Exploring a European Civic Tech Hub to Tackle Barriers to Civic Tech Impact
The European Commission, under its Democracy Shield initiative, is committing to create a European Civic Tech Hub to strengthen societal resilience, citizen engagement, and digital sovereignty. A joint effort between TICTeC and Finland’s innovation fund Sitra is mapping the hub’s practical design and identifying barriers to civic‑tech adoption across the EU. Between mid‑March and late‑April 2026, the team will interview civic participation and deliberative democracy practitioners, with findings slated for a public report in June 2026. The aim is to embed practitioner insights into EU policy and boost democratic participation continent‑wide.
The Digital Omnibus: A Step Back From the Brink, but the Risks Remain
The European Council’s first compromise on the Digital Omnibus has stripped out the most controversial GDPR amendments, including changes to personal data definitions, scientific research scope, and Article 22 safeguards. However, the draft still contains provisions that could dilute transparency obligations,...
Norwich Evening News – Facial Recognition to Be Used in Norwich for the First Time
Norfolk Constabulary will deploy live facial‑recognition cameras in Norwich, marking the first UK city‑wide rollout of the technology. Police argue the system will help identify suspects quickly and improve public safety. Civil‑rights group Big Brother Watch has condemned the move...
HB 2320 Advances in Washington While Broader 3D Printer Control Bill Stalls
Washington’s legislature has cleared HB 2320, an intent‑based bill targeting the illegal manufacture of 3D‑printed weapons, and it now awaits the governor’s signature. A companion proposal, HB 2321, which would have mandated online database checks and firmware controls on all printers, stalled...
Beeline Kazakhstan Monitoring System Orman-AI Prevents 100 Forest Fires
Beeline Kazakhstan launched Orman‑AI, an AI‑driven forest fire monitoring platform, in 2022. The system deploys more than 100 video‑surveillance cameras across Astana and six key regions, continuously scanning for fire signatures. Since its inception, Orman‑AI has prevented over 100 forest...
Legal Opinion: The Use of Artificial Intelligence Tools in Asylum Cases
Open Rights Group released a legal opinion examining the UK Home Office’s use of generative AI tools—ACS and APS—in refugee status determinations. The opinion highlights that the tools produced inaccurate summaries in up to 9% of cases, lack transparent oversight,...
Civil Society Calls for an Ambitious Digital Fairness Act on World Consumer Rights Day
On World Consumer Rights Day, a coalition of civil‑society groups, led by EDRi, urged the European Commission to adopt an ambitious Digital Fairness Act (DFA). The letter argues that current EU rules—GDPR, DSA and DMA—do not cover manipulative design, addictive...
Armenia's "Conducting without Dominating" Approach to Digital Life Events
Armenia’s Information Systems Agency (ISAA) is reshaping digital government by organizing services around 12 “life events” that span multi‑year citizen journeys, from pregnancy to citizenship. Led by Arusyak Martirosyan, the agency adopts a “conducting without dominating” model, coordinating ministries through...
EFF Launches New Fight to Free the Law
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sued the Consumer Product Safety Commission to force the release of safety codes for children’s products that were incorporated into federal law but remain claimed as copyrighted. Public.Resource.Org, a nonprofit that publishes government documents, argues...
OECD's New eGov Index, China's Digital Currency, and the Impacts of Digitalization on Government Service Demand
The OECD released its 2025 Digital Government Index, showing a 14% rise in overall maturity to 0.7, with Europe and Asia leading. New America’s "demand machine" paper warns that AI‑driven public services will generate more citizen requests, not fewer. Estonia...
How UK Can Adopt Digital-First Community Care to Provide Equitable Healthcare
The UK National Health Service faces widening health inequities driven by ageing demographics, workforce shortages, and funding gaps, especially in deprived regions. A digital‑first community care model—leveraging remote patient monitoring, telehealth, AI‑driven personalization, and integrated data analytics—offers a pathway to...
