Learn the ins and outs of making your voice heard at Toronto City Hall online this Thursday at 7pm from members of the Civic Dashboard Team and our friends at No More Noise Toronto!

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See you there!

My name is Khasir and I run Technologists for Democracy (TfD), a grassroots advocacy organization with the mission of keeping tech accountable here in Canada. I’m a machine learning engineer by trade. Many of us volunteers work in or adjacent to tech – the technical perspective helps to inform our advocacy.

In early December, Adam (my colleague and TfD co-conspirator) and I went to depute at Toronto City Hall. It was a followup item to the Magna International case that we’ve been involved with at TfD. I ended up leaving confused and disappointed. Cycle TO left with a bittersweet victory. Nearly everyone left feeling invalidated.

………….

Thanks to Civic Dashboard and City Hall Watcher, we found out that December’s Infrastructure and Environment Committee (IEC) would be discussing the responses from various Privacy Commissioners on Magna’s self-driving vehicle pilot. We’d been waiting for this since September, when the report was originally supposed to have come out.

Adam wanted to depute (i.e., speak) at City Hall on the item. I thought it would be a good idea to say thanks to councillors in person, and Adam would also bring up that Waymo and Serve Robotics would be coming to the city. He took a day off to depute. Thankfully I work as a contractor part-time, so I could move things around and attend.

On December 4, we went to City Hall in the morning. Instead of being hosted in a committee room, this time it was at the larger Council Chamber, because of the sheer number of deputants who signed up to speak.

December 4 was also the same day we sent our open letter to Cineplex Digital Media about their ads doing facial detection at Union Station Bus Terminal, so it was quite an exciting morning.

Once the meeting started at 9:30, I was surprised to find out that the blue bin program would no longer be run by the city, and instead outsourced to private companies, and that this was forced upon the city by the province.

We then got into the meat of the day's meeting: the TransformTO Net Zero Strategy and Electricity and Toronto’s Climate Commitments. Over 60 people signed up to depute for either or both items. Councillors elected to combine the two agenda items in the hope of speeding up the process, and slated the cycling item for 1:30 PM. We'd find out soon enough that this was extremely optimistic.

In between deputations, I got a call from Emma at TorontoToday about our open letter. They wanted to write a story on Tech for Democracy!

By the time we reached the lunch break at 12:30, we were only about halfway through all the deputants for the energy-related items. Adam and I returned at 2:00. We settled back in, and the deputations faded into the background as I read my copy of Enshittification.

Approaching 5:00 PM, after what felt like hundreds of speeches, the energy items finally carried and we could move onto other items. Councillor Fletcher, the Chair of the IEC, decided to shift items around, mentioning the risk of losing quorum in less than an hour. I assumed that meant items would instead be discussed tomorrow.

We finally got to our item, Correspondence Update on the Automated Vehicle Pilot Program. I didn't fully understand what was happening in the moment. Councillor Fletcher mentioned something about asking if the speakers were here today, but also deferring and maybe coming back to it if we had time after the bike lane item, because the bike lane item had to be approved ahead of some sort of deadline later in December or it would be held in limbo.

Councillors voted to defer our item. It’d be discussed at the next IEC meeting on February 25. I was crestfallen. Adam took it in stride, saying it was good to understand firsthand why the deputation process is broken.

The Committee moved onto the bike lane item. Michael Longfield, Executive Director of Cycle Toronto, went first and simply said “we support the staff recommendations” in what was possibly the shortest deputation ever. He then went around the room, trying to tell the dozens of people who spent the whole day waiting for their three minutes of fame to keep their speeches to a minimum. Most other speakers followed suit but some didn't get the memo, still speaking the full three minutes.

Adam and I left, since I figured we wouldn't get the chance to speak. I had been invited to play some Pathfinder that evening and planned to get there on time.

………….

Civic Dashboard is a great tool. It enables people like me and communities like Technologists for Democracy to become more aware of the goings-on in Toronto. But really, it’s a stop-gap for what the city really needs: better interfaces between the city and the public it serves. Not just better websites, but better processes and ways to interact with civic services.

Imagine hundreds of people signing up to depute on something as mundane as building a sidewalk on a side street in Don Valley East. There are simply not enough hours in a day to listen to everyone. If meetings stop being productive by repeatedly having people speak for hours on every item, something will give and change will happen. 

Imagine being able to participate in what’s happening at the city at a meaningful level that doesn’t involve taking a day off just to speak for three minutes. Democracy has come to mean voting in elections and then sitting back for four years, because it’s too hard to do otherwise. But it doesn’t have to be this way!

