center of industrial manufacturing on the East Coast, it consistently ranks among the worst cities for air quality. …