Success Factors in Civic Tech Grassroots Software Ecosystems: Preliminary Findings from an Exploratory Case Study

Abstract

Grassroots civic technology (civic tech) uses collective action-based software creation to drive social change, such as citizen-led environmental monitoring. There exists several grassroots successes, but the phenomenon is not yet well understood or analyzed through the lens of existing software project or ecosystem theories. This initial, exploratory case study examines the factors that influence the growth and sustainability of civic tech software ecosystems, with a particular focus on the trajectories and inflection points of civic tech projects as they scale. The goal is to identify success factors that influence the growth and sustainability of civic tech software ecosystems. Tentative findings indicate that grassroots civic tech software ecosystems can follow similar patterns to FLOSS software ecosystems, where they achieve global reach by effectively engaging and empowering local actors, fostering participation, and developing local-global interaction.