Civil society's use of technology is of strategic importance. Now more than ever. Here's how we've been developing our use of technology to better serve our organization and the communities we're part of. And a look ahead at the biggest challenge: running data-driven campaigns, with respect to the privacy, autonomy and safety of the people involved.

What's at stake

Civil society's use of technology is of strategic importance. Technology can and should advance our work in support of open and just societies. However, it can only do so when we use technology that aligns with our values and message, and when the technology we use and the way we use it is progressive, inspiring and fun. In practice, we see civil society struggling to make use of tech's full potential, and investing in technology without getting a proper return. Furthermore, there's a huge reliance on Big Tech, creating issues for civil society's autonomy and in some cases weakening (the coherency of) its messaging.

The reality of running an NGO

That's why, between 2022 and 2023 we talked to over 40 organizations - half of which were digital rights organizations - about their use of technology. We wanted to understand the state of play, organizations' needs, as well as the underlying assumptions and beliefs. The interim reportTo the report features many of our findings, and the final report charts out possibly ways forward and debunks some prevalent myths.

Our development over the past two years

As for Bits of Freedom, we decided to focus on two bits of work.

We increased tech leadership in our own organization by introducing a senior 'tech lead' role. This person is responsible for our tech strategy: making sure we're up to date on the latest technological developments, challenging colleague's use of tech, and making sure that everything we run and use is up to date and in line with our values. Under his leadership we worked on the following.

1. Office: We phased out all our hardware (we were running 5 servers at different data centers throughout the Netherlands), and moved to a local hosting provider. We developed our own presentation software based on Markdown, which is the default within the organization, and upped our use of Nextcloud to make more collaborative work possible, and to improve the accessibility and user-friendliness of our office tooling.
2. Communications: We left Facebook and X, and are in the process of migrating from Hootsuite to Mixpost. We added some features to the tooling we have full control over: our website, newsletter, podcast and donor software. We also ran a campaign experiment which resulted in https://jouwplatformrechten.nl.

What's next

We're leaving our last bit of proprietary software, Exact, in favor of the open source accounting software Odoo. We'll find an accessible way of describing our own tech setup, and share this with the communities we're part of.

However, the biggest challenge we're tackling this year is our communication- and campaigning tools (and accompanying strategies). How can we engage and mobilize (potential) donors, volunteers and followers across campaigns and time, without using Big Tech platforms or invasive and proprietary third-party (tracking) software? Data-driven campaigning, with respect to the privacy, autonomy and safety of the people involved. Our first step is to run a benchmark campaign using a combination of tools we already have available, and in that process identify additional needs.

Get in touch

We believe in the power of collaboration and working out loud. That's why we're writing this blog post. Ping us Martijn or Evelyn if you want to get involved, stay up to date, or have lessons or wisdom to share.