The city already knows what it needs to do to begin improving the deputation process. For example, having dedicated staff to welcome deputants and prepare for presentations, or allowing for alternate ways of giving feedback on motions that don’t involve speaking in-person or online. 

This is the system we have: gather people to speak your mind, and councillors are forced to listen. This is democracy. But democracy can be much better. Imagine if the city looked to improve the user experience of its services in the way that tech companies do. Why not improve the democratic user experience?

In the meantime, wish us luck as Adam and I have elected to depute virtually for the upcoming IEC meeting on February 25.

In keeping with our commitment to full openness, this presentation is a project update for the community! The team will talk about:

• what we’ve been up to for the last 6 months

• what we’ve learned

• what's next, and how anyone (including you!) can get involved

Looking forward to see you there!

Hosted by: Civic Tech Toronto

New Stadium

83 Walnut Ave, Toronto, ON M5V 2S1, Canada

Tuesday December 9th at 7PM

Or Join Online on Zoom

RSVP at:

By Khasir Hean, Organizer at Technologists For Democracy and Civic Dashboard team member

I spoke at City Hall for the first time and got interviewed by Global News! (Apparently a CBC camera was also on me while I was speaking!)

A week before our speeches, JJ, a local strategic consultant, brought up that there would be an upcoming agenda item (see original on TMMIS) on an autonomous vehicle pilot by Magna International. The pilot is being overseen by the Ministry of Transportation Ontario, so Toronto has no direct say in how it’s being run, but is allowed to submit comments.

Magna wants to test a self-driving vehicle for food delivery. It’s operating at under 32 km/h with a human-operated “chase vehicle” following nearby, as well as a remote human supervisor. The pilot started in May and will last until the end of 2025.

JJ pointed out that Magna was doing some concerning things highlighted in their privacy policy:

[…] If you are within the surrounding environment of one of our SDVs, the sensors may collect your personal information. The sensor data that is collected includes:

- Video recordings and images, including facial images of individuals in the surrounding areas, vehicles (including vehicle license plates) and other nearby objects […]

— Magna International: Privacy Notice | City Delivery by Magna

And later we discovered Magna’s reasoning—which we still don’t think is sufficient reason to record everyone’s faces—as well as a disquieting fact that vehicle license plates will be blurred:

Vehicle license plates will be automatically blurred but faces of pedestrians will not because Magna believes that pedestrian faces are very useful to determine gaze, pose and intent of motion of a pedestrian or cyclist, such as whether a person is about to cross the path of a vehicle or not.

— City of Toronto: REPORT FOR ACTION Automated Vehicle Pilot Deployment in Toronto Under the Highway Traffic Act

JJ, Ilya (Civic Dashboard’s brainfather) and I worked together to understand the issues behind the pilot and what messages we should send. This was really an ad hoc thing that we happened to bring together - we each took time to align and understand the issues before writing our speeches separately. I thought I’d give the speech online until the night before, when Ilya told me he’d be going to City Hall in person with JJ. (Which turned out to be a good thing, since I wouldn’t have been interviewed by Global News otherwise!) I managed to jot down some bullet points on the morning of, once I was sitting in the committee room.

On June 11th, I got to City Hall at 9:30 am and went through security. I’ve been to City Hall a couple of times before for Civic Tech nights, so this wasn’t new to me. The Infrastructure and Environment Committee was meeting in Committee Room 1, so I headed up the stairs to find the room. (Side note: circular architecture is nice on the eyes but confusing to navigate!) When I got to the room, the doors were closed but a digital sign indicated it was the right committee. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to just walk in, until someone else came up and did just that.

It was definitely an intimidating experience for someone deputing in person for the first time. The room was full of staff members, councillors and police officers all chatting and settling in before the committee would begin. I took a seat at the back wall and waited for Ilya and JJ to show up. Ilya showed up shortly after I did. JJ was slotted to be the very first deputant of the day, and thankfully she showed up right before the committee began the meeting. Akhil, a friend of Ilya’s, also showed up online to make a speech with us.

Check us out starting at the 18m30 mark!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQWsX_HQn-0&t=1110s 

Councillors asked questions after our deputations like, “What can we do about this?” We were saying that we can inform Torontonians with signs pointing out Magna’s pilot and face-recording practices. But Akhil brought up an excellent point that we as random Toronto residents should not be the sole ones answering this question. Really, our role is to bring up issues that we face, and trust that the city will do its diligence in asking experts how best to tackle these issues.

Afterwards, we were approached by Matthew at Global News to do an interview, which you can find here! 