U.S. Government Workers Are Rapidly Embracing AI
U.S. government employees are quickly integrating AI tools, with Gallup reporting 43% using AI at least occasionally by late 2025, up from 17% in 2023. Frequent usage reached 21% in the public sector, slightly trailing the private sector’s 25% rate....
Data Systems at a Crossroads: Official Statistics for a New Era
A new paper by Open Data Watch and Paris 21 warns that deep cuts in development financing, mounting legitimacy concerns, rapid AI advances, and rising expectations for inclusive data are converging into a systemic crisis for national statistical offices, especially in...
State Department Shifts StateChat to OpenAI After a Presidential Ban on Anthropic
The U.S. State Department has replaced Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4.5 with OpenAI’s GPT‑4.1 for its internal StateChat platform following a presidential directive that bans Anthropic models from federal use. The switch also rolls the chatbot’s training‑data cutoff back to May 2024, undoing a...
Canada Needs Nationalized, Public AI
Canada’s Carney administration has earmarked $2 billion over five years for a Sovereign AI Compute Strategy, aiming to keep AI development under national control. OpenAI is aggressively courting Ottawa through its “OpenAI for Countries” program, raising concerns about U.S. corporate influence...
The Gulf Built Oil Pipelines to Avoid Hormuz. It’s Now Doing the Same for Data
Gulf nations are racing to construct six overland data corridors linking the region to Europe, routing traffic through Syria, Iraq, and the Horn of Africa. The most advanced, Saudi Arabia's SilkLink, secured an $800 million contract to lay 4,500 km of fiber...
Cyprus First to Use EU GOVSATCOM Secure Communications Service
Cyprus has become the first EU member to operationally use the European Union’s GOVSATCOM secure satellite communications service, announced by EUSPA on 10 March. The service, which went live in January 2026, aggregates capacity from eight satellites operated by five countries to...
The AI Lab Next Door
Local colleges and universities across the U.S. are rapidly building AI capabilities, yet their expertise remains largely untapped by city governments and nonprofits. While higher‑education institutions are governing AI internally and creating a pipeline of AI‑trained talent, public sector entities...
POPVOX Foundation Appropriations Requests: A Focus on Future-Proofing, Constituent Services, Security, and the Member Experience
The POPVOX Foundation submitted FY27 appropriations requests to House appropriations leaders, targeting four pillars: future‑proofing Congress with AI, bolstering constituent casework, enhancing security training, and improving the member experience. Key proposals include creating a Congressional Capacity and Technology Office (C‑TECH)...
AI Agents Are Coming for Government. How One Big City Is Letting Them In
AI agents capable of querying databases and completing transactions are flooding government websites, mixing benign searches with potentially harmful automated actions. Existing public portals, built for human users, lack safeguards against large‑scale machine traffic, exposing agencies to fraud, service hoarding,...
The eID Wallet Still Doesn’t Deserve Your Full Trust
The EU’s new eID Wallet, mandated by eIDAS 2.0, remains stalled because the Commission’s draft implementing acts weaken core privacy safeguards. EDRi and eight NGOs warn that the proposals reduce untraceability, mandate facial biometric data, and limit pseudonym use, shifting privacy...
Big Brother Watch Response to Digital ID Statement by the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister
Big Brother Watch’s senior legal officer Jasleen Chaggar condemned the UK government’s proposed national digital ID scheme, describing it as a multi‑billion‑pound project lacking democratic approval. The campaign highlights that nearly three million citizens have signed a petition opposing the...
Stop Funding Duct Tape
The Department of Defense is spending billions on maintaining legacy platforms, such as 1970s‑era F‑15C/Ds, instead of funding emerging autonomous and AI‑driven programs. Integration hurdles with outdated systems are inflating costs and slowing innovation across air, sea, land, and undersea...
Untitled
A UK Companies House identity‑verification process is stalling as users report mismatched GOV.UK One Login emails and a 14‑day completion window that falls over the Easter school holidays. The author, who unsuccessfully applied for a non‑executive director role, highlights repeated...
