We also had the chance to connect with a host of CSOs and government representatives at TechCamp Kosovo, focused on combating corruption across the Western Balkans. Teaming up with the great folks at Democracy Plus, we highlighted the reasons behind the massive success of their local implementation (in both Albanian and Serbian language) of NDI’s FixMyCommunity DemTool, which has gathered over 1,000 citizen reports and helped municipal governments address and fix hundreds of issues across Kosovo since its launch just over a year ago. The key lessons learned from the implementation of this platform – developing strong relationships with local institutions (like mayors offices, municipal councils, etc.) and smartly advertising the platform to generate awareness and interest – may not seem like rocket science, but served to many of us at the Camp as a powerful reminder that the technology is often the easy part. It’s the human integration that takes the most work and is ultimately the most important piece of the puzzle.
We had the chance to talk FixMyCommunity again at the PeaceTech Exchange in Macedonia, hosted by our friends at Democracy Lab. Although structured a bit differently from the Tech Camps, the goal of these “PTXs” remains the same – connect local change makers both in and out of government with data, tools, technologies and strategies that can solve important issues in their communities. At the end of the three-day event, one of the winning “pitches” outlined a local implementation of the FixMyCommunity DemTool in Gostivar, a diverse municipality located about an hour outside of Skopje, the Macedonian capital. Just a few weeks later, supported by NDI, the winning pitch by a CSO called Nexus Civil Concept turned into what is now a growing and active FixMyCommunity site available both in Macedonian and Albanian language.
We’ll of course be keeping an eye on all these projects as they move forward (if you happen to live in either Kosovo or Macedonia, we definitely encourage you to check out those instances of FixMyCommunity!), and even beyond that look forward to future opportunities to interact with all the awesome innovators that we met at these inspirational sessions.