Comparison of Open-Source Software Release and Civic Hackathon Organizational Structures regarding Sustainability Factors: Powershare App Development Technical Report

Civic technologies are information and communications technologies that connect citizens to other citizens and to public administrative bodies. For the technical project, my team and I developed a mobile application civic technology that enabled suggesting and sharing feedback with local elected officials based on citizens’ residence locations. My STS research focused on drawing analogies between actors in organizational structures surrounding civic hackathons and open source software releases to assess the distribution of responsibilities’ effect on sustainable hackathon outcomes. My STS and technical research projects together demonstrate the challenges and benefits of pursuing civic technologies. They investigate and demonstrate how civic technologies can be developed in various software development environments.