I decided recently that I want to play a more active role in shaping our city - not that I haven’t been already. I’m a machine learning engineer by trade, and an activist in my free time. I volunteer with Civic Dashboard and other organizations like TTCriders who want to improve the quality of services in the city. But what I’ve realized recently is that there is a lack of advocacy for public good from a technological perspective. Sure, there are organizations out there like the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, but they aren’t comprised of technologists. There’s also OpenMedia, but they focus more on telecommunications and media issues from an (inter)national lens. Meanwhile, the United States has the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I look up to all these organizations as an inspiration for what drives me every day.

Since our deputations, city councillors have been supportive of our actions and have even indicated that folks at the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario are concerned with what Magna is doing! It’s very motivating to have support from more powerful allies than ourselves. Also, we’ve recently been featured on the front page of the Annex Gleaner!

All this to say, this is why we’ve started Technologists for Democracy. Our goal is to keep tech companies and governments accountable to the public, by advocating for technological change for social good. We’re part of the growing Civic Tech movement here in Toronto, which recently celebrated its 10th anniversary in the city, and we’re a sister project to Civic Dashboard. We’re a group of people who want to get directly involved with the way that democracy and technology shape our everyday lives. 

Collectively, we can make a difference!

Join us on Zoom or in person at Toronto City Hall Committee Room 1, RSVP here!

Topic of the talk:

It shouldn't take 3 hours and a political science degree to understand City Council and how to meaningfully engage with it.

Civic Dashboard is a 100% volunteer-run effort to make it take a few minutes, make Toronto the most people-powered version of itself, and have fun doing it!

Understand how Council works, see your councillor's voting record, get alerts whenever an item relevant to you is coming up, and take meaningful action with 1 click - and we're just getting started 😁

Speakers:

The Civic Dashboard team is made up of over 35 (and growing!) volunteers who care deeply about the present and future of Toronto's democracy. We are user researchers, policy experts, programmers, designers, illustrators, project/product managers, and all kinds of engaged Torontonians at home and abroad. We're also pretty easy to join, fun to hang out with, and exceptionally good looking!

Join us on Zoom or in person at Toronto City Hall Committee Room 1, please RSVP at:

• A simple, accessible How Council Works page

• A Councillors page showing how every councillor in this session of Council

• An Actions page showing all committee/council items available to act on in the city, along with filters/tags and an email alerts/subscription feature

• A prototype Search page showing where we’re headed in upgrading Council-related search in Toronto

• Organizational infrastructure like social media, a blog, Feedback/Join Us pages, and the tools to support it all

What got us there is not made up of bits and pixels, but time and people:

• 37 volunteer contributors

• 120 Slack channel members

• 9 months

• 42 hacknights

• 3 key supporting organizations - thank you to Open Data Toronto, 1RG, and Civic Tech Toronto!

Stories show us what’s possible, yet volunteer efforts rarely have their stories told, especially not as they’re happening. When they don’t work out they (and their learnings) disappear, and when they do work the journey to get there is obscure, often smoothed over, and mythologized. This is our best attempt at avoiding either of these outcomes, by communicating one version of the first 9 months of this project! 

Much as open source code bolsters other projects and makes them feel more possible, we hope that open sourcing our process and progress will do the same for civic technology projects in Toronto and beyond. We’ll release updates more often going forward!

What the work log below doesn't - and can't - cover is all the critical work in between. The conversations in person and online, the cafe and Zoom meetings and work sessions, encouragement from friends, family, and recent strangers, the personal obstacles overcome, the folks who left and re-engaged, and everything that didn't work before it did. 

Here are a few core takeaways:

1. Working in large groups is not just an unfortunate necessity of volunteer projects, but a core driver of the capacity and resilience of an organization/project. It's a feature, not a bug.

2. There are many wonderful, skilled, trustworthy low ego people who want to contribute, and lots of great work to be done.

3. The best things are not any one person’s - they’re collective, co-owned efforts, and to focus on individual stories is to miss the forest for the trees.

4. Community infrastructure - be it public data or a decade-long weekly meetup - is critical, makes good things possible, and deserves our support.

What follows is a month by month breakdown of the high level work (and the people who did it) that got us to where we are today! It’s not meant to be engaging (unless you’re SUPER into project management). It’s a literal, messy, and necessarily incomplete record of a beautiful and underappreciated way of doing meaningful, necessary work in community. If this way of working sounds appealing to you, you can join us any time!

May 2024

• Ilya does a Civic Tech Toronto hacknight presentation on the UX of democracy, with no project in mind/attached to it

• Several viewers reach out and ask whether there’s a project associated with this, saying they would be interested in contributing!