LMT Installs Smart Traffic Monitoring System in Adazi
Latvian telecom operator LMT has deployed a machine‑vision traffic monitoring system in the town of Adazi. The solution, active from March, will operate for three years and automatically capture violations, forwarding the data to the Road Traffic Safety Directorate and...
Updated: Where the House and Senate Are on Internal Use of AI
Congressional leadership has issued internal AI use policies for both chambers, but the guidance remains hidden behind firewalls and is largely unknown to staff. The House adopted HITPOL 8 in September 2024, outlining five guardrails, approved tools such as ChatGPT Pro and Microsoft Copilot,...
Trump Cyber Strategy Puts Crypto Security on the Agenda
The White House released a National Cyber Strategy that explicitly targets cryptocurrency and blockchain security. The plan calls for bolstering digital defenses across government and private sectors while promoting privacy‑preserving technologies. A key component is the development and adoption of...
What Is RAG And Why It Matters for Legislative AI Use Cases
Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG) enriches large language models by feeding them vectors derived from curated legislative documents, enabling semantic search and grounded responses. The process involves converting policy texts, transcripts, and FAQs into searchable vectors stored in a semantic database, then...
The Trailer on the Side of the Road
In early 2026 investigators uncovered hidden license‑plate readers concealed in trailers and other roadside objects across Southern California, revealing a covert surveillance network operated by Border Patrol and ICE. The network feeds license plates, vehicle data, GPS coordinates, and facial...
The Medicare Login Upgrade Nobody’s Talking About: Why Identity Infrastructure Is the Most Underrated Distribution Rail in Health Tech
On March 3 2026, CMS announced that Medicare.gov will accept CLEAR, ID.me and Login.gov as login options, effectively embedding federally‑backed IAL2 identity verification into the nation’s largest payer platform. The move addresses a $5 billion annual fraud problem and signals that verified digital...
AI's Impact on the Army Officer Corps, PTB Preview, and a SCSP's New Quantum Commission
SCSP released an interactive report estimating that artificial intelligence could influence 25 % to 64 % of tasks across all 131 Army officer MOS, with combat arms still seeing over a quarter of duties affected, especially during deployments. The study proposes four...
Section 117 Is Not a Disclosure Problem
The Department of Education launched a public Section 117 transparency dashboard in February 2026, publishing over $60 billion in cumulative foreign‑funding disclosures from U.S. universities. By making gift and contract data searchable, flagging country‑of‑concern entities, and allowing direct institutional comparisons, the...
Iranian Drone Strikes at Amazon Sites Raise Alarms over Protecting Data Centers
Iranian drones struck Amazon Web Services facilities in the UAE and Bahrain, marking the first known kinetic attack on a U.S. hyperscaler’s infrastructure. The incidents disrupted regional services and highlighted data centers as emerging military targets amid rising AI‑driven strategic...
Sorting Methods for Online Deliberation: Towards a Principled Approach
The paper by Nicolien Janssens and Frederik van de Putte examines how online deliberation platforms should order citizen proposals. It introduces a conceptual framework that classifies sorting methods by purpose and the variables they consider. The authors critique the prevalent...
Artificial Intelligence and Government
The newly released book *Artificial Intelligence and Government* surveys how AI is reshaping public institutions worldwide, from climate resilience and urban planning to justice and service delivery. It details adoption strategies, readiness frameworks, and real‑world case studies that show governments...
NHS Tops Public Trust Rankings for AI Use
New Appian research shows the NHS is the most trusted UK public‑sector organization for responsible AI use. Sixty‑three percent of citizens trust the NHS with AI, outpacing banks (55%), retailers (60%) and technology firms (54%). Despite this confidence, only 6%...
From Data Ambition to Public Value
Governments have moved past debating data use and now face the challenge of governing data responsibly in an AI‑driven era. The article argues that traditional, technocratic data strategies fall short because they prioritize compliance over legitimacy, privacy, and public trust....