June 2024

• Jim, Rel, Sarah, Gena, Sudhakar, Michael N, Mehul, Thomas, GodKnows, RJ, and Aidan join the project

• June 18th - first “pitch” + hacknight breakout

  • Quote - “the goal is to iterate + learn quickly and have an MVP up ASAP, hopefully this summer! I'm gonna be running this breakout every Tuesday this summer, pending emergencies”

  • The project working name is “Citizen Dashboard”

• Most of the work consists of onboarding, some research into Toronto’s Open Data + TMMIS system, and some whiteboard sketches!

July 2024

• Shelley, garo, Nithin, Olivia, Ahmed, Yael, Ajay, and Thomas C join the project

• Mackenzie from Toronto’s Open Data team becomes aware of the project, shares great context

• We split the project into 3 workstreams - Tech, UX, and Project (general), and make the associated Slack channels

• Tech:

  • Michael N opens a GitHub repository, write an initial scraping script for Agenda Item data, an initial architecture diagram, and makes a slide deck called “Toronto City Council Explained”

  • Nithin creates documentation of the existing API documentation

• The UX team begins work on a user survey and interview program, spearheaded by Thomas S and Sarah K

August 2024

• Michael K, Sam M, Jasper, Ali, Manvi, Mandy, Tom R, and Bradley join the project

• UX:

  • Ali creates a discussion guide for semi-structured user interviews

  • Yael shares research on the City’s decision making process

  • The team develops the survey, including questions, email templates, and informed consent forms

• Tech:

  • Lots of discussion and exploration on architecture and MVP scoping

  • Michael K sets up an architecture with Kafka and Kubernetes

  • Michael, Mitch and garo build the team’s understanding of the City’s API

• Project:

  • Manvi and Jasper sign on as product managers

September 2024

• Fab, Baris, Emily, Alan, Simone, Jesse, Kit, Sharmeena, Paul, and Yiwei join the project

• UX:

  • Survey launches, responses roll in!

  • User interviews with democracy power users begin via a Calendly booking page, spearheaded by Ali and Shelley

  • The quest for a more inclusive name (because ~20% of Toronto residents are not citizens) begins, prompted by Sarah K

  • Ilya writes up our first Personas document

  • The research Figjam board is first created and shared

• Tech:

  • Nithin builds and deploys an elastic search instance pointed at our agenda items database

  • More discovery work is done on the agenda item lifecycle and the associated data

• Project:

  • Notion and Google Drive instances launch for the project, we start tracking meeting notes, user stories, and project to-do’s in Notion

  • We make a channel for research-related work called #research-civic-dashboard, led by Yael

  • Ilya writes up an Onboarding document

  • First outside-of-hacknight team party!

October 2024

• Xin Wen, Matthew, Milan, Torie, David, Lawrence, Tristan, Gabriele, Patrick, Julia, Simon H, Isaac, Brian, and Alex G

• UX:

  • Rel sketches out engagement touchpoints on the current City website

• Tech:

  • The team decides on using Tailwind and Next.js for front end work

  • Matthew builds and deploys the first version of our Councillors page

  • Nithin deploys our first Search page prototype

  • Michael N progresses work on our github’s DevOps setup

  • garo builds and deploys the first version of our Actions page

• Research:

  • David begins research on similar projects in other municipalities

  • Brian gives insight on how this tool could play from inside a Councillor's office

• Project:

  • Hacknight meetings are run by the team (spearheaded by Jasper and Manvi) in Ilya’s 5 week absence

November 2024

• Atina, Khasir, Jijesh, Alex O, Sonal, Aditya, Jonathan, Jeremy, Ana, Tom, Akhil, and Jai join the project

• UX:

  • Sharmeena augments the engagement touchpoints draft with more user journey research

  • Sharmeena shares initial designs for the Councillors page

  • User interviews continue, run by Ali

  • Rel creates first design system for the project, based on Material UI

• Tech:

  • garo implements client-side search and filtering by decision body for the Actions page

  • We decide on a postgres database in the backend

• Research:

  • Ali and Yael share the first version of the How Council Works page

  • David shares research about the Councilmatic project in NYC and Chicago, and where it did or didn’t work

• Project:

  • After much discussion, we rename to Civic Dashboard

  • Project management is switched to Slack Canvases and Lists

  • Ilya creates Products and Teams + Onboarding docs and a kanban board + tickets in Slack

  • We formally break our work up into product teams - How Council Works, Search, Actions, and Councillors

  • We buy civicdashboard.ca

December 2024

• Sourabh, Sage, Katelyn, Naomi, Jerome, Danillo, Thomas F, and Sebastian join the project

• UX:

  • Yael shares a visual design for an Actions page, and incorporates lots of feedback into the How Council Works document

• Tech:

  • Khasir kicks off and leads data pipeline conversations and mapping, he and Lawrence explore different AI models for item summarization

  • garo implements an “email yourself your search” feature for Actions

  • Matthew adds Moved/Seconded By tabs and full agenda items to the Councillors page

  • Michael N deploys our first data backend prototype, and a wiki for the GitHub repo

  • Nithin ships a Search prototype with AI summaries

  • Milan builds and deploys the first iteration of civicdashboard.ca, with a landing page, an About Us page, links to our prototypes, and Join Us + Feedback pages

  • The team decides on Cloudflare for hosting

• Project:

  • We have a holiday party at 1RG!