An AI Avatar Is Running to Represent Indigenous Voters in Colombia
An AI avatar named Gaitana is being used to represent two Indigenous candidates in Colombia’s March 8 parliamentary election. Built on the DeepSeek large‑language model and secured with blockchain smart contracts, the platform aims to gather community consensus for legislative decisions....
Open-Source AI Hardware Could Weaken Big Tech’s Grip on AI
Current AI, a $400 million public‑interest partnership, unveiled an open‑source handheld AI device at the India AI Impact Summit. The offline prototype, built with India’s Bhashini translation project, can see, speak, and answer questions in Hindi and English, even identifying candy...
Unlocking the Power of Public Sector Data by Overcoming Common Strategy Pitfalls
Public sector organisations view data as a strategic asset, yet many treat data strategy as a one‑off document that quickly becomes obsolete. The article outlines common pitfalls—treating strategy as paperwork, ignoring people and culture, lacking clear purpose, and failing to...
Metro – Live Facial Recognition Use Not Ruled Out in Oxford Street’s Pedestrianisation Plans
London Mayor Sadiq Khan announced plans to pedestrianise Oxford Street, aiming to create a world‑leading urban space. While the pedestrianisation scheme is promoted as a safety boost, the mayor has not ruled out deploying live facial‑recognition cameras in the area....
Outsourcing Crime Control: How EU Anti-Money Laundering Rules Threaten Financial Privacy
The European Union’s revised anti‑money‑laundering (AML) and counter‑terrorist financing framework transfers crime‑detection duties from public authorities to private banks and other obliged entities. By mandating extensive collection of personal and transactional data, the rules compel institutions to flag customers as...
EFF to Third Circuit: Electronic Device Searches at the Border Require a Warrant
The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU filed an amicus brief urging the Third Circuit to require a warrant for electronic device searches at the border. The brief centers on U.S. v. Roggio, where agents seized a traveler’s laptop, tablet,...
EFF to Supreme Court: Shut Down Unconstitutional Geofence Searches
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, ACLU, and Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy & Technology filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to declare geofence warrants unconstitutional. Geofence warrants force companies to hand over location data for every device within...
JT/DL: Court Innovation Is Middleware
The article argues that court case management systems (CMS) are the bottleneck preventing courts from leveraging their massive data streams, citing an Oklahoma pilot where a simple middleware layer cut jail time for low‑level defendants. It explains that most CMS...
Access to National Healthcare Systems: The Deadline for Action Is Getting Closer
NHS England has set a firm deadline to retire the CIS1 authentication service, removing access on 28 February 2027 after reducing its SLA to silver on 1 October 2025. The move forces NHS trusts and other European hospitals to adopt the newer CIS2 platform,...
Palestine Action Ruling: Human Rights Organisations Call for Ofcom to Issue Guidance on Content Takedowns
A UK High Court has declared the government’s proscription of Palestine Action unlawful, prompting human‑rights groups to demand immediate guidance from Ofcom on how platforms should handle related content. The government’s appeal leaves uncertainty over whether online material supporting the...
He Studied Cognitive Science at Stanford. Then He Wrote a Startling Play About A.I. Authoritarianism.
The Off‑Broadway play “Data” dramatizes a tech firm’s secret project to build a government‑contracted immigration database, exposing the persuasive language tech leaders use to justify authoritarian‑leaning AI. Its protagonist creates a hyper‑accurate predictive algorithm, echoing real‑world advances where startups like...
Untitled
Manish Srivastava proposes a minimal digital kernel that provides the essential shared capabilities for an unbundled state to function as a rule‑of‑law machine. The kernel focuses on legibility, reproducibility, and enforceability, allowing other applications, intermediaries, and fulfillment channels to remain...
Daily Mail – All Social Media Users Required to Verify Their Age if the Government Takes Strongest Measures to Ban...
The UK government is considering its most stringent option to ban under‑16s from social media, which would require every user to undergo age verification. Proposed methods include mandatory ID checks, biometric scans, or AI‑based behavioural profiling. Privacy watchdog Big Brother...