January 2025

• Yumi, Drini, Ariel, Richard, Matteo, Chantal, Ashish, Nour, Sadiq, Mikaal, Kevin, Sarah P, Rowan, Phu, Sunny, Joseph G, and Serena join the project

• UX:

  • Ilya build a user feedback form to Google Sheets to Slack pipeline

  • Mandy rejoins the project and initiates design system + unifying agenda item card design work

  • Sharmeena designs our first shared agenda item component

  • Chantal contributes some sketches for the How Council Works page

• Tech:

  • garo merges the action page and website repositories

  • Khasir, Jerome and Lawrence continue agenda item classification/tagging work

• Research:

  • How Council Works team splits into visually-focused team working on the intro document and a research/words-focused team working on more extensive wiki docs for the City

  • Yael connects Ilya to Jordan, a taxonomist at the City, who points us to the City Subject Thesaurus, which shows that there are human-made tags on most agenda items

  • Danillo gives feedback about the How Council Works document

• Project:

  • Jeremy creates a meeting and project management structure for our tech team - tech work items start being tracked in GitHub

  • Ilya makes a Backlog document, an Open Organization document, and a Milestone document outlining what we’re aiming for next

  • Notion is formally shut down

February 2025

• David H, Caroline, Geoffrey, Labib, Mateo, Mathushan, Kyle, and Luce join the project

• UX:

  • Sharmeena and the design team conduct some voting research about the agenda item card component

  • Richard does initial branding work and a team survey

  • Ali and the How Council Works team post first Figma wireframes for the How Council Works page

  • The UX team transitions from Figma to Penpot (under Jordy’s suggestion) due to cost and open source considerations

• Tech:

  • Jim brings up the idea of using a Github wiki as the place for our burgeoning Council wiki

  • Jai and the data team take a first pass at, and get feedback on, different forms and attributes of AI summaries for items

  • garo and Khasir find and analyze “subject terms” for agenda items, paving the way for tagging

  • John adds the Councillor list page

• Research:

  • Yael, Danillo, and Mathushan start work on the Council wiki

• Project:

  • The team decides to work with a deadline for the first time, aiming to release an enthusiastically shareable + usable version of Civic Dashboard by April 3rd, in time to demo it at Democracy Xchange!

  • The team does a big work session outside of hacknights for the first time, at Civic Space Sundays at 1RG!

  • #updates-civic-dashboard is added and hooked up to the GitHub

  • Khasir and Jai create a technical onboarding document

  • Calendly is shut down, the team transitions to an email-based flow for signing users up for interviews

March 2025

• Liqi, Ian, Veronica, Nathan, Melissa, Carol, Luisa, and Allan join the project

• UX:

  • Mathushan creates and iterates the User Researcher Toolkit

  • The team transitions all assets and work to Penpot from Figma

  • Sarah connects the team with Luisa, who (with the team’s direction) creates illustrations for How Council Works

  • Shelley shares new designs for the future of the Search page

  • Richard designs Civic Dashboard’s first logo

• Tech:

  • Garo adds viewing past items, search operators, and viewing underlying subject terms by hovering over tags, email subscriptions, and new UI to the Actions page

  • Luce implements infinite scroll for the Actions page

  • Caroline builds a prototype of the new Search design

  • Khasir creates supertags from subject terms to be used to tag agenda items throughout the website

  • Jai creates an agenda item AI summary generating pipeline

  • Milan deploys the How Council Works page, updated UI for the Councillors page (with individual motions on each item), and adds a Feedback banner + updates to the Feedback page, 

  • Matthew implements new designs for the Councillor List page and Jai’s AI summaries into agenda items on the Councillor page

  • The team comes up with a basic permissions hierarchy for Github

• Project:

  • garo initiates the practice of a monthly “all hands” Slack thread for the team to be aware of each other’s work and how they’re feeling

  • The team works together outside of hacknights at Civic Space Sunday and for a pre-launch work session tomorrow

  • Jerome researches newsletter options, selects Steady

  • Ilya makes LinkedIn and BlueSky pages